The World Ahead 2024: five stories to watch out for

I foresee a recession lasting 2-3 years, and if inflation continues to surge, the Federal Reserve will likely raise interest rates soon. Inflation is causing various issues worldwide, such as food shortages, scarcities of diesel and heating fuel, and significant spikes in housing prices, leading to a potential financial market crash. This global downturn could have long-lasting repercussions. Given the current inflation rate of approximately 9%, my main worry is how to optimize my savings and retirement fund, which has remained stagnant at around $300,000, yielding almost no gains for quite some time.

Every year I watch this video from the economist to see what is not going to happen next year😂

Basically a summary of the world's outlook without providing much context.  There is so much speculation being presented as if it is factual. Would be interesting to revisit in a year's time to see which actually comes true.

How can people focus on politics, technology, and AI when they're still living paycheck to paycheck? - Without affordable housing and transportation in 2024, it will be difficult for families to survive in this economy.

00:02 2024 will be the biggest election year in history 02:46 Taiwan's future and eVTOLs at the 2024 Olympics 05:12 The race for autonomous flying vehicles and its impact on transportation 07:21 Regulation of AI and its potential risks and benefits 09:28 Concerns over artificial general intelligence and industrial greenhouse gas emissions are growing. 11:30 Coolbrook's rotodynamic heater technology is bringing sustainable energy to heavy industry. 13:31 In 2024, the American-led world order will be challenged by the expansion of the BRICS+ group. 15:27 BRICS challenging the American-led world order

For the editors; your story on AI misses the biggest danger. The training of AIs on our personal data. Microsoft one drive, google drive data, all are used to train AIs. The loss of our personal data and mining of our expertise for free is the biggest long term threat.

Love to see Coolbrook highlighted here! Amazing technology from Finland!

The economist: industry drags its feet. The reality: industry sends armies of corporate lobbyists to congress and international climate negotiations to stymy progress that only mildly threatens their exorbitantly profitable bottom line.

The guy who spoke about AI in this video has no idea what he's talking about. The AI that Elon Musk is so concerned about has nothing to do with the AI that enables self-driving cars. Conflating the two is like saying a goldfish and a shark are the same because they both live in water.

Ultimately it will come down to what the media thinks is newsworthy to run across channels and articles

wait, let me go back to last year's "to watch out for"

When it comes to the flying vehicles, there is a problem I often see. While the guy mentioned quiet travel, they are still very noisy. Now imagine many if them flying around above your head. Something else that I see that could pose an issue is that the blades are often exposed, which is clearly a danger. Yes, people will be careful to begin with, but as they get used to such things, people are often more relaxed and tend to make mistakes or too many risks. The space required to land many of them might also be an issue. There might be some kind of limit on how close you can land one vehicle next to another or perhaps a building which will, of course, increase the space needed. I'm not sure enough things have been considered when it comes to such things that will create more problems than needed.

Lightweight journalism. These are all general trends that started well before 2024 and will continue long after. Very little, if anything, said specific to 2024.

For millions living paycheck to paycheck, anxieties about basic needs can overshadow even the biggest headlines in politics, technology, or AI. How can we bridge this gap?

For the editors and/or the speakers in the video, AGI is not the same thing as purpose built automation systems such as self-driving. They don't use the same algorithms (for now anyway). Therefore current iterations of the self-driving systems cannot really do anythjing outside of their parameters. AGI on the otherhand can because that's the whole point for AGI, which is to be as flexible as possible. We're nowhere near AGI yet but with this kind of attention (pun intended) maybe we'll get a breakthrough technology to achieve it. I suspect that an AGI system would constantly need a lot of computing power, not just for the training phase for it to be as flexible, as creative and as self-learning as possible. Hence even if it is invented, it may not be available for public consumption.

EVTOL for all ? ... is it that hard to understand that no one has a penny in their pocket ? This will only transport the 1% richest of us ...

Just re-watched the Economist's "stories to watch out for" video's from the past few years. You get it wrong every time. Best stick to reviewing the most important stories from the past year, instead of trying to predict the year ahead.

2024 is gonna be a wait and see year . But I have more confidence in this year than the past one 🤔

The economist, who know how to get every story wrong. Always

Economist's video quality has deteriorated to a level of entertainment.