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/leaning into 2025: with lessons from 2024
39 Plays5 months ago
This week on The Forward Slash, James and Aaron dive into more than just a reflection of 2024. They uncover the stories, challenges, and breakthroughs that defined the IT world—and share what it’s really been like creating and hosting this podcast along the way.
But they don’t stop there! Get ready for bold predictions and key trends to watch as we step into 2025. Whether you're in tech or just curious about the future, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
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Transcript
Tech Industry Cycles and Job Availability
00:00:03
Speaker
If you've been around long enough, you've seen the downturns of of technology. And we've always said that being a technologist is feast or famine. you know There are times where you can go out, find a new position, basically write your own ticket because of the skillset that you have. And there are other times where you can't have enough skills on your resume to find a job. So you know it does there are these ebbs and flows in in the industry.
Introduction to 'Forward Slash' and Year Reflection
00:00:41
Speaker
Welcome to the Forward Slash, where we lean into the future of IT. I'm your host, Aaron Chesney, with my beautiful co-host, James Carmen. Today we don't have a special guest. It's just going to be us talking about the year in review. So all the goods and the bads that happened in 2024. So, you know, it's, it's amazing how quickly this year has gone by. It seems like we just at the beginning of the year, um, we had just, uh, maybe 11 months ago.
Humor and Light-hearted Start
00:01:12
Speaker
Um, it does. It does. You know, I, I did an a little experiment the other day where, you know, I opened up the window and I threw a clock out just to see if I could make time fly. It didn't work so well. Kind of crashed and burned. Oh man. So, uh,
00:01:34
Speaker
And I'm glad I'm having two weeks off here soon. Yeah. You you need a break from these i need break ah time flies. Wow. And I remember my, my grandfather, he was like the OG of dad jokes. Like he would have like, what was one of the ones we'd be like, we're driving across the river or near some body of water. Like, did you see that fish jump? That must've weighed yeah that thing weighed 7.5 pounds. And he was like, well, how do you know that had scales on it? Yeah.
00:02:05
Speaker
ah He was the OG, man, my grandfather. I love it. My kids get sick of it. I reuse his jokes. Like, you drive by a cemetery, you're like, you know, what kind of people they bur they bury there? You know, thinking like, you know, veterans or something like that. And they're like, dead ones. Yeah. My my favorite cemetery one that I always use is like, you know why they put fences around that place, don't you? Because people are just dying to get in.
00:02:32
Speaker
that's all all love it Okay. so So, you know, it's been an interesting year, yeah hasn't it? We started this, this year. So that was, you know, and hello. Yeah. we are Right. two thousand and twenty four The introduction of the forward slash. Yeah. So this is, I mean, you mark your calendar, you were here for this. Like you, our listeners were here at the beginning of this momentous occasion.
00:03:03
Speaker
I remember when. So some of the, some of the folks that we've had on, we've we had some interesting people on from a lot of different walks of life. And there's been a lot of learning that's that surprised even us, you know, and we've been around the block, maybe more than once.
Usability Testing vs. User Testing
00:03:24
Speaker
right Ryan Wilson was one. Um, I did learn something that I have to,
00:03:33
Speaker
removed from my vocabulary is we're not user testing. We're not testing the user. It's usability testing. I'm like, ah yeah, that's a fair point, right? we're not and We're not testing users. Ryan's one of those guys, I feel like I learned something every time I talk to him and I have to like unlearn something one night because he's he's a pretty insightful dude. he He's very thought provoking. Yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
I, he, he has forced me into like some of my own research channels with some of, with some of his things.
Importance of Behavior Testing in Development
00:04:08
Speaker
Another guy that it was, is very thought provoking and always has been like looking at different perspectives of a problem is Jonathan Thompson, who we, who we had we came and we talked about QA types of things. And one of the things that was really.
00:04:26
Speaker
kind of flipped a mental switch in my head to where I had to go back and go, well, that's a good point. I didn't really think about it that way was the importance of behavior testing, you know, especially if developers are doing it. It's like, well, if you're already kind of doing a lot of that testing already. So why would you do it twice? like Yeah, that's kind of a good point. I kind of saw that too, when I was doing it the right way, like, well, this is kind of redundant.
00:04:57
Speaker
The theory is that, you know, you're supposed to be thinking about the the software from a user's perspective. It kind of forces you into that mindset. However, like, why don't you just do that for all your testing? And that's, and that's what I push. I push my teams to do that. I'm like, don't think about it. Like you're trying to solve a problem, trying to think about it, like how you want it to be used.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think from from when it comes to testing, I'm, I'm one of those purists. I'm a, I'm a hundred percent code coverage guy and like, but I, but I have to like kind of check myself and like, ah cause I, I appreciate everybody else about outcomes, you know, focus on the outcomes. Like I preach that, but when it comes to testing, like you, if you really focus on the outcomes, are you getting diminishing returns for some of the stuff now, some of the the code covers thing for me, it's more of a.
00:05:47
Speaker
a means to an end that the the byproduct is clean code. When you, when you force yourself to have to make every bit of your code test double, you typically have cleaner code, more modular and all that sort of stuff. But like, but yeah, it's, you know, you get into these practices of, well, we have to do BDD tests or we have to do this test or we have to do that. Well, but do you, what, what is it helping you? How is it giving you better confidence about your code and that it's performing the way you want? Yeah. And those are, one of the things that I've always found is that when you have.
00:06:17
Speaker
Something like you always have to, that, that predicate turns out to be a red flag. Because if you're always doing something the right when you're not thinking about it anymore, you're just like, well, I'm doing it because I have to. And that's not something that you want out of your team. You want them to be free thinking. You want them to think outside the box, push the limits, find the next best thing.
00:06:43
Speaker
And if you have statements or rules like that in place, like, we always have to do this. Then you don't get the, why, why are we doing it this way? Well, just because somebody said I have to. Then the measurement becomes a goal and it's not just a measurement any longer. And then then it starts to lose its
Getting Things Done Approach and Productivity
00:07:05
Speaker
utility.
00:07:05
Speaker
my
00:07:09
Speaker
Who'd you like that we had on this year? Well, I mean, I think of, uh, you know, Eric, we've known Eric press cop for a long time. Uh, but I, I did not know, but Eric and I are kind of kindred spirits. i'm I'm kind of, I'm, I'm new to the world of like, we talked about GTD, getting things done with Eric a lot when he was on. And, uh, that's kind of a new, a new habit for me that I'm trying to make more part of my life. But yeah, I love geeking out about that. So productivity stuff with, with Eric, he's been, he's been doing that stuff for a long time. So it's, he's always fun to talk to about, about that. I really enjoyed that episode.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, my wife's been on my case to get things done. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I've had a honey do list for a long time. Yes. Honey do this, honey do that. Yes. That's always in, you know, I actually was thinking that this might be a good way of tracking the honey do list in having that kind of in an inbox type thing. It's like, okay, yeah, if there's things you want me to do, get them in the inbox and let's work through them and do that kind of thing. So I've actually been rethinking kind of some of my personal organization around the getting things done methodologies and
00:08:22
Speaker
some of some of that So some of the tools yeah some of those that hurt one of some of the tools that are used for GTD, one ah they they have that ability to like, and I shared that with my
Technology's Impact on Traditional Domains
00:08:34
Speaker
my own wife. I said, you know, hey here's here's an email address where if you send it, not only does it go to my email inbox, it literally will monitor my email.
00:08:42
Speaker
um actually it's more of an, I think the email just goes straight to my, my GTD inbox. So you send an email to this specific email address and it knows it's linked to your, your software. So it can put it, put something in your inbox, like your GTD inbox, not your email. So, yeah but I, I would say be careful with that because you can get a little overloaded there. And, uh, part of the, part of the whole process of going through your inbox, you have to know what, what's going on, right? And you have to know the context around what you were talking about. So even then we're to categorize things. So.
00:09:13
Speaker
I would do that sparingly.
00:09:18
Speaker
One of the interesting things that came out of this year with some of the guests that we've had on, like David Amhoff, Matt Cote, uh, Coteney, I always got to check myself when I say that to make sure I don't say Cottney. I mean, just because of the the English Cottney.
00:09:36
Speaker
Uh, accent, um, Cockney, Cockney, Cockney. It is, co but I, it reminds me of that when I see it written, but it's Coteney. So Matt Coteney, uh, Eric Price, Holly labelling, uh, in rich SRAM, who we, who we just interviewed in that technology is leaching into all these different domains where we don't think.
00:10:05
Speaker
about technology, things like the law offices, something that is traditionally we're thinking about leather bound books and many leather bound books and stacks of paper and in bankers boxes of files and and that kind of thing. And now they're using technology to riffle through that kind of stuff to expedite their stuff with its own caveats. And nope don't be the AI lawyer.
00:10:38
Speaker
ah That's, you know, citing cases that never existed. Yeah. Those hallucinations will get you. Right. Yeah. It's, it's even as technologists, I mean, we, we know this is, you know, and I said this just the other day, I was meeting with a client. It's like these companies, it's been going on for a while, but it's like, it's now, it seems like it's really getting into those corners that had been able to avoid it for long enough. But it's like companies are waking up and realizing I'm no longer a.
00:11:06
Speaker
You know, a flugelbinder company, but I'm a technology company that facilitates the selling of flugelbinders, right? Like everybody's a technology company, but there's like this side hustle that we do. That's actually the thing that makes money. But, but yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Companies like Yum that, you know, they're, they're dealing with food products. Most people don't associate technology with food, but we've proven there's a lot of technology behind the scenes there that.
00:11:35
Speaker
They do a lot of testing and thought around the experience behind the counter and how how they streamline their processes. It's just pretty interesting.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's one of the things I love about this podcast is, you know, we we were able to leverage our network but for what we do for a living, right? We're consultants. So we we come across different companies, different domains, different problems, all these different really cool things. And I'm always fascinated by that stuff when I meet with new clients or prospective clients. And and I'm just eking out like,
00:12:08
Speaker
Tell me about this. and And you just start to listen to what how deeply they think about their world and and what they do as a business. When you interact with your business businesses that you interact with on a day-to-day basis, you kind of take it for granted. But to do what I do, what I have to do, I have to help you know dig into that stuff. And it's it's fascinating to to take a deep dive into all these different industries and understand how deeply they think about the thing that it is that they do for money.
00:12:34
Speaker
um So to be able to bring those those experiences and those unique aspects so and and unique problems to bear and and share with our listeners, I think is really cool. And speaking about taking things for granted, you know our episode with Ocean Eller was very much focused on how those developers that are coming up in the system today take a lot of the groundbreaking stuff that we did the hard way for granted.
00:13:03
Speaker
You know, things like having to write a bunch of boilerplate code or your own collections, that whole DIY of, of coding that you had to do in order to make things work. Before there were all these libraries and IDEs. I remember like my first programming thing I, we had, it was, it was VI versus Emacs was the big debate. Right. Which are both just plain text editors. say They're not.
00:13:33
Speaker
fancy IDEs. So all those things that you get for free when you start using an IDE were things we had to do manually back in the day and grow our own solutions to make our lives easier just so that if we could write code, get it compiled, and get it onto to a system.
00:13:54
Speaker
yeah i do I do worry about it. we talked We touched on this a little bit when we were talked to Ocean, and he was a fascinating dude. um But like the the whole aspect of that you know that, our current climate, our current the way we interact with the world, we're very dopamine addicted. right we We need that quick fix, quick hit. right that's We're very much like every little ding on your phone, every little pop-up notification, all of those bing, dopamine. right Um, that delayed gratification, like that's, that's going to be harder to come by and and that's kind of what it takes to do that DIY, that, that tinkering mindset is that you can't always have that immediate gratitude. You you got to really grind to get to that, that aha moment or whatever. Right. It may actually take you several iterations of attempts.
00:14:45
Speaker
to get there too in more of the Edison model of coding, right? It's does several experiments before you finally get one that is like, yes, that's, that's the one. And even at that, after you put it in practice, you may be like, I thought it was the one, but not quite. Right. And it's like, yes, it works in this environment, but when I move it to this environment with this kind of load, it breaks down, but at least you have something to go back to and go, okay,
00:15:15
Speaker
So where did I, where, where do I need to tweak this? Where do I need to make the changes? And you, you, at least you have, instead of just a lump of clay, you have kind of a rough shape that you can mold and, and start to refine. And that kind of in that process is very tedious. And I think, you know, those that have a creative mindset to where they think about problems in that kind of space that Or they have like those creative outlets as their hobbies and things like that end up being more patient with that process and and not looking for the immediate ding. They can slow down and think about those. So getting back to.
00:16:05
Speaker
our year in review, let's talk about some fails and successes of the year.
Tech Job Market Challenges in 2024
00:16:12
Speaker
This one, this, this may turn out to be a bit of an unbalanced list. It's been a rough year. I mean, I mean, I'd say the starting off would be like the, just the technology job market in 2024 was kind of abysmal. It was, it was rough. It was a rough year for for technologists. A lot of folks out of work for a long time. And so it's been, it's been very troublesome for a lot of folks.
00:16:35
Speaker
And I've heard a lot of blame being put on AI, but and as we've discovered through our conversations about AI for the year, it's like, no, AI is not replacing people's jobs. It's just not there. So... No, I think it was... I think we overbought. Yeah. I think as an industry, we overbought on talent um for what's what's needed right now. and And we went through a little bit of a lull as far as like,
00:17:01
Speaker
the need, the whole market, the entire ah global economy slowed a little bit. And there wasn't that need for for all that talent at the moment. And we see this as ah as a cycle in technology. If you've been around long enough, you've seen the downturns of of technology. And we've always said that being a technologist is feast or famine. um you know There are times where you can go out find a new position, basically write your own ticket because of the skill set that you have. And there are other times where you can't have enough skills on your resume to find a job. So, you know, it does, there are these ebbs and flows in in the industry. And I think it's just at this time, we're in a bit of a low, but I think we're going to see an uptick very quickly. I don't think this was as bad as
00:17:55
Speaker
the the dot com boom that happened, you know, more around, uh, the, the tournament. Yeah. Man, that makes you sound a full time it's like back in my day. backing them but ah ah yeah I think it was a lot too tough year. I don't know why I went like,
00:18:20
Speaker
I don't even know what that accent is that I was just doing that, but yeah but anyway, yes. Right. Yeah.
Apple's Product Release Struggles
00:18:27
Speaker
So some of the, some of the other, other things that, uh, didn't go so well, Apple had a rough year. I think they're, they're struggling to find their footing without their, their captain at the helm.
00:18:42
Speaker
um they've Well, they've been struggling for a little bit there, but you know, I have to say I'm an Apple stockholder and I'm still doing okay i'm from a stockholder and perspective. Well, that's good because between the iPhone 16 and some of the bad publicity around the iPad pro and this thing called the vision pro that didn't really take off anywhere. They, they had some rough, rough releases this year.
00:19:11
Speaker
I really hadn't seen a lot of, you know, and I'm sure different markets are different with, especially with the vision pro. Um, it, I had not seen it very often. And I was just, you know, doing some Christmas shopping the other day and I went, I went into the Apple store and there were these people just sitting at the table, you know, pinching in the middle of the air, like, you know, just looking at me like, you're just laughing. Like, what is this? This is just, do I want this to be how I interact with a computer? I don't know if I do. Well, it's not in public. The biggest complaint was that the battery life and with the weight of it, it put ah a strain on the head to where it had about a 30 minute use ah window.
00:19:52
Speaker
And if it's being sold as a productivity tool, unless you're going to work in 30 minute increments and take a break, it's it's not It's not their right. It's not your all day computing platform right now. No, I don't. I agree. And however, don't want to tether either. Right. Like that would be awful. Uh, I, I have tethered my, my Oculus quest. Uh, and it's not too bad. I mean, I'm tethered with my headset already. So it's, it's not too bad. At least it would allow me to stand, but I still, I have a problem with the.
00:20:34
Speaker
full immersion of only being in a work environment, I guess, ah i which is strange because I used to work in a cubicle, which is yeah basically the same thing.
00:20:46
Speaker
um So I may have to, in 2025, something for me to look forward to is embracing the the virtual office because ah Steve Baradelli, who we talked to a few episodes ago,
00:21:02
Speaker
He's trying to sell me on this. He does this, ah I think it's called immersed where he's got like, he can virtually move his screens around and kind of lay out his spot. And he doesn't have to sit like he can stand and walk around and still do his work stuff.
00:21:22
Speaker
I think it definitely we talked about it. I think it was the last episode we did. I think we talked about that. I i do think it'll be fun to be able to interact with computers in that, like kind of that holographic that augmented virtual XR world. I think that'll be cool. You know, I, and again, I thought I mentioned last time we, then I think of Jarvis, you know, if we, if we we can interact like that and very, you know, have, have like use our limbs in a way that's not more natural as a human, sorry, my dogs are going crazy. I think that would be really cool.
AI's Advances and Failures
00:21:51
Speaker
Um,
00:21:52
Speaker
So I think like the big topic for 2024 has been AI. AI has been like the linchpin of tech talks all year long. And some places have had so not so good a luck of trying to market their AI. One is, ah was an AI device called the Rabbit. And this thing was just a total dud. it was It was supposed to be a personal AI assistant type device and just didn't have the battery life, didn't have good usability.
00:22:40
Speaker
ah The camera was kind of shoddy on it. So they that kind of went nowhere. To throw a little bit bigger name out there, McDonald's had tried some AI ordering.
00:22:53
Speaker
which led to a customer continually getting chicken McNuggets on their order, even though they asked to not have chicken nuggets on their order and ended up with something like 264 nuggets on their order, which was great entertainment value, but Not so happy if you're trying to order a big bag. No, I said not nuggets. said Oh, yes. 12 more nuggets. Right. Sure. I think some of us have had that with our, with our in-car voice of recognition. I had that just the other day, I like do this and it does something completely different. and I'm like, no, no, no, don't call them. I don't want to talk to them. Yeah, exactly. So, um,
00:23:43
Speaker
And another one that was AI based was this AI pin. This was supposed to be something that was like a wearable AI device that did like, you know, projections onto the palm of your hand on certain information and had yeah different things that you could ask. It was another one of these AI assistant type things. And that kind of went nowhere because the, you know, there was problems with the, in With the projection, you couldn't see it in certain lights and just the the feedback wasn't great. the in There was a ah time delay that was not great. so yeah Another not so good launch. Yeah, I remember seeing that and I was like,
00:24:34
Speaker
Couldn't like convince myself to even get excited about that product at all. I think we we it seems like we were continuously chasing Star Trek, you know, like a little near a little, you know, like that kind of thing, like to press it and talk to the bridge kind of thing. it It's just not. I don't know. I don't think anybody's going to wear that. Right. it's It's got to be. It's got to be something that is more inconspicuous, I think.
00:25:04
Speaker
you know I think like an AI watch would be possibly like a a good route because you can cover that up and more like a the like a risk communicator type tap device. And I think that's a ah good extension of like the smartwatches that we have now, I think expanding on that. And I think we'll probably see that smartwatches are gonna start getting some AI tech into them, um especially around a health and fitness.
00:25:32
Speaker
Right. Uh, I think we're going to see a growth in that segment AI for health and fitness tied to smartwatches and probably i think the watch. It is going to surprise us as being of a really big part of our life. I love my Apple watch. I, you know, I like to run. So that's one of my favorite things. It's one of my favorite devices I have is my Apple watch, but like, maybe if we can get into like holograms with the watch where like it can display, like I had a holographic display out of the top of the watch. Like, you know, I'm thinking like master chief sitting there talking to Cortana on his right. I think that would be, if we could get there, that would be.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah. Even if you could project it onto something like, you know, like like a side window or stuff like that, which I have seen technologies out there that are, are doing like glass projection type stuff. So if we can get to, you know, that level of where we can get larger display from a smaller device, I think that'll work ah pretty well. So let's talk about some of the big names that, uh,
00:26:35
Speaker
had some big flops.
Musk's Transport Projects and Challenges
00:26:37
Speaker
Elon Musk had a couple. He had this vacuum loop thing, and I'm not sure that's the official title of it, but it's this transport loop that's supposed to work on vacuum, like a male vacuum tube that's supposed to transport people around at- You mean like when you go to the bank and you- Yeah. That kind of thing? Okay. Yeah.
00:27:04
Speaker
so moving people around it at speeds of like 600 miles per hour it was supposed to be, it was promised to be here in 2024, but that project is is having trouble with engineering ah issues and in creating a vacuum that that large is proving to be problematic. The cyber taxi release ah that was supposed to be an autonomous taxi, that one also flop this year, uh, was lackluster. I'm still hopeful that, you know, that one's still on the drawing board and coming around and that one's more of a total, total recall reference to the, uh, the robo taxi. Uh, then Netflix. This was awful. The Tyson Paul fight. Oh my goodness. And next flicks.
00:28:04
Speaker
fails under load. So not great for Netflix on that one. And with them having the NFL contracts, people are concerned that Super Bowl Sunday may be a repeat of the Tyson Paul fight.
Netflix Streaming Issues During Major Events
00:28:21
Speaker
So hopefully they are scrambling to get there get their numbers up so that they're able to support the expected track for Super Bowl Sunday.
00:28:32
Speaker
Well, they it's like they took too long to scale up because I know that the computing power is out there, right? So, right. Yeah, I mean, but um it did eventually like by the time the big fight came, I mean, I think there was very little disruption once the fight itself. I don't think it's where I was. My experience was ah I did watch it and.
00:28:52
Speaker
Once the fight started, there was very little of that, but like get leading up to the fight. You can see it like Twitter blue, arem sorry, X, blew up like crazy. I was watching it and it was trending. And it was like, whoa, man, folks get their stuff together. And of course you've got these, um you know, everybody knows software engineering at that point. They know everything about how to, how to scale, you know, video streaming services. yeah, mean everybody's the next person when things break down, right? It's like when the gamers talk about,
00:29:17
Speaker
Oh, come on, whoever riot games, fix your net code. Like that's what they call it. Like you fix your net code. What are you talking about? I don't know if you've ever seen that, but the gamers do that too. They know, they obviously know how to develop these games better. Well, and when you saw, I do a lot of the multiplayer online experiences when they're like,
00:29:40
Speaker
Oh, the server's laggy. It's not the server, dude. The rest of us have no lag whatsoever. That's your system that can't keep up. ah Your network connection is junk. That's the problem.
CrowdStrike Outage and Y2K Echoes
00:29:53
Speaker
ah But speaking of you know big outages and problems, CrowdStrike, how awful was that?
00:30:03
Speaker
Man, I was traveling at that time and I dodged a bullet because I had just like, I think one of my flights got canceled, not because of that. It was on my way out to Chicago. I was going to Chicago and my, my flight got canceled. I just decided to drive it. And then I'm on my way home is when they're having all that issue. I'm like, man, I'm glad I'm in my truck and not trying to get through an airport today. Right. Yeah. That was, that was for me living through Y2K.
00:30:33
Speaker
That crowd strike outage was what I was expecting Y2K to be. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It was, it was awful. It was, it was really bad. And I mean, I think it was like they, they rolled out an update without testing it kind of thing. Is that yeah, and there's, there's your QA is important people. Let's get on that soapbox again, because test your stuff, please.
00:31:02
Speaker
because that's the kind of stuff that can happen. And even though you think it's a minor change, oh, I don't need to test it. I only changed one line of code. Oh yeah. We'll go wrong. Famous last words. Right? With what one line of code can do. ah So anyways, let's talk about some successes.
AI's Integration Across Industries
00:31:21
Speaker
There were there were a few. And we we have alluded to one of them already, which is AI everywhere.
00:31:31
Speaker
Right? The AI boom, everybody knows what AI is and some of the things it's doing, not everything that it's doing, you know, there's, there's a lot of AI stuff, you know, coming out and being included in things, especially like in your Google searches, your Bing searches, your Amazon ah content generation.
00:31:59
Speaker
and all this kind of stuff. So we're, we're definitely seeing E yeah hey E yeah but E yeah not E
00:32:13
Speaker
oh wait oh why why was i named as a host of the show i mean we're we're questioning that every day every time yeah ah the with ai getting into everything that we're doing though it's it's definitely becoming part of our lives. And I think that was a ah big success. there's There's been some horror stories around, but with any technology, you're gonna have good and bad, but I think mostly the AI ah pieces have been positive. So I think that so that's good. Yeah, I think it's, you know, and I've talked about this, I think we talked about this on the podcast a couple of episodes, but like, you know, AI, a lot of these, the the use cases that are coming out,
00:32:57
Speaker
Been around for a while and the technology would would be able to support it before, but if that it it just wasn't like, and I think you mentioned it earlier, was ah you know it's it's it's now like a household name type of a thing. like i was just I was at the dentist this morning and and the the person cleaning my teeth was like, we had a continuing education class for for dentistry. and That was about AI and how we're going to use AI in dentistry. So well I think it's pretty cool. that Yeah. So they're, they're using it to like analyze the X-rays and see things that maybe the human eye might not be able to see on a dental X-ray. It's able to actually perceive it better than the human cancer. Pretty cool.
00:33:37
Speaker
um But I think that's the kind of stuff that I do consider a success for AI is that people are actually, they're they're they're applying AI and and saying, okay, thats that is a tool in my tool belt that we can bring to bear on this problem. Not every problem. It shouldn't be for every problem. It doesn't apply for everywhere, but they are absolutely reaching for that tool in their tool belt more often, probably more often than they need to, but it's it's there. So um i'm I am happy about that.
00:34:02
Speaker
that we're seeing a lot of innovation in and using machine learning, AI, those sort of things that I'm very happy about. Well, and just so that rumors don't get started, we're not saying AI is going to replace your high just. I don't want AI in my mouth doing so. No, no, i don't I don't think I want an AI scraping my teeth. I don't think that would be. although
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, robotic hip replacement is is got a much better recovery rate. So maybe it is something that. Because, or maybe, maybe if you had AI powered nano bots that would just go and eat the plaque off your teeth, that you'd never have to go to the dentist again. You just mouthwash with these nano bots and then just, you know, you just spit them out. And that's, I just made up an invention right now. Yeah. Let me know. Do you like that it? Let me know how that nano bot thing comes out. It worked in big hero six perfectly. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh,
00:35:06
Speaker
One of the speaking of, you know, little bots, bigger bots, autonomous driving yes has made some advances in 2024. So we're getting closer and closer to having the, you know, the auto trucks and taxis and, uh, self-driving cars. So lots of improvements made there to where the infrastructures are.
00:35:36
Speaker
getting in place and now they're just expanding autonomous drive areas in Lake California. So I know we have here in Michigan, we have so what they call blue lanes, which are meant for autonomous driving. So those are, they're common. They're common. We're not there yet. We still don't have the hover cars yet, but We'll get on that. we We're supposed to have others. I mean, the air taxi thing was ah but theres there's been some advancements in that sort of stuff this year as well. I think that's that's that would be kind of cool. and Although I don't know. I mean, um I am worried about the skies being kind of just the the wild, wild west when it comes to these drones and everything flying around. if If you can't, you know, we have roadways when it's only in two dimensions, we can kind of control where you're going to drive. But when you go full 3D notes, it's crazy. Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
Well, and speaking of full 3D drones, drone entertainment has been a big success this year. we've yeah We've seen amazing things being done with drones carrying LEDs and and mass quantity doing amazing 3D art in the sky. It's really cool use of technology.
00:36:56
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's going to be ah from, from an entertainment perspective. that's goingnna That's going to be part of how we entertain ourselves for many, many years to come. and we We may do away with like fireworks and it'll just be replaced with these, these drone light shows. Although in America, we kind of like to blow stuff up. Yeah. the You got to have the boom. and other Otherwise it's just like watching fireworks on TV, which is kind of awful. Yeah.
00:37:25
Speaker
Although i I like to do that just to avoid the crowd. You know, we have a favorite show here in town in September and I'll watch it on TV because I don't like the only there's like a gazillion people down there on the river. I ain't going to do that. Right.
00:37:40
Speaker
ah Another another success in 2024 is that quantum computing made it a big step forward. They were actually able to solve a an algorithm that would take traditional computers like trillions of years to solve and they did it in like five minutes so that's a major step forward for quantum computing so we may see more coming with that but that's really cool ah but quantum computing has been a theoretical possibility for many many many years now so it's kind of like cold fusion it's one of those technologies
00:38:19
Speaker
you hear about on the fringe, but you know, we're not there yet. And when I'm computing, is starting to make some steps forward. So we may see it in our lifetime yet.
Quantum Computing Strides
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think it's quite ready for, you know, prime time as far as being just a normal part of how we do computing in the industry. But and when they finally make it, you know, approachable, when they finally make it affordable, and when they finally make it, you know, something we can actually do.
00:38:47
Speaker
It will absolutely be the biggest like revolution in our industry ever. Absolutely. It's going to upend so much for sure. And alllthough all of the limitations we thought we had before.
00:38:59
Speaker
out the window Throw them out the window. theyre yeah I mean, we already see now the cryptography stuff is, oh, it's feasibly, it's not feasible to to crack this password or whatever. Like, come on. It takes like, you know, a tenth of a second to do it now, where it would have taken years. Like you said, like it would take years. and And that's one of the, that's one of the biggest problems with moving to quantum computing is that it is going to break every security model that we currently have.
00:39:28
Speaker
I mean, every, every password is going to be, ah password protection is going to be a thing in the past because there, you won't be able to create a password that a quantum computer can't bust in seconds. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. You have to use other, you know, throttling techniques of like the, where, where you're trying out the password, you know, timeouts and all that kind of stuff to slow it down.
00:39:51
Speaker
You may even see like geofencing for passwords where if you're trying to log in from a certain location, it knows that, okay, yes, you're, you're in the right location to do this. So we can, so you may have multifactor authentications being more prevalent in where we're thinking outside the box on security is to what are our security gates that we're using? What can we use? you know Things like facial recognition or fingerprinting ah to say, no without the fingerprint and your password and you know a ah ah ah geo tag or something like that, you're not getting in. So with these technologies, there's there's some trends that we're actually starting to talk about for the next
AI's Cost and Implementation Challenges
00:40:42
Speaker
year. ah One of those things being
00:40:45
Speaker
the uses of AI, we've we've talked about for AI for health and fitness, but there's also this this possibility that in this next year, we're looking at probably a make it or break it for AI because of its cost of implementation. There's a lot of, in order to stand up these language models and the processing power that AI requires,
00:41:16
Speaker
there is a high cost of entry. And with those expenses, if we can't find monetary value in those, we may see AI start to fade away because of that. Or you're going to find or it's going to be something like the the chip industry where we're going to have some major players and everybody's going to get routed through those players. And it's going to be like another utility type company because they're the only ones big enough to be able to so support the needs of AI. So like your chat GPTs or yeah your Apples and Googles. I think in some respects, 2024 AI already hit a wall. And then we've talked about this personally about, the you know, I think AI is kind of entering into that that trough of disillusionment already. That's not to say,
00:42:14
Speaker
that it's going anywhere. I think that now people are aware of it. Like I said, they're starting to use it in new domains and applying it to the unique and and and innovative ways. I think that's fantastic. I think it's just people are, they're they're starting to to, they're not seeing the the ah ROI. They're not seeing the the big aha moment when it comes. And then I'm talking primarily with generative AI because everybody's like, Oh, I see chat GBT. I wanted that to,
00:42:42
Speaker
You know, run my business or whatever. Right. So that, that is not paying off, but I, but I do think, and that's the thing that's primarily very expensive, right? The tokenization and all of that sort of stuff that is hugely expensive to run your own model and, and all of the the tokens and all of that generating tokens is is very expensive. So that probably will be cost prohibitive and, and diminish a little bit, but I do think.
00:43:07
Speaker
general or legacy or traditional AI will be around for a long time. And I know am glad that I think it will be used in many more places. Yeah, I see it being used more specifically as a tool or add on feature to existing technologies that we have instead of standalone technology solutions. ah Possibly in the assistant space, we may see some growth as you know, AI suggested things. I don't think we're looking at career replacement for anybody ah being replaced by an AI. It's just not there yet. um It may never be there. But as a power tool, I think it's it's going we're going to see great uses of it. Like you were saying, I think it's going to be around for a long, long time. And it's going to be one of those those tools that you get
00:44:03
Speaker
really good at using kind of like the search engine was. You know, if you're, if your Google flu is good, you can find answers on the internet really quickly. And, um,
00:44:16
Speaker
it's going to be the same with AI. If you're good at prompt writing, you're going to be able to to have AI help you out tremendously in whatever business you're in. Uh, which comes to my next point about it is you're going to, you're going to see more of that domain specific AI usage.
00:44:34
Speaker
Right. So it's like, yeah, we have, we've augmented our, our, our AI model with these domain specific knowledge bases and fed those into it so that we can get more specific, accurate answers in our area. Right. Yeah. yeah The, I mean, and we're already kind of doing fine tuning domain, specific fine tuning on these base models. I think.
00:45:03
Speaker
The more likely that we may see is more of kind of like a chaining, right? So you're going to maybe maybe use a ah ah base language model that that understands you know the the actual language, the and the natural language understands it very well and nuances and and connotations and all of that because of the high dimensionality vector space that it operates in, it can see patterns and connections that we don't.
00:45:27
Speaker
But then that might you know make sense of natural language for you and feed into ah a more domain specific, like solve a very specific problem and then you're kind of having to choose, okay, send it over to this other you know AI based solution that can take that and do something with it. So I'm going to go just through a couple of the other ones that that we we marked as trends and predictions for the next year, um more server side rendering that's that's coming and back the pendulum swinging back towards server side rendering.
Potential Policy Shift in Vehicle Technology
00:45:59
Speaker
um We may see a change from the push for EVs, electric vehicles back to ICE or ah internal combustion engine vehicles ah just because of you know certain trade restrictions that may be happening with China. We got to wait and kind of see what happens there, but we may see a trend ah back towards
00:46:25
Speaker
ah our gas vehicles. the Who knows what's going to happen with this TikTok ban? This could open up some possibly possible technology spaces in the US for people looking for work. ah We could see growth in crypto. ah There's rumors of legislation and regulation coming in for cryptocurrencies, and we could see some changes in the way we use crypto. Also, we talked about drones, there's a couple different drone things that are on the radar. One is bands on certain types of drones. And also, you mentioned you, you saw something interesting, a drone was doing something
00:47:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think the, so yeah, I mean, like you're you're saying like drone bands, I think what we're seeing going on, like the New Jersey situation, probably going to be something resulting out of that. there There's, there's some a little more scrutiny over what types of drones can we use where and how and all that. So that'll be, that'll be interesting to see how.
00:47:35
Speaker
that pans out, uh, drone deliveries. I've noticed this, this year, it seems like this, this has been kind of a, where they're they're starting to do to make those things actually a reality. You know, we've always been hearing about like, Oh, we have this drone that can, Amazon's going to have drones that just drop packages off at your house, which they are starting to actually do these things. I did see, I went to a volleyball game on the, um,
00:47:59
Speaker
University of Kentucky campus a month or so ago. And I'm, you know, and I get out in the parking lot and I'm paying for my my parking there in the parking lot. And all of a sudden this little robot goes driving by. They've got like these robots on campus delivering goods to the students in their dorm room. So this it's a little Wally looking thing that's just kind of rolling itself along. Yeah. So and that, that I think is going to be kind of cool to start to see some, some innovation there. Although,
00:48:29
Speaker
Maybe kind of wish we'd get up off our butts and, you know, go, go get our pizza ourselves or whatever, whatever we're wanting our Taco Bell or whatever it is. You know, that makes me think about like,
00:48:45
Speaker
the Domino's, what was it? It was like the hot van or whatever that they had. that but Yeah. Well, there was like, I think there was at one time some, I don't even remember who I was talking to about this. There was a kind of this vision where instead of, you know, you think about the Amazon truck in your neighborhood, they judge from house to house to house and they have to do this. Whereas in the future, maybe it would be like,
00:49:07
Speaker
It drives just into your neighborhood. The top opens up and all this little swarm of drones goes out and you know and delivers to you all the packages. And then they all come back to the mothership and it drives drives on. It'll be kind of cool. um Might be fun. um one ah One of the growth spaces that we're expecting to see more of is the platform engineering space. I know um we at Calumbrity have have embrace the platform engineering, we have a whole practice dedicated to it. And, you know, we're leaning into that expecting growth in that space as well, as, as well as the AI, we have a AI practice as well, that we're leaning into to, to get ourselves aware and start thinking about different ways of using AI. So those are a couple things to be looking
00:50:02
Speaker
looking towards is the return of platform engineering, as I like to call it, because we've been doing platform engineering for a long time. And then it got uncool to be a platform engineer. Now it's becoming cool again.
00:50:19
Speaker
Everything's a platform. ah we willll be One of the things that I'm interested in in seeing is improvements in VR. So there are advancements in uh, screen technologies that are making like lightweight VR type glasses instead of the big headsets, uh, in, in bringing the lighter weight gear into play, I think makes it more accessible. Um, so I think that'll be interesting. It'll be also interesting to see how, uh, president elect Trump will impact technology. I mean, we saw, we saw Elon.
00:51:02
Speaker
by his side a lot during his campaign. And he, you know, there's been a mention that he's talked with a bunch of different major technology leaders in the space. So there may be a more tech friendly presidency in that may impact kind of what we see. Maybe there'll be like technology grants and things like that, that'll help push the boundary of certain technologies forward.
