Euronews Next takes a look at what could lie ahead for the tech and crypto sectors in 2023.
While predicting the year ahead should be taken with a handful of salt, some indications of what could be in store for the technology sector in 2023 have emerged.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has surfaced as a big player this year, while the hype bubble over the metaverse appears to have burst. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies have nosedived amid scandal and economic pressure and the tech sector has seen job cuts en masse.
Euronews Next takes a look at what could lie ahead for the tech and crypto sectors in 2023.
Artificial intelligence
AI has made major strides this year, especially with ChatGPT, a powerful AI chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation, which is self-censoring and generates text at a user’s request.
“I think the area that will continue to see great strides in is very much AI,” said Ajay Chowdhury, Boston Consulting Groups’ managing director, senior partner and BCG X Lead for the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium.
He also said added that with ChatGPT you could even write this article on the future of the tech – and a “pretty good one at that”.
The metaverse gamble
Last year, there was much hype around the metaverse after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his big bet on the virtual reality world, which has not taken off as he had hoped.
Canva
The metaverse may not have taken off as hoped in 2022 but it still could in the future.Canva
Meta’s shareholders have grumbled about the costly change of focus and have seen the company’s stock fall more than 65 per cent this year. Meta also laid off 11,000 employees in November.
“The metaverse was the big bet that I think a lot of people in the tech sector decided to make, especially Zuckerberg,” said Chowdhury.
“The reality in tech is that stuff takes a lot longer to happen than you would expect,” he said, adding that this applies to Meta’s metaverse but that there are “other amazing virtual worlds” where consumers can go or that can be used for educational and training purposes.
The tech sector’s economic woes
Job cuts have not just hit Meta, but other tech giants such as Amazon, Twitter and Lyft.
The US tech sector in particular very much got ahead of itself in terms of hiring in the beginning, said Chowdhury, and growth and valuation have now started to plateau, resulting in job cuts.
“The markets had given them a bit of a free pass on costs because they were growing so fast and as the macroeconomic headwinds have come in, they’ve suddenly realised that their markets are slowing down. They want to focus on the bottom line and frankly, they had too many people,” he said.
But this could be an opportunity for smaller or niche tech companies to hire talent from the tech giants.
For Europe, war was inflicted this year in Ukraine, and the economic shock has hit the continent far more than in other parts of the world with rampant inflation and rising energy prices.