Israel-Hamas war threatens to spill over, AI, and a seismic US election: 5 predictions for 2024

CharlieH · January 2

As we enter 2024 what lies ahead on the global stage may seem more uncertain than it has in years.

To help you make sense of it, here are some key themes to watch.

1. Israel-Hamas war threatens to spill over

The new year begins with Israel pushing its offensive further into the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ October 7 attacks.International pressure is mounting on Israel to limit the duration and intensity of its war amid global outcry over Gazans being trapped in mortal danger, without critical supplies or access to healthcare, as disease spreads through crowded humanitarian camps. Despite this, Israel has doubled down on its efforts and vowed its war on Hamas will rage for many months.

The risk of a wider Middle East conflict is escalating.

There are increasing cross-border exchanges between the Iran-backed, Islamist paramilitary group Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on the Lebanon-Israel border.

2. Stalemate as Russia-Ukraine conflict enters third year

In February, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will enter its third year.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine shows any signs of achieving victory or a willingness to compromise on their incompatible objectives. Ukraine is fighting for its survival, territorial integrity and sovereignty, while Russia is intent on what it calls the “denazification” and demilitarization of Ukraine, and the prevention of its aspiration to join NATO and other Western bodies. The Russian framing of its unprovoked invasion as “denazification” has been dismissed by historians and political observers.

Putin starts the year more confidently than he did the year before.

3. Elections, certain and uncertain

Elections are always significant, never more so than when so many key players are on the ballots at a moment of global instability. In 2024 2 billion people will go to the polls in a bumper year for voting.

The United States’ elections on November 5 could potentially see Trump return to the White House. Trump has a commanding lead over his Republican rivals for their party’s nomination, but the Colorado Supreme Court judgment that he cannot run in the state due to the 2021 insurrection case, followed by a similar decision in Maine, may foreshadow the obstacles he will face.

4. Territorial disputes

As the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East show, we are at in inflection point in geopolitics.

The tilt toward authoritarianism and long-predicted fracturing of Western hegemony has finally come home to roost. There has been a definitive shift away from American unipolarity, with China and Russia taking advantage of this retreat. The geopolitical axes of power are loosely realigning, with the US and EU on one side and an anti-US axis of China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea on the other. This is leading to bolder, less predictable actions and a more dangerous and uncertain global environment.

We will continue to witness this shift, which could be exacerbated by the posturing of non-aligned countries and the rise of competitive blocs such as BRICS.

Territorial disputes and revanchism are on the rise. Azerbaijan’s lightning seizure of the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region is just one instance.

5. AI comes of age

2024 looks set to see a tension between exponential artificial intelligence (AI) growth and attempts to regulate it, from governing institutions notoriously lacking in tech savvy.

Generative AI – which generates new data, like text, images or designs, by learning from existing data – dates back to the 1950s (we have to give Alan Turing his props here.) But it is only now that we are truly witnessing the paradigm shift as AI technology is widely available and impacting all aspects of our lives.

What does that mean in practice? Huge progress in image generation, design, speech synthesis, translation and automation. The rise of AI assistants and personalizing your tech interactions. Instead of text models like ChatGPT, image-generating models like DALL-E 2, and speech models being separate, they will be combined for a more holistic interface.

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thaibeachlovers · January 2

16 hours ago, CharlieH said:

The geopolitical axes of power are loosely realigning, with the US and EU on one side and an anti-US axis of China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea on the other.

The elephant in that room IMO is India. Nothing to say they will align with the West.

thaibeachlovers · January 2

16 hours ago, CharlieH said:

2024 looks set to see a tension between exponential artificial intelligence (AI) growth and attempts to regulate it, from governing institutions notoriously lacking in tech savvy.

Welcome to a world in which no digital information can be taken as true without some sort of actual proof.