Decide to agree or disagree with these 2024 predictions from J-L. Check out predictions from G-I at https://www.techtradeasia.com/2024/01/a-to-z-of-tech-predictions-in-2024-g-i.htm.
J is for jobs
 |
| Source: Ipsos. Respondents are almost evenly split between those who think AI will create jobs and those who disagree. The majority believe that jobs will be lost to AI, however. |
According to research firm Ipsos, countries in Asia, known for their tech-driven growth, remain undecided
about AI. In China, 74% of respondents* said that AI may lead to new jobs being created in
their country, whereas 70% think AI could lead to job losses. And while 43% expect AI to lead to jobs being created, 64% globally expect AI to lead to job losses. In Singapore, 69% of Singaporeans are
concerned that AI will result in job losses, and an almost equal number (63%) believe that AI will create new employment opportunities.
The rapid rise of AI has led to societal and legislative concern and backlash, said DataStax. "It’s likely this backlash is just the beginning. The European Union is placing increased regulatory scrutiny on AI and the companies developing the technology, further galvanised by the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence that came out of the White House in October," the company said in a list of 2024 predictions.
"And the pressure is not just coming from government and regulatory organisations. If unemployment and stagnation rise in 2024, we will likely see a backlash from workers who worry about AI displacing their jobs."
 |
| Source: HPE Aruba Networking. Hughes. |
"Fortunately, AI and automation are advancing rapidly, shifting the job from managing and configuring individual devices, to instead defining policy across a whole estate and having that policy implemented automatically and consistently. AI is also able to comb through huge volumes of data to identify anomalies and recommend (and even implement) remedies.
"It’s now well established that AI is only as good as its dataset, and bigger, high-quality datasets are key. Leading vendors will be drawing AI insights from data lakes representing millions of managed devices and hundreds of millions of endpoints. Finally, large language models are turbocharging existing natural language interfaces and providing a more convenient way for admins to get the information they need.
"The bottom line is organisations need to ensure that they are providing their IT teams the AI force-multiplier admins need to remain competitive."
Job skills
NTT believes that even though four in five organisations
plan to incorporate AI into customer experience (CX) delivery within the next 12 months,
the human element will be central to its success. The company’s 2023 Global CX Report
found that the majority of CX interactions still require a form of
human intervention, with executives agreeing that this will remain a
critical part of customer journeys.
"As enterprises
turn their attention to how automation can complement and enhance human
capabilities, they will place greater emphasis on closing the mounting
skills shortages that will challenge AI aspirations. The fundamentals of
AI and big data analytics will become baseline skills for a majority of
jobs across industries, but new hires won’t be the only pathway," said NTT in a list of 2024 predictions.
"Research
by NTT DATA uncovered that business leaders are more likely to have
seen profitability of more than 25% over the last three years because of
investments in reskilling and upskilling initiatives. This will
continue into 2024, with more curated teaching experiences to help close
skills gaps and meet the needs of organisations. "
"With AI poised to add US$1 trillion to the ASEAN’s GDP, businesses will have to bolster AI skills training and initiatives, and equip the workforce with the skills and tools needed to maximise the full potential of AI at work."
 |
| Source: Twilio. Adeniji. |
"Data literacy will become a core component in employee upskilling and recruitment. We also expect organisations to take on a more proactive role in consumer data privacy education, including providing easy-to-understand privacy notices and guiding consumers on options to control their data.
"Attribution, measurement, and personalisation at scale will become key considerations
alongside privacy, consent, and governance. This will fundamentally impact the operations and
strategies of many marketers and data practitioners."
 |
| Source: Alteryx. Madgwick. |
Philip Madgwick, Senior Director, Asia, Alteryx said that preparing for the current "increasingly complex, data-driven future" will require skill transformation.
"Beyond technology, people remain key to the success of digital transformation. As we move into 2024 and the years ahead, embracing upskilling in data analytics and machine learning emerges as the catalyst for driving the path towards sustained business growth and success.
