January 10, 2023

There are some signs of what the technology sector might experience in 2023, yet making predictions for the future should be done with a grain of salt.

This year, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a major participant, while the metaverse hype bubble seems to have burst. In the meantime, employment layoffs in the tech industry have been widespread, and cryptocurrency prices have plummeted amid scandal and economic pressure.

Looking ahead to 2023, Euronews Next examines what might be in store for the tech and cryptocurrency industries.

This year has seen significant advancements in AI, particularly with ChatGPT, a potent chatbot developed by the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation that self-censors and generates text at the user’s request.

Ajay Chowdhury, Managing Director & Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group, stated that “I think the area that will continue to make huge advancements in is very much AI,” adding that with ChatGPT you could even create this piece about the future of the tech — and a “very nice one at that.”

According to Chowdhury, the democratization of this type of AI will profoundly alter several businesses, particularly the media.
However, AI will have an impact on every industry since it can speed up the process of digging through massive amounts of data and reduce the cost of many business decisions.

After Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced his large wager on the virtual reality industry, which has not taken off as he had planned, there was a lot of anticipation surrounding the metaverse last year.

The pricey shift of emphasis has angered Meta’s shareholders, who have also seen the company’s shares decline by more than 65% this year. Additionally, 11,000 Meta workers were let off in November.

According to Chowdhury, “The metaverse was the huge gamble that a lot of individuals in the tech sector opted to make, especially Zuckerberg.”

Not only Meta but also other tech behemoths like Amazon, Twitter, and Lyft have seen layoffs.

According to Chowdhury, the US tech sector in particular started off hiring way too quickly, and as a result, growth and valuation have plateaued, leading to employment losses.

“Because they were expanding so quickly, the markets had given them a bit of a pass on costs, but now that macroeconomic headwinds have arrived, they have suddenly realized that their markets are slowing down. They wanted to concentrate on the bottom line and, quite frankly, had too many employees, he said.

However, this can present a chance for smaller or specialized IT firms to hire employees from the industry’s titans.

Inflicting war on Europe this year, the continent has seen a much greater economic blow than other parts of the world due to widespread inflation and soaring oil costs.

This might have an effect on venture capital funding, leading to less money being invested in new businesses and innovative ideas.

In the next five to ten years, advancements in synthetic biology, quantum computing, and advanced AI robotics will be substantially more significant than they were in the previous twenty years. But in order to do that, these startups require cash. If they don’t, according to Chowdhury, innovation in Europe may lag behind that in the US and China.

The price of cryptocurrencies this year has also been impacted by the difficult economic times, but that is not the only factor.

The third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, which was headed by Sam Bankman-Fried, spectacularly collapsed, shocking the sector as a whole.

As a result of numerous crashes, including the Terra Luna saga, the entire cryptocurrency market has lost more than $1.4 trillion (€1.3 trillion) in value this year.

According to Samantha Yap, founder and CEO of YAP Global, an international PR and communications consultancy specializing in blockchain and decentralized finance, it has been a trying year for the cryptocurrency and web3 industries as the markets have experienced turbulence due to the rise and fall of Terra Luna and FTX (DeFi).

She said, however, that this year has witnessed a rise in multi-chain ecosystems, which means users no longer need to switch between networks when conducting transactions over many chains at once.

“The focus on the technology and the applications it can enable, which is the most intriguing element of the crypto sector, is the encouraging thing about these ecosystems emerging.”

In 2023, government regulation, particularly in relation to cryptocurrencies, is anticipated to be significant.

Early 2023 is the anticipated implementation date for the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, a piece of EU legislation that will regulate digital assets among member states.

The bill aims to support the evolution of the crypto asset market while simultaneously protecting investors and preserving financial stability.

The Digital Services Act (DSA), which will undoubtedly go into effect on September 1, 2023, has been cautioned that online platforms must “be ready” for it. This is according to the EU’s head of internal markets, Thierry Breton.

Source: Euronews
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