Today in Tech

Over the past 20 years, innovation and new products seemed to come mainly from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other venture capitalist investments. But that may be changing, as research labs, academics and research and development groups come up with new ways to develop “what’s coming next.” In this episode, Keith chats with Chris Shaw, CMO at NTT Research, about some of the big trends in how new products and technologies will be developed over the next 10 to 20 years.

OpenAI has fired its opening salvo in the burgeoning AI-generated video space with the announcement of its Sora tool that can generate short video clips based on text prompts. Guest co-host Paul Desmond joins the show to discuss what this could mean for video-related jobs and how misinformation could result from this. Also: law enforcement cracks down on a ransomware gang and how the television has gone from the centerpiece of a home to “just another display.”

With more AI models and platforms and updates coming on a regular basis, we’re starting to wonder whether businesses and consumers will start suffering from “AI overload”, which could slow or disrupt adoption of the technology. Guest co-host Jack Gold joins the crew to discuss this and other technology news of recent weeks, including whether it’s time to put the brakes on the self-driving car industry.

The ‘spatial computing’ Apple Vision Pro has been out for a few weeks now, and reviews have been mixed about whether this is the future of computing or just a really expensive gadget. Keith chats with Macworld’s Mike Simon and Jason Cross, and Computerworld contributing writer Michael deAgonia about their impressions of the device and whether business users will find value in the device.

In our latest technology news roundup, we discuss how scammers were able to grab $25 million from a Hong Kong company’s finance employee by using deepfaked AI video; the rise of dumb people using Apple Vision Pro devices in not-so-smart ways, and whether a mega-sports streaming service will mean the death of the cable TV industry.

While generative AI dominated the headlines last year, there are some other amazing macro-trends in the world of technology that will have a big impact this year. Keith chats with Mike Bechtel, chief futurist and managing director at Deloitte Consulting, about the big trends for the year, as identified in the company’s Top Tech Trends report.

Whether companies are at the beginning or in the middle of their generative AI projects, getting the correct large language model (LLM) as a basis for the project is a key decision. Keith chats with Peter Pezaris, chief strategy officer at New Relic, about some of the decisions that companies need to make when exploring LLMs.

The first big primary in the 2024 election season also sees an AI-generated President Biden doing robocalls to voters, signaling the beginning of a long season of AI deepfakers. We also talk about the energy costs of running large AI projects, Netflix moving to livestreaming of WWE program Raw, and whether Disney has invented something that will get us closer to the Star Trek Holodeck. Analyst Jack Gold joins as co-host for the episode.

Technology analyst Jack Gold joins as guest co-host for several weeks to discuss the challenges faced by EV owners in cold weather, Hertz's EV fleet and AI human handwriting, frustration with streaming services and ads, Peacock ad rates and impact of remote work on promotions, the importance of personal connections in remote work, skepticism towards Apple Vision Pro, and pricing strategy and self-checkout technologies.

For many companies, this year will mean moving their generative AI pilot projects into more customer-facing tools, while they still experiment with new tools and models. Keith chats with Sandeep Sacheti, executive vice president of Wolters Kluwer, about the lessons they learned in 2023 from genAI experiments, and why companies need to balance experiments between creative uses and more accurate tools.