AI, metaverse, chatbots: Workplace trends to watch for in 2024

Humans do learn how to use technology, and amazingly fast when you think about it. But AI brings a new turn on the tech wheel, and we have to learn it, too. – Reuters

Every end-of-year working assumption is the same: Next year will be different. This is the eternal optimism of business and the never-ending story of innovation. But this time it’s true, certainly when it comes to workplace technology. All sorts of incredible things will be possible at your desk (wherever your desk is), but it will come with a price: possibly the steepest learning curve in knowledge work since the word processor way back in the analogue age of the 1970s.

ChatGPT’s arrival a year ago has captured the collective imagination with 100 million users per week, according to its creator, OpenAI. Workers got a taste of what it's like to ask AI tools to write their emails and summarize documents for them, but in the year ahead these tools will only get more sophisticated and be able to respond to images, voice commands, and potentially carry out more complex tasks with limited human intervention. That has the potential to radically change the day-to-day experience of work.