286: I Can Sum Up 2024 - AI AI AI AI And Uhh… ML

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Welcome to episode 286 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Welcome to the final show of 2024! We thank you for joining us on our cloud journey over the past year. During this last show of the year, we look back on all the tech that changed our jobs and lives, and make predictions for an AI filled 2025. Join Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matthew as they look forward to even more discussions about undersea cables. Happy New Year!

Titles we almost went with this week:

📅We thought 2024 would never end
🤖I can sum up 2024 – AI AI AI AI and uhh AI
🎙️AI has taken over the Cloud Pod – we are not really here
🧑‍💼2024 the year we hoped AI would replace us… close but not yet

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General News

00:31 2024 Predictions Look Back

Matt

Simpler and Easier to access LLM with new services
Kubernetes will become simpler for smaller companies to operate that doesn’t require Highly Paid Devops/Scientists
Low Employee Churn Rates and increased Tenure (Quiet Quitting)

02:07 📢 Matthew – “How is it simpler and easier? I think that there are more ways to run it. The general public has an easier way to access it. And they are simpler as Justin said that they are becoming easier and more efficient and better to use for the average user. So I know that I talked to many people that I work with now and just in general and people that are not in tech, which I feel like a year ago.”

Jonathan

There will be mass layoffs in tech directly attributed to AI in Q1 2024 (10k or more)
Someone will start a cult that follows an AI LLM God believing in sentience, a higher power.
AI will find a new home in education. Lesson Plans, Personalized Learning plans by students, etc.

02:07 📢 Jonathan – “Well, there is a religion called the First Church of Artificial Intelligence, but it’s been around for longer than this year. I think it’s like five, six years old at this point. So that’s kind of cheating.

Ryan

Start seeing the financial impact of AI to better profitability by using AI.
AI Solution tied towards new employee onboarding (replace wiki technology)
Removal of stateful firewalls as traffic ruleset (next-gen next-gen firewall)

02:07 📢 Ryan – “I mean, agentic AI is something that’s been rolled out in a lot of companies. I know in my day job, it’s been rolled out. I hope to see this get even stronger and more obvious just because I think that, you know, the days of searching through thousands of documents or the one, you know, unmaintained team page that someone built three years ago when they were new are over. And so I’d like to see this continue.

Justin

LLM will hit the trough of disillusionment either on Cost, Environmental impact or people realizing how limited these models are
Another AI model other than Transformer based
We will see another large defector from Public Cloud (not 37 Signals or X/Twitter)

13:26 📢 Justin – “I feel partially vindicated that I was sort of right, just I thought we didn’t be in the trough a little faster, but maybe it’s coming still. I don’t know. they’re innovating pretty quickly. I don’t think they’ll get there, but definitely environmental is going to become a big, big conversation around AI.”

17:02 Favorite Story of 2024

Did you remember that Gemini wasn’t a thing in 2023? It feels like it’s been around forever. 2024 saw some serious jumps forward in tech and innovation, as well as a lot of quality of life improvements overall. But here’s a quick rundown of our favorite articles from the past year:

Ryan

Introduction of RAG into the AI models

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/knowledge-bases-for-amazon-bedrock-now-supports-amazon-aurora-postgresql-and-cohere-embedding-models/

Matthew

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/11/amazon-cloudfront-vpc-origins/

Jonathan

Open AI Sam Altman Drama

Justin

Announcing Humboldt, the first cable route between South America and Asia-Pacific

Other 2024 things of note:

32:11 2025 Predictions

Ryan

Someone will come up with the ability to quickly provide an LLM model for individuals.
AI will go to the edge of the computing layer, in a more native edge stack of some kind. In a native way (Lambda on the edge-esque but AI.)
Cloud native security mesh for multi-cloud hybrid environments. App to App at the edge

Matthew

We are going to see FOCUS be adopted by Snowflake or Databricks, who sell consumption models outside of hyperscalers
Lot more security in AI, ethical focus and features in AI. A SOC or ISO specific standard for AI.
Amazon is going to keep deprecating at least 5 more services. Workmail for an extra point

Jonathan

A company will claim that Artificial General Intelligence has been achieved (sentience?)
Delegation of work to existing AI Agent Personal assistance that work in the real world. (for example Google booking reservations, but AI)
Models that can learn in real-time. (not referencing current information) but incorporating it via what they learned in conversations or interactions with other systems.

Justin

Over 10 companies after Q2 (Amazon and AT&T) will announce they are returning to office 5 days a week
Open AI will not be seen as the leader that they are in 2024.
We will have a GPT 5, a Claude 4 and a Gemini 3.0

45:01 📢 Justin – “I just feel like their innovation curve has definitely slowed down where I still see Claude and Gemini and Alibaba you mentioned. They’re all innovating quite a bit and I would not be shocked to see the market shift.”

53:36 📢 Jonathan – “That was kind of, that was going to be one of my predictions, but I couldn’t really quantify it in a way which would be measurable to win the point. I think there’s obviously a need for tons of data. I’m not going to say that we’re running out of data exactly, although the quality is a bit questionable, but I think access to data is going to be super important. And I didn’t know how to turn that into a prediction, but like when I, when I go to Safeway and buy my groceries, I want a way to get my, my like receipt electronically, so that I can plug that into an AI. So then I go to do my groceries, my AI will know what’s in my pantry. And if I say, what can I cook to eat today? And it can be like, well, you’ve got this stuff. Why don’t you make this? I just think there’s so many places where access to data would make life easier for a consumer. And right now, it’s very asymmetric. Safeway or Albertsons have access to all the data. They can market the shit out of me because they know exactly what I buy, when I buy – patterns of all kinds of stuff, but I have none of that. So I want to see some of that asymmetry go away and I want access to the data that other people have about me.”

50:27 And since we suck at predictions, here are other experts who may also suck:

Closing

And that is the week in the cloud! Visit our website, the home of the Cloud Pod where you can join our newsletter, slack team, send feedback or ask questions at theCloud Pod.net or tweet at us with hashtag #theCloudPod

2024

286: I Can Sum Up 2024 – AI AI AI AI and uhh… ML