Last year taught us to worry about clever chatbots, this year we will find out if artificial intelligence is ready for much wider use. Financial Times reporters consider this and other trends affecting businesses from defence contractors to energy majors, luxury and private equity.

Technology

Trend to watch

If the biggest tech story of 2023 was the race to build generative AI systems that can emulate humans in producing text and images, 2024 will bring the acid test of whether it is ready for widespread adoption.

Consumer internet companies such as Google are already embedding the new AI into their free services. But it is not clear yet whether consumers will also be willing to pay a premium for AI, and the early signs suggest that take-up in business will be slow. Such systems often “hallucinate” — making up information — or produce erratic results, and many companies are only in the early stages of exploring how to use it to make their workers more productive. After all the hope and hype, delays in adopting generative AI in 2024 could put a serious dent in the stock market’s euphoria over the technology.