[IT | 기술] (WSJ) 2024년 당신의 삶을 변화시킬 기술

월스트리트저널 기사 요약 (ChatGPT)

AI 생성 콘텐츠 진위 확인: 이미지, 비디오, 텍스트 등 AI 생성 콘텐츠를 식별하는 데 도움이 되는 도구와 이니셔티브가 등장할 것입니다. OpenAI, TikTok, Adobe, Microsoft, 카메라 제조업체와 같은 회사들은 AI로 생성되지 않았다는 증명을 포함하거나 AI 생성 콘텐츠를 감지하는 기능을 개발하는 데 노력할 것입니다.

전기차 발전: 전기차 판매는 급증하지 않지만 더 많은 메인스트림 구매자들이 전기차 구매를 고려하게 될 것입니다. 충전 인프라 개선, 자동차 제조업체 간 충전을 위한 협력,  전기차 구매 즉시 연방 세액 공제 적용 등이 성장에 기여할 것입니다.

청정 기술 붐: 전기차 이상으로 더 넓은 청정 기술 부문에서 발전이 목격될 것입니다. 회사들은 에너지 저장을 위한 대형 배터리 사용(가상 발전소), 전기차 전력망 통합, 풍력, 태양열, 지열 발전과 같은 재생 에너지원 확장을 모색합니다.

PC용 온디바이스 AI: 주요 제조업체들은 노트북 및 PC에서 온디바이스 AI를 지원하여 클라우드 서비스에 의존하지 않고 특수 컴퓨팅 작업을 수행할 수 있도록 합니다. 뉴럴 프로세싱 유닛(NPU)이 장착된 칩은 인터넷 연결 없이도 음성 인식, 정보 요약, 이미지 생성과 같은 AI 작업을 수행할 수 있게 합니다.

전자 제품 수명 연장: 주요 브랜드들은 전자 기기 폐기물을 줄이기 위해 장치에 대한 소프트웨어 지원을 연장합니다. Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft은 스마트폰, 노트북, 태블릿에 대한 소프트웨어 지원 연장을 약속합니다.

애플의 혼합 현실 헤드셋: 애플은 디지털과 실제 세계 경험을 결합하는 혼합 현실 헤드셋인 Vision Pro를 출시했습니다. 3,499달러라는 가격으로 얼리 어답터와 개발자를 타겟으로 공간 컴퓨팅의 잠재적 응용 분야를 모색합니다.

애플 생태계의 변화: 규제 압력과 시장 수요는 애플 생태계의 변화를 강제합니다. 여기에는 앱 스토어 독점 금지, iMessage를 다른 플랫폼에 개방, 새로운 메시징 표준 채택 등이 포함됩니다.

암호에서 패스키로의 전환: Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft와 같은 회사들은 패스워드와 2단계 인증 코드를 대체할 수 있는 더 안전한 로그인 방법인 패스키로 전환하고 있습니다.

선거에 대한 AI의 영향: AI 생성 콘텐츠와 허위 정보의 광범위한 사용은 전 세계적으로 선거에 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다. 소셜 미디어 플랫폼은 디지털 변조된 미디어, 허위 정보, 극단적인 정치적 견해를 조절하는데 어려움을 겪고 있습니다.

자율 주행 차량 기술 발전: 일부 역풍에도 불구하고 Waymo, Mercedes-Benz와 같은 회사들은 자율 주행 기술을 발전시키고 있습니다. Waymo는 로보택시 서비스를 확장하고 Mercedes-Benz, Jeep, Chrysler, Ford는 자율 주행 시스템 개발에 노력합니다.

소셜 미디어 규제 및 소송: Meta (예전의 Facebook)와 TikTok은 미성년자에게 유해한 자사 제품 특성으로 인해 주 법무 장관들이 제기한 법적 소송에 직면해 있습니다. 소셜 미디어 플랫폼의 연령 확인은 기술적 및 행정적 장애로 인해 여전히 복잡한 문제이며 2024년 안에 적용될 가능성은 낮습니다.

웨어러블 디바이스의 진화: 웨어러블 기술은 심장 박동과 수면 추적을 넘어 혈압 모니터링까지 포함할 가능성이 있습니다. Apple, Fitbit, Samsung, Aktiia, Omron과 같은 회사들은 손목 기반 웨어러블을 사용하여 건강 지표 추적의 혁신을 모색합니다.

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(WSJ) Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2024

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/tech-life-changing-2024-ai-9dd4dd76

Generative AI will remain huge, and we’ll also see big moves with electric vehicles, Apple’s mixed-reality headset, password security and regulation around social media

JASON SCHNEIDER

By Joanna Stern Nicole, Nguyen and Christopher Mims

Dec. 29, 2023 5:30 am ET

It’s been a crazy year in tech:

• Artificial intelligence infiltrated everything.

• Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agreed to a cage fight (which never happened).

• High-schoolers made pornographic clones of their classmates.

• A high-profile tech CEO was fired and rehired over a weekend.

• Oh, and Apple unveiled its least-mainstream product since the G4 Cube.

We could go on, but we’re here to look forward. That’s the best part about this annual exercise, where we all pile into an electric time-travel vehicle and set the Google Maps destination to The Future.

So what can we predict for 2024? AI as far as the…A-eye can see. We won’t even pretend to know all the things generative AI will do to our devices, our jobs, our lives—and our elections. But we promise you won’t be able to escape it. We’ll see other things too: the decline of the dreaded password, a boom in cleaner energy, increasing regulation around kids on social media, and more.

And yes, Apple will start selling a $3,500 face computer that aims to change how we see the world, or at least our living rooms.

Here are our predictions for the coming year in tech.

Is it real?

When photos of a bull walking on train tracks in New Jersey recently went viral, many people’s first thought was, “Did AI make this?” No, the photo was the real deal. (Don’t worry, the bull is safe now.) 

This is the internet challenge of 2024: How do we tell the real from the AI? The generative-AI product flood will continue, but also expect more tools to help us pinpoint artificially generated text, photos, video and audio.

OpenAI, specifically, has promised a feature that will identify whether an image is created by its Dall-E 3 image generator. TikTok has said it is working on ways to detect and automatically label AI-generated content.

The Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative, which provides technology to embed information about the origin of an image or video into the file, will also continue to gain steam. Microsoft has said it will launch a tool for political candidates and campaigns that allows them to add credentials to media so people will know how it was created or edited. Camera maker Leica recently announced a new camera that automatically embeds such credentials in its photos.

At some point, we might just regard content without credentials as suspicious.

※ Seeing is (Not) Believing.

EVs struggle to accelerate

PHOTO: JASON SCHNEIDER

If you’re expecting 2024 to be the Year of the EV Boom, think again. “It’s not that EV sales are down, it’s that the pace of growth is slowing down,” said Barclays analyst Dan Levy.

That deceleration looks to continue but it marks a turning point: More mainstream car buyers are now catching their breath and beginning to assess their EV options. Two of the biggest consumer pain points—price and charging—will start to improve. Especially for people looking beyond Tesla.

Sometime in 2024, Ford, General Motors, Rivian and others will be able to charge at many of Tesla’s charging sites. That should significantly increase the number of places EV drivers can stop to charge on a long road trip. Additionally, we’ll see the launch of more fast-charging stations funded through the Biden administration’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. Here’s hoping they work—and actually accept credit cards.

Starting Jan. 1, if you’re buying an EV that’s eligible for a federal tax credit you can get that discount at the point of sale. You will no longer have to wait until you file your taxes. The bad news: Fewer EVs will qualify for the credit. But at least there are some sub-$40,000 EVs on the way, including the Chevy Equinox EV and Volvo EX30.

The clean-tech boom begins

Electric vehicles may seem like the embodiment of so-called “clean tech”—driven in no small part by a certain eccentric billionaire and his car company. But the EV supply chain is enabling hardware companies of all kinds to make use of really big batteries, and the critical “power electronics” that go with them.

For example, in Vermont, the biggest regional utility is turning batteries into a distributed energy-storage network it calls a “virtual power plant.” (VPP, 가상 발전소) In-home batteries can recharge from the grid when energy is plentiful, and put it back into the grid when demand shoots up or there are outages, increasing reliability and saving customers money. Even electric vehicles can help in a similar way: Ford says its electric F-150 can power your home in a blackout.

And the relentless rollout of new sources of low-carbon and renewable energy is proceeding apace, including offshore wind, rooftop solar and geothermal power from the earth’s own heat. Startups—backed by big money—are looking to develop a generation of smaller, safer modular nuclear reactors, too.

AI + PC = ?

ILLUSTRATION: JASON SCHNEIDER

In 2024, every major manufacturer is aiming to give you access to AI on your devices, quickly and easily, even when they’re not connected to the internet, which current technology requires. Welcome to the age of the AI PC. (And, yes, the AI Mac.)

What’s coming is what engineers call “on-device AI.” Like our smartphones, our laptops will gain the ability to do the specialized computing required to perform AI-boosted tasks without connecting to the cloud. They will be able to understand our speech, search and summarize information, even generate images and text, all without the slow and costly round trip to a tech company’s server.