"Therefore, the organisations that will flourish will be the ones that have nurtured and equipped their domain experts with essential critical thinking, domain knowledge, data literacy, and analytical skills to navigate this era of AI-driven intelligence," he said.
 |
| Source: Boomi. Irecki. |
David Irecki, Director of Solutions Consulting, APJ, Boomi, has his money on prompt engineers being in demand in 2024. "The convergence of data management with data analytics and AI will only continue to rise. The imperative is clear: enterprises must break free from data silos, fostering agility.
"As data ecosystems transition from traditional deployments to those augmented with AI, the role of prompt engineers will gain prominence. These specialists will play a pivotal role in structuring data (supported by integration and automation) that can be interpreted and understood by AI, ensuring real-time insights translate into swift, actionable measures," he said.
Aaron White, VP and GM of Sales, Nutanix APJ, left the door open as to which skills might be in demand. "With the speed of innovation, it might be difficult to predict what skills will be needed over the next few years. However, one thing is certain: we’ll need to start building education into our workflows to upskill and reskill the current workforce to keep pace with evolving business requirements," he said.
 |
| Source: Nutanix. White. |
"We are standing at the precipice of this transformative year – a journey toward resilience, innovation, and sustainability. As organisations take stock of the last 12 months and the tech odyssey that we’ve been on, it is time now to take full advantage of the innovation. Having the right technology partner, skills, and talent, will be crucial as we take off to new technological heights."
Talent crunch
As companies prioritise AI and cloud, securing and retaining talent remains a challenge, said Rackspace Technology, citing research carried out in conjunction with Dell Technologies and VMware. The 2024 IT Outlook Report found that 76% of Singapore respondents identified a shortage of skilled workers as their leading concern. A quarter of Singapore respondents also see paying more to fill critical roles, with the rapid pace of technology advancement cited as the leading cause for higher IT labour costs.
Key roles that Singapore organisations are struggling to hire include:
- 5G specialists (59%)
- Data scientists (45%)
- Data engineers (41%)
- Cybersecurity experts (38%)
“This challenge underscores the need for a different workforce strategy that prioritises adaptability, problem-solving, and continuous learning in addition to the latest technical skills to keep pace and drive innovation forward.”
Pure Storage believes that salaries will rise and many AI projects stall because of the talent crunch.
"Besides gen AI, the talent crunch will also persist in hot areas such as cloud computing, Kubernetes, data architecture, and cybersecurity," the company said in a list of 2024 predictions.
"This war for talent will be waged even in traditionally less tech-driven industries such as agriculture, forestry, and fishing as they shift towards data analytics. Professionals skilled in IoT, data analytics, AI, and environmental technology will be highly sought after in these industries."
Jobs in cybersecurity
Like Pure Storage, LogRhythm also acknowledged the need for cybersecurity workers. "Gen AI's role within security operations centres (SOCs) will be characterised by augmentation rather than replacement of human analysts due to its maturity limitations. For the Asia Pacific region, which faces a critical shortage of 2.7 million cybersecurity workers, gen AI will be able to assist and enhance the capabilities of short-staffed SOC teams with the necessary expertise to interpret its output, proving especially valuable for mid-level analysts," said Andrew Hollister, CISO & VP Labs R&D, LogRhythm.
"Organisations will need to discern genuine gen AI contributions amid marketing hype, and the debate between investing in more technology like gen AI or hiring additional SOC analysts will persist, with the human factor remaining crucial. Success will depend on aligning these tools with analyst workflows rather than relying on superficial intelligence."
Jobs in finance and accounting (F&A)
 |
| Source: BlackLine. Parambath. |
"As accounting software becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, the role of the CFO is more important than ever to transform the F&A function amidst the wave of technological advancements."To facilitate F&A’s transition into a truly digital function, CFOs can set advisory guidelines, encourage team members to pick up relevant tech skills and work with the CTO to ensure the smooth integration of AI and automation," he added.
