These are my predictions for 2023 which I hope will help you orient your worldview, understand what is coming and how you may need to adapt so that you can prepare for success.
Disclaimers
I’m an idiot.
I’m also not holding on to these predictions overly tightly.
These predictions may be quite obvious to most following the news and trends.
I’d like to make more risky predictions but not sure exactly what those are.
“On average, 65% of adults worldwide say they are optimistic that 2023 will be a better year for them than it was in 2022.” IPSOS
A Lot More Companies Will Fail
Many companies will be unable to raise money. Companies that have raised money in the past at too high of a valuation will need to take a massive down round, seek alternative sources of funding, get acquired or will fail as a whole.
There Will Be A Recession
Not sure how big and long of a recession but it is on its way. Inflation is continuing and the blunt instrument of interest rates is not impacting it like the Fed and Bank of Canada hoped. There is still some time for the impact to sink in but until then interest rates will be a difficult game that will drive us into a recession.
Interest Rates Will Rise Or Only Drop Slightly If Lucky
My partner Monika and I got hurt like many of us by unexpected severe interest rate hikes in 2022. We went from a 0.99% rate to more than a 4.25% interest rate.
If inflation continues, the Fed and Bank of Canada will have no choice but to continue to raise rates or hold them steady. At the very brightest scenario, we may see a small decrease in interest rates at the end of 2023 but I’m not going to hold on to optimism for that.
Generative AI Will Continue To Explode
OpenAI and Stability AI had two of the biggest years I’ve ever seen a company have.
Some would also put Jasper and Cohere in the same bracket.
Generative AI supports a core human desire for creativity, laziness, and instant gratification that will not go away any time soon.
Business cases will emerge with more fine-tuning of models. Interest will continue to skyrocket with these technologies reaching more of a mainstream audience and finding interaction in everyday lives.
GPT-4 will be released in the next couple of months—and yes, it will be a big deal.
Text-To-Video And Text-To-Audio Will Emerge In Full
Phenaki, Runway ML, Stability Ai, Imagen Video, and Facebook Text-To-Video were all revealed to the public in 2022.
The validation is already there both on the technology side and people’s drive to interact.
There Will Be A Massive Technological Breakthrough
Not sure from who or in what field.
I have an inkling that it will be in climate as vast amounts of money and energy get put into the space.
I am not counting the natural language processing, generative AI, and large language models technology in this because I already know that will continue to innovate at insane speeds.
Think of the nuclear fusion proof point at the end of 2022 as an example of that.
A conflict between remote and in-person work
Twitter, Apple, Google, and other large companies that others look to for leadership have had their belief in fully remote work is conducive to success and culture in a post-pandemic world.
While many workers have enjoyed the convenience of remote work, the economy has shifted and companies have pressure on them to improve productivity with a focus on revenue generation and profit in a way that was lost for several years in an environment filled with cheap and freshly-printed cash.
In 2023, these forces will collide. We’ve already seen instances of that at Apple. Recently, Marc Benioff of Salesforce openly published in a Slack channel questioning if remote work was the reason why productivity had dropped.
As the world enters a year (hopefully) with COVID in the rearview mirror, the focus will be put on this and we will see changes, conflicts, and organizations making different bets.
Resources
What will happen in 2023? Predictions on Stocks, China and Recession Next Year – Bloomberg
Global predictions for 2023 | Ipsos
Horoscope 2023 – Yearly Horoscope Predictions 2023 – Annual Horoscope 2023 Predictions
The World at War – Saxo Outrageous Prediction 2023 | Saxo Group