On Dec. 14, Intel announced its entrants into this race, chips with built-in neural-processing units. Qualcomm announced similar chips in late October. Both silicon giants will compete to power Windows laptops and Chromebooks. Look for more announcements of chips to enable on-device AI, possibly from Nvidia and AMD. Apple—which brought variations of its neural-engine-equipped mobile chips to laptops and desktops in 2020—will be making that specialized processing power available to software developers in new ways.

The hardware will show up before the compelling software applications do, but we’ve already seen some promising demos—like fast AI-powered photo-editing tools.

Longer life for older gadgets 

Unlike milk and bread, there’s no expiration date printed on our gadgets’ packaging. That doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Modern, internet-connected devices remain tied to their makers after we buy them. And when the makers stop providing services and software updates, they die.

A growing number of manufacturers and brands are extending software support, however. Apple—which updates iPhones for about six years, and Macs for six to eight years depending on the model—was the gold standard, but it has fallen a bit behind Alphabet’s Google. For its new Pixel 8 phones, Google upped support to seven years. The company also said it will provide updates to Chromebooks for up to a decade starting in 2024.

Samsung previously updated phones for just two years, with four years of security patches. It recently committed to four years of system updates, with an additional year of security. Microsoft announced earlier this month that after support for Windows 10 machines ends in 2025, customers can continue receiving security updates for a fee.

By stretching devices’ lifespans, companies could reduce some of the 6.9 million tons of electronics waste we generate annually, according to nonprofit public-interest group U.S. PIRG.

Apple’s mixed reality meets the real world 

ILLUSTRATION: JASON SCHNEIDER

Will Apple’s Vision Pro change the way we work by putting floating 3-D spreadsheets on our office walls? Will it make us all yearn to FaceTime with holo-grandma? Will it finally make 3-D movies cool? Or, at $3,499, will it be the world’s most expensive paperweight? We find out in early 2024.

In early trials, we’ve been impressed with just how natural it is to navigate the digital interface with just hand waves and finger taps. It still is quite a substantial piece of hardware you have to put on your head, however, battery pack and all. 

Given its price tag and its first-generation status, the Vision Pro isn’t p-ositioned to be a mainstream hit. Instead, Apple’s betting on early adopters and software developers to define the killer apps of spatial computing—the idea that we can blend our real lives and digital worlds in new ways. As Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said during the Vision Pro’s introduction, it’s “the beginning of a journey.”

Cracks in Apple’s garden walls 

Perhaps the president of the European Commission should just move her office to Cupertino, Calif. In 2023, EU legislation forced Apple to give up its proprietary Lightning port in favor of USB-C on the iPhone 15. Next year, EU regulation will push Apple to make additional changes.

While Apple’s App Store has been the only way to install apps on the iPhone, the EU’s Digital Markets Act aims to change that. It requires the “gatekeepers”—specific tech companies—to stop restricting users from getting apps from outside its own app stores. The deadline to comply is March 7. A recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Apple stated that the company “expects to make further business changes in the future” to the App Store. (Google’s Android already allows users to install apps downloaded from outside its Google Play app store.)

It’s unclear if Apple would change the App Store only in the EU or around the globe. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s plans.

Then there’s Apple’s tightly protected iMessage. Beeper, a new app that brings iMessage to Android devices, has regulators pressuring the giant to open up its exclusive iMessage chat platform. Separately, Apple has agreed to adopt RCS, a messaging standard that will make “green bubble” texting with Android phones a bit more like iMessage. 

Passkeys in more places

ILLUSTRATION: JASON SCHNEIDER

Passwords are lousy. When hackers exposed information belonging to around 6.9 million customers of DNA test-kit company 23andMe, the company said the attackers tried credentials stolen from other websites. Because people often reuse their usernames and passwords, thousands of logins worked.

That’s why, in 2023, companies including Google, Apple and Amazon moved toward passkeys, a type of login that can replace passwords and two-factor authentication codes. Starting next year, Microsoft will roll out passkeys for businesses.

A passkey is more secure than a traditional login because each is unique, it won’t work on fake sites designed to trick us and it can’t be stolen from company servers. It’s stored inside password managers and can be accessed with a face or fingerprint scan.

Today, over eight billion accounts are passkey-enabled, according to Andrew Shikiar, executive director of FIDO Alliance, which oversees security standards for passkeys. Shikiar expects 20 billion passkey-capable accounts by the end of 2024.

Rocking the vote in 2024 

Millions can now generate images and videos with AI—and potentially influence elections around the world. In 2024, an estimated two billion people will vote in 50 countries. While manipulated media isn’t new, the ability to create convincing AI-generated sounds and imagery on a dime is. The White House said generative-AI systems have the potential to “erode public trust and safety in democracy.”

Former President Donald Trump posted a parody of Republican Ron DeSantis’s campaign launch with a video featuring AI-generated voice clones. In turn, a pro-DeSantis super PAC ran a television ad attacking Trump, using an AI-generated version of his voice. Meta Platforms is requiring advertisers to disclose when political ads on its Facebook and Instagram contain digitally altered media.

AI-enabled content isn’t the only concern. We can expect just as much or more old-fashioned disinformation compared with the last presidential election, too, said Erik Nisbet, a professor of communication at Northwestern University. That’s because some social-media platforms have either changed their policies or pared back their content-moderation efforts, Nisbet said.

Research has shown a particular rise in malign content on X, he added. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment. Meta now allows ads to say past elections were  “rigged” or “stolen,” a false claim often repeated by Trump. At a conference, Meta’s head of global affairs said  private-sector companies shouldn’t arbitrate whether politicians can “make claims or counterclaims about the legitimacy of previous elections.” Google’s YouTube will also no longer remove content questioning the legitimacy of former elections, saying the action could “have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech.”

Ride in a self-driving car—no, really

ILLUSTRATION: JASON SCHNEIDER

Robotaxis and self-driving vehicles in general had a rough 2023. GM subsidiary Cruise lost its license to operate in California and subsequently laid off about a quarter of its workforce. Tesla faced lawsuits over its “full self-driving system” on account of its apparent reliance on human monitoring, despite the marketing. And residents of San Francisco, the self-driving-est city in the U.S., expressed doubts about this technology.

Yet amid the chaos, there have been winners—in particular Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, which is continuing to expand its robotaxi service to more cities. If you travel to Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Austin, Texas, you can hop in one of the company’s driverless taxis today. And it’s…surprisingly normal?

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz gained approval to roll out the first hands-free, eyes-off-the-road autonomous driving system in the U.S. It only works on certain roads, under certain conditions. Jeep and Chrysler parent Stellantis is working on a version, which it says will arrive in 2024. Ford says it will have its version in 2025.

No surprise, then, that in Phoenix, you can now hail a Waymo robotaxi through Uber, thanks to a recently announced partnership. Yes, the future is here. You just might have to go to Phoenix to find it.

Another social-media reckoning 

As they seem to every year, Meta and TikTok face massive lawsuits, new laws, curbs from regulators, and the possibility of huge fines.

In 2024, Meta will have to contend with a grab bag of suits from more than 40 state attorneys general trying to force the company to change features of its products that the AGs allege harm minors. These include features that attempt to maximize teens’ and adolescents’ time spent on Meta subsidiary Instagram.

The company said: “We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families.”

In December, the New Mexico attorney general filed a suit alleging the company steers predators to the accounts of children on Instagram. In a statement, Meta said it uses technology, industry protocols and partners in law enforcement, including state attorneys general, “to help root out predators.” 

Should the suits somehow force Meta to make its products less appealing, they may accelerate users’ flight to TikTok. That could reignite the long-smoldering fire in Congress to ban the TikTok app outright. The initiative has won bipartisan support, but not enough to make it law. States have attempted their own remedies, but in November a federal judge blocked Montana’s TikTok ban, signaling that such state-level laws are unlikely to stand.

Meanwhile, age verification sounded like a promising move to protect kids on social media. But doing it effectively means clearing some high technical and administrative hurdles. It’s not likely you’ll see that in 2024.

Beyond heartbeats and nighttime Zs

ILLUSTRATION: JASON SCHNEIDER

Wearable gadgets have long tracked heart rate and sleep. Soon, they’ll be out for blood.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Apple is studying a way to track blood pressure through sensors in the Apple Watch. Next year—when Apple is expected to commemorate the watch’s 10th anniversary with a new design—the company might finally release the feature, which can notify a watch wearer when blood pressure is trending upward and direct the user to verify the measurement with a traditional inflatable cuff, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Other wearables may not be far behind. Fitbit filed a patent application for a display that could estimate blood pressure when pressed. Samsung has offered blood-pressure measurement on its Galaxy Watches for several years, though the feature isn’t available in the U.S. for regulatory reasons. Aktiia is a wrist-based wearable with an optical sensor that can capture 24/7 blood-pressure data. It’s currently only available in Europe, and is awaiting authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for commercial availability in the U.S. Omron has a larger wearable device available in the U.S. now.

There’s certainly a market for this metric. The devices could make it easier to manage high blood pressure (aka hypertension), which affects as many as 119 million American adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.