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2023 Big Ideas in Technology (Part 1)
a16zConnie Chan, Anne Lee Skates, Jack Soslow, Doug McCracken, Sarah Wang, Sumeet Singh, Anne-Lise Gates
- 2023 is predicted to be the year social, discovery, and video commerce become "obvious," with platforms seeking to complete transactions directly rather than redirecting users, fostering a new ecosystem where anyone can sell via community-driven live video dynamics involving limited-time promos.
- Concepts proven in Asia are expected to take a time lag of at least one year and generally three to five years to become popular in the US, partly due to the US being "mobile first" only for younger generations compared to developing markets that are "mobile only."
- Social platforms in 2023 will experiment more with commerce and creators, leading to the emergence of a new creator category defined by sales proficiency rather than just follower count or acting talent, while video shopping in the West will evolve from entertainment-like infomercials to mainstream.
- Post-COVID hybrid living will drive the rise of "online-first" third spaces for community and identity exploration, enabling billions to connect globally for specialized interests and changing presence through immersive digital environments that can also prompt or create in-person interactions.
- Digital-native activities will foster new engagement modalities, such as coding as a game, and AI in games will advance to first-class citizen bots, potentially making it impossible to distinguish humans from AI, while single-player games will feature believable AI companions and multiplayer games will offer personalized flow states.
- In 2023, foundation models will expand into 3D, audio, and video domains to converge game assets, lowering the barrier to creation for individuals with little experience, while Gen Z and Gen Alpha will increasingly prioritize digital fashion for self-expression, demanding interoperability of assets like virtual shoes across metaverse platforms.
- Digital-only fashion creators and businesses are expected to grow, driven by avatar interoperability infrastructure and the habits of children in games like Roblox, with brands rewarding those who lean into digital self-expression.
- Enterprise productivity in 2023 is forecast to see 10 to 100 times performance improvements as AI moves from text-to-image to complex workflows like text-to-SQL or text-to-Excel, driving a shift where underlying models become commoditized and applications must differentiate by owning mission-critical data workflows.
- Coding and video editing are immediate AI use cases offering massive efficiency gains, while companies face decisions on using general horizontal LLMs versus fine-tuned models based on proprietary data needs, with text-to-image maturing but data workflows delivering the most transformative near-term impact.
- Fintech companies must balance adopting LLM technology rails with maintaining customer trust, expecting near-term opportunities in customer engagement and back-office automation where default error tolerance is higher than in high-stakes automated accounting or investment decisions.
- AI in fintech will initially automate data-heavy manual tasks like insurance claims or loan origination, with complex use cases requiring significant user trust and potential regulatory scrutiny from bodies like the CFPB regarding discriminatory data in loan decisioning or tenant screening.
- Future differentiators in fintech will remain distribution despite product technology becoming table stakes, as SMBs may fully replace back-office employees, while Part Two of the series will cover fintech, American dynamism, and bio health as emerging themes for the remainder of 2023.