"F&A teams face increasing pressure to close their books faster, improve financial planning and analysis, and strengthen financial agility," Parambath elaborated. "Without the right talent, they may struggle to fulfill their role as a strategic partner to help organisations meet changing market opportunities."
The most successful F&A professionals in 2024, Parambath said, will be those who can interpret and act on insights provided by business intelligence and AI tools. "Currently, automation software is already known for its potential to complete manual, repetitive tasks. With the rise of AI, this presents even more possibilities to help F&A teams become more efficient - for instance, through predictive guidance on high-risk transactions and financial forecasting," he said.
"What sets the modern F&A talent apart from their peers will be the ability to fully leverage digital tools to uncover financial insights, and align these findings with business strategy in real-time to drive the business forward.
"Rather than a department focusing solely on organising the business’ financial statements, F&A team members will shift towards a more analytical, collaborative role, helping various functions of the organisation from sales to IT seize opportunities and evade disruptions. They could also be positioned as internal strategic advisers to their commercial function colleagues on a project-by-project basis, validating the assumptions generated in AI models."
*The 2024 IT Outlook survey was conducted by Coleman Parkes in October and November 2023 and targeted 1,420 senior IT decision makers across key sectors in the US, LATAM, EMEA and APAC.
K is for killer app
"When the iPhone came out, everybody went crazy for apps and thousands appeared all at once, but many of them weren't successful. Eventually, the real winners popped up – apps like Instagram, Facebook, and others. In 2024, we’re likely to see the 'Instagrams' of gen AI applications start to emerge – the field will start washing out quickly and we will see leaders come into view," predicted DataStax in a list of 2024 forecasts."We're seeing early signs of this with Alpha Ori disrupting and enabling the multibillion dollar international shipping business, with PhysicsWallah using gen AI for edtech for millions of students, and Skypoint automating healthcare, saving physicians and medical providers up to 10 hours each a week."
L is for large language models (LLMs)
 |
| Source: New Relic. Marelas. |
"Finally, performance of these models depend on the time of day, scaling requirements and demand from other companies. These models also consume enormous amounts of computation to produce a single response, and right now, there is limited hardware available to support the demand."
According to Marelas, observing LLMs is key to deciding whether projects succeed, or are abandoned quickly. "Observability will enable organisations to evaluate the cost, quality of questions, quality of responses, and performance so businesses can respond to any situation in real-time. For example, with the introduction of OpenAI GPT-4 Turbo, organisations are having to re-evaluate the cost, quality and performance of these models all over again," he said.
Nicole Carignan, VP of Strategic Cyber AI at Darktrace, said that there are several challenges to overcome in 2024 before LLMs can reach their true potential for enterprise use.
"AI researchers will turn to new techniques to improve the performance and accuracy of LLMs without just adding more compute and data," she said.
"Specifically, vector databases – which store numerical representations of data, including numerical representations of the similarities between data – will become more widely used to improve the performance of LLMs without having to increase the compute. Vector databases will also be used to facilitate more knowledge sharing between different LLMs, which will enable organisations to take learnings from one model and apply them to another model to refine it. This type of technology will be key as developers look for faster and more efficient ways to improve their LLMs without requiring more compute/data centre resources."
"Reinforcement learning is currently a key component of how LLMs are trained and refined over time, but one of the challenges facing developers is that each time a model is taken 'offline' for updates, the reinforcement learning is overridden and they have to start from scratch to finetune the models again," she added.
"AI researchers will focus on finding new ways to make reinforcement learning more persistent so that each time the model is updated, the existing refinements remain in place."
Explore
Read predictions from M-O at https://www.techtradeasia.com/2024/01/a-to-z-of-tech-predictions-in-2024-m-o.html
Start from the beginning*Results of a 34-country survey conducted by Ipsos on its Global Advisor online platform and, in India, on its IndiaBus platform, between October 20 and November 3, 2023. For this survey, Ipsos interviewed a total of 25,292 adults aged 18 years and older in India, 18-74 in Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and the US, 20-74 in Thailand, 21-74 in Indonesia and Singapore, and 16-74 in all other countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment