Reflecting on 2024
When a charlatan gives you their predictions, they try to keep things purposefully vague in order to claim they were correct at some point in the future. In order to avoid feeling like a charlatan, I made my Predictions for 2024 very specific so as to make it easy to determine when I was correct (or not). To that end, I’ve included links to my sources when I produced a correct prediction - and sprinkled in the occasional link or comment when I missed the mark.
This year I’ve also included a “Final Tally” section for longer-form thoughts, and to discuss why making specific predictions can prove to be a challenging endeavor. It’s important to admit when you’re wrong, and a little humility says a lot about one’s character.
With that said - let’s see how I did!
Section Links:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Climate Change
- COVID-19
- Global Conflict
- Global Economics
- Information Security
- Technology
- Hope
- Final Tally
Artificial Intelligence
❌ OpenAI announces the release of GPT-5
- It seems like they’re “behind schedule” 🤷♂️ Although they’ve sure released a lot of models in 2024!
✅ Major technology companies replace over 1000 workers with AI
✅ At-least one deepfake political advertisement is publicly aired during the United States elections
❌ OpenAI loses at-least one copyright infringement court battle (and then appeals to a higher court)
- This is still in litigation, and it’s getting 🌶️ spicy 🌶️
✅ An Open Source Large Language Model (LLM) achieves GPT-4 levels of performance
Climate Change
❌ India experiences at-least one day where the heat index reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit
- India’s highest temperature in 2024: 126.4 degrees Fahrenheit (52.3 degrees Celsius)
✅ The continental United States experiences at-least one day where the heat index reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit
❌ At-least one Category 5 hurricane strikes the continental United States
- Directionally correct, but Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane
✅ The Panama Canal is closed due to a lack of rain for at-least 5 days
✅ The average price of coffee will exceed $7 per pound
COVID-19
✅ At-least 25% of Americans will be disabled from COVID-19 (i.e. Long COVID)
❌ The U.S. Government passes proposed changes to reduce the number of people with disabilities found in the census
❌ COVID-19 evolves to completely escape the immune system response
- Honestly glad to be wrong on this one - but it’s still evolving
❌ China reinstates universal mask mandates to slow the spread of COVID
❌ Governments start to recognize the financial loss COVID is having on the economy and reinstate safety regulations
- The EU recognized the financial costs, but didn’t reinstate safety regulations
Global Conflict
✅ At-least one act of domestic terrorism occurs at a political event and/or polling place during the United States elections which makes global headlines
❌ Ukraine retakes Crimea through the use of American arms and munitions
❌ Iran and Syria go to war with Israel over the massacre of Palestinian civilians
❌ China invades Taiwan
- All-but invaded it seems
✅ Ukraine fights to a stalemate with Russia in the Donbas and Luhansk regions
Global Economics
❌ Mounting commercial real estate losses lead to significant cuts in Federal interest rates
✅ Businesses force staff back to the office at-least four days a week
❌ The United States Government fully eliminates remote work as an option for federal employees
❌ Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs become severely restricted due to their financial impacts on major retailers
- GLP-1 drugs are definitely reshaping consumer behaviors - but retailers are changing their product lineups rather than lobbying for additional restrictions
✅ Core inflation remains above 2.75% in the United States
Information Security
❌ A Top 10 technology company experiences a major security incident attributed to non-state actors
- While there were plenty of ransomware events in 2024, none of them hit a Top 10 Technology Company
❌ A Form 8-K breach notification filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) leads to a 10% drop in a publicly listed company’s stock value
❌ At-least one CISO will face charges of fraud from the SEC due to a security incident
- Seems like the courts weighed-in and threw out the fraud charges against the CISO
✅ A United States utility company is hit with ransomware with service to customers impacted
❌ A major Israeli security company experiences an impactful security incident attributed to a state actor
Technology
❌ Twitter is sold at a significant loss to new ownership
✅ Amazon replaces at-least 25% of their warehouse workforce with robots
❌ Portable nuclear reactors start being mass-produced
❌ A lucid dreaming device becomes commercially available for use
- But we’re really close to having one come to market!
✅ Non-screen based connected devices (think Humane’s AI pin) will totally flop
Hope
❌ A universal COVID-19 vaccine that prevents infection is discovered
- We’re making progres with self-amplifying mRNA vaccines, and have made advancements with a universal influenza vaccine that could provide valuable scientific knowledge in this field
❌ Masks (once again) become universally required in medical settings in the United States
- While New York requires masks in all medical settings, they are not universally required across the United States
⏸️ The United States produces more than 47% of its energy from zero-carbon sources
- We won’t know this until sometime in 2025, as all public data is published on a delay
Final Tally
✅ 14 correct
❌ 23 incorrect
⏸️ 1 awaiting final data
Based on the math, I made correct predictions 37% of the time for 2024 - which I’m actually pretty happy about. I was a little surprised by how well I predicted events in the “Artificial Intelligence” and “Climate Change” categories (3/5 correct predictions each, with a healthy amount of directional correctness). I’m also a little sad about how poorly I predicted events in the “Information Security” and “COVID-19” categories (1/5 correct predictions each).
As it turns out, expertise in a given field actually hinders one’s ability to make accurate predictions. Apparently it takes a lot of de-biasing to accurately forecast in a field where one has expertise - and I pay a great deal of attention to the Information Security sector because I’ve made a career of working in that field. I also pay a great deal of attention to COVID-19 (and other viruses with pandemic-inducing potential) because I want to survive the “pan-decade”. No wonder I didn’t forecast as well in those categories 😅
Anyway, some lessons learned from this year’s experience includes performing decomposition to breakdown forecasts into smaller, more easy to predict events - and then applying percentages to those smaller predictions. Likewise, recognizing where one’s biases are shaping a prediction - and then actively seeking out conflicting evidence with an open mind - can help to make your predictions more accurate.
Here’s to making better predictions in 2025! 😄 Happy New Year 🎉
Thank you for taking the time to read through my pseudo-random musings 😊 While I take some time to rest and prepare for what’s in store this year, you can git checkout other (usually off-topic) content I’m reading over at Instapaper - which is probably shaping my biases for the predictions I’m making 😅
Until next time, remember to git commit && stay classy!
Cheers,
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