1. Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the end game and 2023 will go down in history as the inflection point in human evolution.

For integrators, everything changes. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), coming in about three years, will give us the truly useful personal digital assistants that a “smart home” has never achieved. The ultimate butler, an all-seeing guardian angel. This is the age of context. AGIs will use numerous data inputs from sensors, cameras, microphones, online services, bank accounts, social media and just about everything else in our digital lives.

Along with AGI will come sophisticated AI cybersecurity. Rich sensory input to anticipatory algorithms will give integrators tools for autonomous controls and invisible automation. Keypads and touch panels will be replaced with wearable AI hardware like the hu.ma.ne Pin.

Absolutely no one is better prepared to usher in this new era than the residential system integrator.

2. Extended reality (XR)

Metaverse has been a boring, commercialised flop but that will change with the addition of AI in content creation, there’s the DIY Metaverse. We’ll soon be writing, directing and producing our own immersive movies and games. Fun for the whole family!

Hardware is bursting onto the scene now with products like the XReal Air 2 Pro and Meta Quest 3. Apple’s ridiculously competent Vision Pro is ready for an early 2024 launch.

Extended reality (XR) is the larger space and Metaverse will live in a snarky little corner. XR will convert home entertainment into personal entertainment at immersive scales. New XR consumers will consider big TVs boring. Integrators can fight back with visceral, multimodal immersive entertainment spaces that play interactive family-generated AI content.

3. Better money

Let me share a few thoughts from what I am seeing here in Silicon Valley. For sure, AGI will be big, really big. But there is one thing bigger: finance. Saving and spending digital money is the new frontier in venture capital investment. The emerging global middle class will explode with opportunity and with it a new generation of entrepreneurs at a scale we have never seen.

Take a look at the venture capital firm Ribbit Capital and explore their portfolio companies like Wealthfront, Parafin, Hippo, Walmart ONE and Coinbase. My favourite is Invoice2Go, a mobile invoice system that tracks and collects payments in real-time from technicians in the field.

Watch this space.

4. The revenge of analogue

The Revenge of Analog and The Future is Analog are two books by David Sax worth reading. Zoom, Microsoft Teams and the horrors of the pandemic have led us to a flat, brain-numbing, soul-sucking world of virtual meetings. This hurts our humanity, make it stop!

Young home builders will want something different. A place that nurtures the soul and connects people to their families, friends and the ones they care about. What does that look like? It’s what I call “slow technology”. Fire pits, pizza ovens, craft cocktails, analogue wristwatches, LP records, light switches that go “click”. Homes will become a refuge, playground, meeting place and sacred.

We need to design and build bright, naturally lit, quiet open spaces that encourage diverse, multi-generational human engagement, not unlike the traditional town squares and piazzas of the old country. Music will become even more important than video. AI will soon enable interactive music composition and performance in the kitchen, engaging the whole family. Let’s have some fun with this.

 

This Tech Predictor is written by Rich Green Design president Rich Green. To find the rest of the Connected Tech Predictors for 2024, click on this link.