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The new year is upon us, and that means that it’s time for experts and technologists to try and predict some of the biggest upcoming trends for government and technology in 2024. What might make those predictions a bit more difficult this year is the fact that many technologies are moving ahead at warp speed. Changes that used to slowly shift into place over many years in some cases can now happen in weeks, or even almost overnight:

I. Generative artificial intelligence will change the world in 2024

Google’s DeepMind AI was recently tasked with solving an unsolvable math problem. Not only did the AI eventually solve the well-known but impossible mathematical task involving matrix multiplication, but it also produced a formula which will make future problem solving efforts possible — something human mathematicians were never able to do. The researchers working on the project know that the solution was not included in training data, so the AI must have somehow worked everything out on its own, thinking its way through that impossible problem.

NOAA and NASA are working with AI to not only monitor potentially damaging solar storms, but to actually predict them before they happen. And robots driven by AI are even being thought of almost like real people in some cases, and getting more lifelike all the time. It seems like every week we learn of something new and incredible that has been accomplished using AI.

Generative AI faced a lot of headwinds in 2023, not the least of which was a serious shortage of the dedicated chips that generative AI needs to quickly process information. NVIDIA emerged as the frontrunner in this area with the introduction of its H100 chip, which has an astonishing 3.35 terabytes per second throughput capacity and 80GB of total memory. But there were not enough of them to go around. The chips were selling and being traded for over $25,000 a piece this year, with hundreds or thousands of them required to support most AI engines and projects.

To compensate, NVIDIA introduced the H200 dedicated AI chip, which is even more powerful than the original, and fully compatible so that H100s and H200s can exist side by side in the same data centers. And other companies are picking up the slack as well. Intel just announced a whole new line of chips dedicated for use with AI. Most experts believe that the AI chip shortage will evaporate by early next year.

All of that means that the genie for generative AI will not only be out of the bottle in 2024, but free of almost any technical constraints that might have previously limited its performance. As such, get ready for AI to potentially change the world, hopefully for the better, in the new year.

II. Government and the military will further embrace and master 5G

In the past, many 5G networks were actually made up of software implementations running overtop of 4G networks. But that is changing fast. In 2024 we will see the rapid expansion of the US DOD Joint All Domain Command and Control program, which exists as a pure 5G network that combines applications and sensors from all military services in one unifying infrastructure.

The next step in 5G will happen for the military in 2024 with the deployment of Open Radio Access Networks. The use of O-RAN will allow the military to operate private and secure 5G networks that exist fully in the cloud.

The technology to allow for O-RAN as the next step in military 5G use already exists. There just needs to be more testing and verification regarding the security of the technology to ensure that the DOD can safely use it for any application. The Idaho National Laboratory’s Wireless Security Institute is working on that problem right now, and officials I talked with are confident that it will be ready for widespread use in 2024. That will not only allow the DOD to deploy secure 5G networks anywhere in the world, but also cement the military as the world’s leader in 5G innovation.

III. Technology will make it harder than ever to secure the 2024 presidential election

While everyone agreed that the core of the election — the voting machines, the counting process and the certification of winners — remained secure, problems started to become evident in peripheral areas with the rise in misinformation.

Most voting machines remain offline, with people required to head to designated areas or use physical media like the mail to cast their ballots. As such, I don’t think we will see any big attacks on voting machines or anything like that in 2024. But misinformation and manipulating people through social media and other platforms is going to be a huge problem. And if you want to know why, you only need to look at my first prediction.

In previous elections, those who wanted to propagate hoaxes or even do outright illegal things — like calling up voters and telling them some lie, such as sending them to the wrong polling place — had to do so by hand. And even then, 2020 was a bit of a mess when it came to misinformation. In 2024, those who want to try and manipulate or poison an election can task AI to help out — and the technology has proven surprisingly effective at those kinds of deceptive activities.

Unfortunately, I predict that this is going to be a massive problem in 2024. We are going to literally be bombarded with misinformation at every turn leading up to the election. And buckle up now, because those efforts likely won’t wait until November. We will probably be barely into the new year before some of them get started.