Predictions From IEEE’s 2024 Technology Megatrends Report

It’s time to start preparing your organization and employees for the effects of artificial general intelligence, sustainability, and digital transformation. According to IEEE’s 2024 Technology Megatrends report, the three technologies will change how companies, governments, and universities operate and will affect what new skills employees need.

A megatrend, which integrates multiple tendencies that evolve over two decades or so, is expected to have a substantial effect on society, technology, ecology, economics, and more.

More than 50 experts from Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States provided their perspectives for the report. They represent all 47 of IEEE’s fields of interest and come from academia, the public sector, and the private sector. The report includes insights and opportunities about each megatrend and how industries could benefit.

The experts compared their insights to technology predictions from Google Trends; the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Xplore Digital Library; and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“We made predictions about technology and megatrends and correlated them with other general megatrends such as economical, ecological, and sociopolitical. They’re all intertwined,” says IEEE Fellow Dejan Milojicic, a member of the IEEE Future Directions Committee and vice president at Hewlett Packard Labs in Milpitas, Calif. He is also a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Fellow.

The benefits and drawbacks of artificial general intelligence

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) includes ChatGPT, autonomous robots, wearable and implantable technologies, and digital twins.

Education, health care, and manufacturing are some of the sectors that can benefit most from AGI, the report says.

For academia, the technology can help expand remote learning, potentially replacing physical classrooms and leading to more personalized education for students.

In health care, the technology could lead to personalized medicine, tailored patient treatment plans, and faster drug discovery. AGI also could help reduce costs and increase efficiencies, the report says.

Manufacturing can use the technology to improve quality control, reduce downtime, and increase production. The time to market could be significantly shortened, the report says.

Today’s AI systems are specialized and narrow, so to reap the benefits, experts say, the widespread adoption of curated datasets, advances in AI hardware, and new algorithms will be needed. It will require interdisciplinary collaborations across computer science, engineering, ethics, and philosophy, the report says.

The report points out drawbacks with AGI, including a lack of data privacy, ethical challenges, and misuse of content.

Another concern is job displacement and the need for employees to be retrained. AGI requires more AI programmers and data scientists but fewer support staff and system administrators, the report notes.

Adopting digital technologies

Digital transformation tech includes autonomous technologies, ubiquitous connectivity, and smart environments.

The areas that would benefit most from expanding their use of computers and other electronic devices, the experts say, are construction, education, health care, and manufacturing.

The construction industry could use building information modeling (BIM), which generates digital versions of office buildings, bridges, and other structures to improve safety and efficiency.

Educational institutions already use electronics such as digital whiteboards, laptops, tablets, and smartphones to enhance the learning experience. But the experts point out that schools aren’t using the tools yet for continuing education programs needed to train workers on how to use new tools and technology.

“Most education processes are the same now as they were in the last century, at a time when we need to change to lifelong learning,” the experts say.

“We made predictions about technology and megatrends, but we correlated them with other general megatrends such as economical, ecological, and sociopolitical. They’re all intertwined.” —Dejan Milojicic

The report says the digital transformation will need more employees to supervise automation, as well as those with experience in analytics, but fewer operators and workers responsible for maintaining old systems.

The health field has started converting to electronic records, but more could be done, the report says, such as using computer-aided design to develop drugs and prosthetics and using BIM tools to design hospitals.

Manufacturing could benefit by using computer-aided-design data to create digital representations of product prototypes.

There are some concerns with digital transformation, the experts acknowledge. There aren’t enough chips and batteries to build all the devices and systems needed, for example, and not every organization or government can afford the digital tools. Also, people in underdeveloped areas who lack connectivity would not have access to them, leading to a widening of the digital divide. Other people might resist because of privacy, religious, or lifestyle concerns, the experts note.

Addressing the climate crisis

Technology can help engineer social and environmental change. Sustainability applications include clean renewable energy, decarbonization, and energy storage.

Nearly half of organizations around the world have a company-wide sustainability strategy, but only 18 percent have well-defined goals and a timetable for how to implement them, the report says. About half of companies lack the tools or expertise to deploy sustainable solutions. Meanwhile, information and communication technologies’ energy consumption is growing, using about 10 percent of worldwide electricity.

The experts predict that transitioning to more sustainable information and communication technologies will lead to entirely new businesses. Blockchain technology could be used to optimize surplus energy produced by microgrids, for example, ultimately leading to more jobs, less-expensive energy, and energy security. Early leaders in sustainability are already applying digital technologies such as AI, big data, blockchain, computer vision, and the Internet of Things to help operationalize sustainability.

Employees familiar with those technologies will be needed, the report predicts, adding that engineers who can design systems that are more energy efficient and environmentally friendly will be in demand.

Some of the challenges that could hinder such efforts include a lack of regulations, an absence of incentives to encourage people to become eco-friendly, and the high cost of sustainable technologies.

How organizations can work together

All three megatrends should be considered synergistically, the experts say. For example, AGI techniques can be applied to sustainable and digitally transformed technologies. Sustainability is a key aspect of technology, including AGI. And digital transformation needs to be continually updated with AGI and sustainability features, the report says.

The report included several recommendations for how academia, governments, industries, and professional organizations can work together to advance the three technologies.

To address the need to retrain employees, for example, industry should work with colleges and universities to educate the workforce and train instructors on the technologies.

To advance the science that supports the megatrend technologies, academia needs to work more closely with industry on research projects, the experts suggest. In turn, governments should foster research by academia and not-for-profit organizations.

Companies should advise government officials on how to best regulate the technologies. To gain widespread acceptance of the technologies, the risks and the benefits should be explained to the public to avoid misinformation, the experts say. In addition, processes, practices, and educational materials need to be created to address ethical issues surrounding the technologies.

“As a whole, these megatrends should focus on helping industry,” Milojicic says. “Government and academia are important in their own ways, but if we can make industry successful, everything else will come from that. Industry will fund academia, and governments will help industry.”

Professional organizations including IEEE will need to develop technical standards and road maps on the three areas, he says. A road map is a strategic look at the long-term landscape of a technology, what the trends are, and what the possibilities are.

The megatrends influence which initiatives IEEE is going to explore, Milojicic says, “which could potentially lead to future road maps and standards. In a way, we are doing the prework to prepare what they could eventually standardize.”

Dejan Milojicic discusses findings from IEEE’s 2024 Technology Megatrends report.

Dissemination and education are critical

The group encourages a broad dissemination of the three megatrends to avoid widening the digital divide.

“The speed of change could be faster than most people can adapt to—which could lead to fear and aggression toward technology,” the experts say. “Broad education is critical for technology adoption.”