Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion informed perspectives, an expert, data driven commentary on
Speaker 1: breaking news. Well, Hi, everybody, this is Bloomberg Opinion with
Speaker 1: Tim Culpan, Bloomberg Opinion columnists joining us to look back
Speaker 1: at what might have been. It might have been one
Speaker 1: of the worst years for the tech industry that we've
Speaker 1: seen in some time, and whether or not we might
Speaker 1: see some light in the coming year. Tim, what say
Speaker 1: you is you know, is it was it actually a
Speaker 1: good year or a bad year? Well, the numbers point
Speaker 1: a really bad year. The NANSDACK is on track for
Speaker 1: its worst year in a decade, possibly two decades, depending
Speaker 1: on how it plays out the next couple of days. Uh,
Speaker 1: And of course the NASTAC is tech heavy. We also
Speaker 1: saw crypto meltdowns after quite a lot of drama going
Speaker 1: on this year in crypto. We saw a continuation of
Speaker 1: some supply chain issues and chips being all out. Actually
Speaker 1: see it as a good year because it's set up
Speaker 1: a very good future. There's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: happened to you that I think will make the next
Speaker 1: five to ten years for tech very very exciting. And
Speaker 1: to that end, Tim, you talk about the new paradigm,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is that? Is it about algorithms? What
Speaker 1: are we what are we waiting to see? Well, one
Speaker 1: of the things that that we know is coming, we
Speaker 1: don't know quite when is quantum computing. Now quantum computing
Speaker 1: in a nutshell incident, Instead of crunching numbers in binary units, bits,
Speaker 1: ones or zeros, you can do it in larger chunks
Speaker 1: of information at a time. Uh. And that is really
Speaker 1: really exciting, except if you're in charge of security, because
Speaker 1: security would be could be compromised by quantum computing because
Speaker 1: they're so powerful. But new standards came out this year,
Speaker 1: new algorithms and equations for encrypting information that should make
Speaker 1: the future quantum safe. This is very very geeky stuff
Speaker 1: and there's really only a handful of people in the
Speaker 1: world who are going to be getting their hands dirty
Speaker 1: on is. But it is very important for the future,
Speaker 1: for for email, for fintech, and and all sorts of
Speaker 1: other applications that require security. And what this means is
Speaker 1: that the industry can start moving forward, getting ready deploying
Speaker 1: new systems and networks and infrastructure over the next few years,
Speaker 1: knowing that you know, twenty years down the track, they
Speaker 1: will be safe so it's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: that was sank below the surface of visibility this year,
Speaker 1: but it was very important and it does make the
Speaker 1: future of a post quantum era very very exciting. There
Speaker 1: are always ethical issues tied to developments in artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and just recently, I mean it's really only the past
Speaker 1: couple of months that we've heard people talking about chat
Speaker 1: GBT and that the fact that in that kind of
Speaker 1: of intelligence, you know, you can get all kinds of
Speaker 1: creative stuff put together, are the big ethical questions with
Speaker 1: how far we can go there our huge questions. I
Speaker 1: mean chat GPT and some of the chat apps have
Speaker 1: now been used to write college essays, which of course
Speaker 1: is a big problem for for sagearism and academic ethics.
Speaker 1: But then we also have, you know, on the artwork
Speaker 1: side and the visual arts side, we've got Daly and
Speaker 1: various others that create artwork. You just type in a
Speaker 1: few things like, uh, you know, draw a photo of
Speaker 1: Brian and Doug sitting in a microphone and you'll do
Speaker 1: it for you right, um And and that's exciting, but
Speaker 1: nobody would want to see that. We all have a
Speaker 1: good face for radio, don't we. Um. So The thing
Speaker 1: about that is that it sucks up and hoovers up
Speaker 1: a lot of photos and graphics out there on the
Speaker 1: internet with our permission. So it's actually basing it on
Speaker 1: real artwork made by real human artists and then adapts
Speaker 1: that and uses that style. That's a real ethical issue
Speaker 1: because essentially it's theft. It's it's ip and artistic theft.
Speaker 1: So that's a big problem going forward. It really could
Speaker 1: put out a lot of people out of out of jobs,
Speaker 1: out of work. But you know, progress technology and progress
Speaker 1: does that. You know, we don't have people making buggy
Speaker 1: whips anymore because we have motor cars. So you know,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a lot of ethical issues with AI,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the developments we've seen in the
Speaker 1: last top of months are very very exciting and and frankly,
Speaker 1: it's progress and you can't stop progress. Tim one thing
Speaker 1: that's defined is to take war within the US and China.
Speaker 1: The US now wants to onshore chip production. TSMT has
Speaker 1: already set up shop in Arizona. Will it work? Will
Speaker 1: the US realize his dream? Well? I think their dream
Speaker 1: is very grand. It's basically a moonshop project. I think
Speaker 1: I think it'll be harder for them to get chip
Speaker 1: independence that it was for the US to land a
Speaker 1: man on the moon sixty years ago, But they're trying.
Speaker 1: I think they won't get to full chip independence, but
Speaker 1: clearly TSMC, as well as Samsung and even local names
Speaker 1: like Intel on Texas Instruments are spending a lot of
Speaker 1: money to build fabs. T SMC will bring some of
Speaker 1: that technology to the US. They will still lag Taiwan,
Speaker 1: but they'll get closer and closer to their goal. Just briefly, Tim,
Speaker 1: did blockchain and cryptos get kicked in the knees this year?
Speaker 1: Ah seriously got a real low blow this year across
Speaker 1: the board. Obviously, the stuff that happening at FDx is
Speaker 1: is what everyone's talking about now. It's a real dense
Speaker 1: to the credibility of the crypto space. But you know
Speaker 1: what happens is that a lot of it, It clears
Speaker 1: out a lot of the charlatans in the industry, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them, makes it stronger in the
Speaker 1: long run. Many thanks s Bloomberg opinion columnist Tim Culpen.
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