00:51:32
Speaker
So that would be that, that might be on the horizon as well, but that's, it's all speculation right now. and Nobody knows for sure what's going to happen, but it'll be interesting to see. Yeah. so I mean, with a new new you know cabinet or whatever, they're you know you're going to see different approaches to different things. So it will be it be an interesting year to see what how how things unfold, even in tech, right? As you said, all the tech leaders are kind of swarming themselves down the Mar-a-Lago, which is interesting in and of itself. But yeah, so it will be interesting to see how that how that impacts are. And I heard i heard mention
00:52:11
Speaker
somewhere of the possibility of a technology czar, right? Uh, kind of like the ah borders are, you know, when in his last, in his last go around, then, you know, speculation that Elon might be the, the technologies czar. Right. So.
00:52:31
Speaker
all speculation, but we'll see. That'll be interesting. He's going to be busy shutting down all the government agencies though, you know. Right. He'll have to pick somebody else. Yeah. Um, so that kind of brings us to the, to the end of the year. Uh, so ah James, what well over the holidays, are you doing anything tech related over the holidays? I'll try to probably get some reading in. But the the one thing I'd like to do is you know catch up on my advent of code. I don't know if those of you aren't familiar. the Every year, there's a it's kind of a puzzle thing, right? So some people do use it as a competition. it's It's a speed thing. So the people who get done with the puzzles fastest get the more most points and stuff. So that's cool. But I just like i like it because it's
00:53:23
Speaker
You know, day-to-day coding in the business world, we don't really have to kind of use any of those advanced algorithms. Like you're not thinking about graphs and, and you know, linear programming or any of those sorts of things in them, you know, um, about branch and bound type stuff. You're not, you're not doing any of that in your day-to-day coding, but the the problems that we get through the advent of code, you kind of have to.
00:53:46
Speaker
resurrect some of those neurons that you're, you know, learned back in the day and and have to apply that, which is, which is kind of fun. So I'm hopefully I'm going to be catching up on that. I think I'm only through like day 15 or something right now. I got to catch up a little bit and hopefully get all the way through 25. Gotcha. Oh, I see. So it's like an advent of an advent calendar of different problems to try and solve.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah. So every day it's, uh, they release a new, a new problem and it's usually's usually a two parter, right? So it's, well, it's not usually it is. It's two. So you get two, you can get two stars per day. So you can get 50 stars total. So you'll get a part one. You have to basically input, you have to use, I mean, I guess you could.
00:54:25
Speaker
root force it and figure it out. Pencil and pay review wanted, but it's a little easier to just write a little code to to crunch the numbers or whatever you're doing. and And then get you type in what your code gave the answer and everybody's input is unique. So my input, I can, I can publish that, which I do on my GitHub and it's not going to be the same answer for everyone. So that's kind of a nice aspect of it. Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's fun. I may do a little robo coding over.
00:54:53
Speaker
over the holidays, ah actually have to reach out to our person that's going to be running our in-house Robocode competition to see if we're still planning on doing something over the holidays for that. um So those of you that may not know Robocode is a is basically you program a robot to destroy other robots in the digital arena. And it's kind of a last robot standing type of competition. And you go through several rounds at different points. so And there's all kinds of like engineering strategies and things like you can detect when other people are shooting at you and where bullets are and how fast they're moving and all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's something a little bit fun ah to do. Um, especially if you're a mathlete, uh, cause there's a lot of math involved with angles and velocities and, and that kind of thing. So that's a fun co-signs and fun stuff. Yeah.
00:55:51
Speaker
That's a fun little thing. And, and that's free to check out too. If you go search up robo code, um, it's been around for quite a while. Um, ah I think the last time I did it was, uh, I want to say like 10 years ago was the first robo code competition that I participated in. That sounds fun. Yeah. Some other things that are coming up, we now have a forward slash mailbag.
00:56:20
Speaker
So if you have thoughts, ideas, or episodes you'd like to hear, drop us a line at the forward slash at Caliberty.com. That's the forward slash all one word at Caliberty, C-A-L-L-I-B-R-I-T-Y dot.com. And we'd love to hear from you on different things. And we may even have other ways for listeners to interact with us next year. We're still batting around some ideas on on how to get you guys more involved on the podcast. Do you have but any closing thoughts for the year, James?
00:56:59
Speaker
No, i I was just thinking and none of the songs gonna be stuck in my head all dang day. But you as you were spelling out Caliberty, and I have to do that a lot, but I was thinking about that stupid song. Stupid, it's okay. But my kids, the the hot to go, H-O-T-T-O-G, you know that one. I was like, can we make like spelling Caliberty along with that song maybe? I don't know. I'll figure it out.
00:57:25
Speaker
I'll debut that next year. um So that may be a test for my, my song generative AI. Okay. All right. Let's do that. See if you can spell the liberty to the song. That's where our lightning round jingle came from. So maybe maybe chat GPT can do that. But all it does is spit out MIDI notes or whatever it says to a MIDI player. I wish it would actually play a song. So if, so one of the songs I did using AI.
00:57:55
Speaker
I actually use chat GBT to give me lyrics, massage the lyrics to chat GBT and then plugged them into my song generative AI as the lyrics like, okay, put a song around these lyrics and turn up pretty good. Turn up for nice. That concludes this episode of the forward slash where we lean into the future of it. t Make sure you subscribe to this podcast for future episodes. I'd like to thank my beautiful co-host James Carmen.
00:58:25
Speaker
for a wonderful 2024. Looking forward to working with you more in 2025. And who knows what kind of episodes we'll come up with. So stay tuned, drop us a line at the forward slash at Caliberty.com if you have thoughts, ideas or things you want to hear from us. And I'd also like to thank our production team. Happy Holidays everyone. I'm Aaron Chesney. Thank you and stay curious.