2023 predictions retrospective

So… roughly a year ago 2023 started. Yet again I haven’t made any progress on frequent blogging, nonetheless I’d like to revisit my 2023 predictions piost to see how well I did. Let’s see…

1. AI will steadily expand with new models to uncharted areas. We’ll see new and more creative ways to engage with it in form of new interfaces or invisible computing. We’ll see further decoupling of ideation and execution, which will cause more and more confusion beyond art contests.

✅ Correct! Combined multimodalities, specialized models, folks winning art contests with generated art, photorealistic Midjurney that actually can render right number of fingers… I could go on and on.

2. Online scams of sorts thanks to new AI tools will reach a new level of sophistication, it’ll take a while until our common sense and proper tools catch up.

❓ __ 50:50_ on this one, I’ve have witnessed some really deceptive attacks (an acquaintance had someone call them using their wifes voice begging for financial help to get out of responsibility for the car accident they’ve been involved in) however they’re still not the scale I expected them to reach a year ago. __

3. Economy in US and EU-zone will soft land barely missing recession. UK won’t.

✅ Likely score, US economy soft landed, UK still on the fence - although Bloomberg reported recession few days back.

4. Web3 space will be inhabited by builders and die-hards. Bitcoin and Eth will bounce back although not close to ATH.

✅ Yes! Bitcoin and Ethereum bounced back quite significantly, not close to all time high though. Looking at my network all the tourists are gone from Web3 space and all I can see is mavericks building. Would love to get excited about something out there but… I can’t.

5. 2023 will be a tough year for startups, especially ones expecting to retain momentum from their COVID-era fundraising. Pre-seed and seed stage startups will be just fine.

✅ Boom!

6. Despite massive layoffs in 2022 that happened all over tech sector the employee market will persist throughout 2023.

✅ Sadly, yes. Lots of entry-level folks on the market, however if you’re looking for senior+ good luck.

7. Climate and clean energy startups will thrive. We will see an exponential growth of number of initiatives supporting entrepreneurs at all stages.

❓ On the fence here, technically you could say yes, clean tech startups are on the rise and apart of AI related startups are amongst the only two attracting VC interest, still I have expected an order of magnitude more going on.

8. China will experience few massive waves of COVID disturbing global supply chain further until they reach herd immunity.

❌ Frankly I have no idea what’s COVID anymore, but looks like those multiple waves didn’t materialize or at least didn’t resemble what I expected.

9. Brief peace talks will happen between Ukraine and russia, will not lead to resolution.

✅ Sadly we’re still in the very similar place we’ve been a year ago, even worse: with no end in sight.

10. Metaverse will remain a buzzword. Meta will not be able to bring their vision to the masses, Apple will delay anything headset-related till after 2023.

✅ I’ll put together a Metaverse specifc blogpost later (I promise…), but looks like despite massive investment Meta has made into Metaverse it hasn’t gotten anywhere yet. Don’t get me wrong, the Meta Quest 3 is very neat, but the promised content doesn’t live up anyones expectations, probably Zuck’s too.

11. After few years of plateau there will be new wearable sensors, perhaps blood-sugar, that will 10x the value they provide.

❌ Very disappointed about this one. Not much news about new wearable sensors, non-invasive blood sugar monitors still haven’t made it out of the lab. Lots of buzz around regulatory aspects of health tech startups, however technically it seems like we haven’t made much progress.

12. Twitter and Musk part ways.

❌ Recently Twitter seems doing better than early 2023, although it’s become very polarised, skewed very far right and not much fun to be there.

Be well 🙏