2023 is coming to an end, a busy year for technology, especially because of its origins Creative artificial intelligence As it reaches the end consumer, it has raised many expectations of dread, even apocalyptic. We review 3 notable successes and 3 blunders that this year in technology delivered.
Apple lost to Massimo
Apple The year ended with one of the worst possible news for the company. From the last 25th, you can no longer buy one Apple Watch Series 9 or Ultra 2 Apple Stores in the US and no other stores in the country while supplies last. The reason lies in the health technology company's patent infringement fields By Apple with the sensor Sp02 It measures the oxygen in the blood.
Apple's relationship with Massimo isn't recent. The American company started its relations with the Italian company 2013 For possible collaboration or acquisition of the company. It was never produced, but Apple worked on it for years Along with many of Massimo's employees, starting at Michael O'Reilly, then the medical director at Massimo and the current head of specialty health programs at Apple. The United States International Trade Commission has ruled that Massimo's reported patent infringement occurred, and Apple has been unable to sell one of its flagship products since this Christmas. It remains to be seen whether Apple can overturn ITC's decision given the dimensions of the damage this move could do to the company.
The explosion of the submarine Titan
If a story has all the elements that users can stick to their screens in 2023, it's submersible. Titan: An experimental submarine The plane exploded with five millionaires on board While descending to a depth of 3,800 meters to visit the remains of the Titanic. Four days after contact was lost, remains were found nearby.
Among its passengers Stockton RushAerospace engineer and company founder Oceangate It powered the Titan. The submarine was not certified and OceanGate had been warned on several occasions of the dangers posed by the submarine. 6.7 meters long controlled by joystick and made of carbon fiber. Asked about this question in an interview, Rush said, “They remember you for the rules you break”. Unfortunately for Rush and his companions, breaking the rules doesn't work in physics.
The downsides of autonomous driving
Two recent events have called into question the progress of autonomous driving, another big promise of the technology. On the one hand, Tesla Had to perform An urgent update to the software of its two million vehicles After several accidents in auto driving mode. But the backlash was overwhelming Cruisesection General Motors Became the first company to offer tours Driverless taxis with over 400 cars in San Francisco.
Following a series of incidents including A pedestrian was dragged for several metersCalifornia Department of Motor Vehicles Suspends GM Robotaxis, „Unreasonable risk to public safety”.
Smartphones are waiting for foldables
2023 is not a great year for smartphones. A technological device that practically everyone always carries closes the year 13% decline in sales, thus reaching the lowest point in a decade. This decline in sales comes from the most developed markets and indicates that users have their needs covered and need something new to convince them to upgrade their smartphones.
This change can be good Folding mobilesA sector that is growing year by year thanks to the efforts of companies like Samsung Motorola, Google, OnePlus Contrary to what happened with the first generations of mobile phones of this type, others are releasing more durable products. The form factor change offers new functionality and represents a significant shift in what traditional smartphones have to offer. The technology must become even cheaper, abandon the premium limits of manufacturers and reach a large number of users, but It is close after this 2023 launch.
Apple Vision Pro and high-speed technology
Another consequence of the importance of AI is that the world seems to have completely forgotten about it. Metaverso, even Meta gives more visibility to its progress with AI than Zuckerberg's renamed Facebook project. Apple is the only major tech company to draw attention to this sector High-speed technology developed for declared Apple Vision Pro. An augmented reality and virtual reality headset presented at WDC in June showed a series of practical applications of the technology that seemed more realistic than Meta's promises about the Metaverse.
Of course, Apple was very careful to avoid words like this or artificial intelligence and instead talked about it Spatial Computing and Machine Learning, different collars for the same dog. The ability to connect the virtual with the reality around the user has attracted a lot of attention. They will arrive in the first months of 2024 and will be prohibitively expensive for most consumers, but the potential is there.
Creative AI
Hero of the year. After the initial signal given that OpenAI Launched by the end of 2022 ChatGPT, Microsoft, Google Y Meta They hurried to avoid missing a train for months, which seemed to take them all. By the end of 2023, after all these companies have released multiple iterations of their language models and the services that use them, Expectations are very realistic. Chatbots, despite the success of ChatGPT and their impressive capabilities proven in various tests, are not reliable day to day. They tend to introduce hallucinations and errors Avoiding them requires constant human inspection, which are not as practical as they seem to be. Maybe in the future, but they're not there yet.
Other types of artificial intelligence, though not yet popular Very consistent in their results Provide capabilities that the user would not have without this technology. Create realistic images, videos that are not yet realistic, but progress quickly, create music or voices from text or other data sources are now becoming common Draw a new world on our screen. Some are already there, while others will soon reach end consumers. Presumably, 2024 will be another year of AI as big tech companies build them and integrate them into their services, but Image and sound creation have all the tickets to take center stage.