EP 40: AI Predicts 2024 Trends

Transcript for this Episode:

INTRODUCTION VOICEOVER: This is Tech UNMUTED. The podcast of modern collaboration – where we tell the stories of how collaboration tools enable businesses to be more efficient and connected. With your hosts, George Schoenstein and Santi Cuellar. Welcome to Tech UNMUTED.

GEORGE: Welcome to the latest episode of Tech UNMUTED. Today we're going to take a look at some of the trends that are predicted by Copilot for 2024. None of this is really technical stuff, but-

SANTI: It’s Fun.

GEORGE: -we'll see what happens. We haven't pre-done this. We're going to do this on the fly. This is one If you're watching on YouTube, you're going to see some of the activity as we go through it on the screen. If you're listening to it, it works perfectly well on any of the platforms that you'd be listening to. As always, please subscribe, please like, please comment. We'll do our best where there's comments or requests to feature those in an upcoming episode where it makes sense.

We're going to start this off. Santi is going to bring up Copilot on screen, and we've got six questions that we're going to run through, and I'll give him a second to get that brought up, and then we'll start off with the first question. Question number one, what will be the most popular fashion trend in 2024? Something I'm keenly concerned about.

SANTI: All right Copilot and the answer is-- let's see. I bet you that each response is going to have some type of a caveat-- oh, here it is. The fashion industry is always evolving and it's hard to predict, and so there is a caveat. See, it always has something. It always gives you this-- oh look, it even gives you some sample fashion links. This is pretty interesting. First one, micro fringe, which I never heard of. It's ultra-fine standards of micro fringe accenting. What’s that, hemlines?

GEORGE: Hemlines.

SANTI: Hemlines. I should probably wear my reading glasses, [laughs] directing the eye to key elements. Then there's business sensual, which I've never heard of. I've heard of business casual. This is interesting. Then major mod micro minis. There you go. George, this is going to be an interesting topic for sure. We have three [chuckles] fashion trends that we can expect to see in 2024. I don't know how business sensual is going to work out, [chuckles] to be honest with you. That's odd, but--

GEORGE: This, if you take a look at it, it went through chat. It's a hybrid of an AI response and a reference to InStyle Magazine to get to this answer. Let's see what happens as we go forward with the next couple of these.

SANTI: What I do want to point out is that everything else that Copilot does, it gives you the answer, but it gives you the reference. Then down below it gives you all the links. There's four links in total, where it used a source to generate its response. I've never seen this before, where now it gives me titles of some clothing and purses that are for sale. It actually titles that. You see it says, "Here are some options for fashion trend 2024." There you go. Now you can click on those and actually buy them.

This was pretty cool. You know why, because you don't get to see this type of response from ChatGPT. It usually just gives you the answer, but Copilot takes a step further and it's giving you these suggested links that you can go buy stuff at. Anyway, that's pretty cool.

GEORGE: Let's move on to number two, it's a little more interesting, at least for me. What will be the most popular food trends in 2024?

SANTI: That is a good one. All right. Let's submit it.

[pause]

Look at that. It's interesting because this one, it went straight to the Food Network. Makes sense. It gave us five. Remixed French pastries, countertop ovens. What is a countertop oven? What does it have to do with-- I guess it includes cooking to-- no, wait a minute. Compact multi cooker. That's not a food item. Spicy dishes is number three. Nostalgic flavors. I'm curious to know what this is. Peanut butter and jelly, s'mores, and cotton candy will be popular in 2024.

I don't know. I think they've been popular my entire life, but that's alright. Then hormone-friendly meals. Those are your five results for 2024 food trends. I don't understand number two though, I guess it's just-- it got the answer from Food Network, but answers one, three, four, and five are dishes or types of foods. Number two was an oven. I don't like that. [laughs]

GEORGE: It's anchoring the interesting piece again. It's anchoring against a couple of, and in particular, one, site to get the data. In the background, I'm running-- I didn't do it for the first one, but I'm running the same question through ChatGPT. It's taken quite a while to get to the answer. It actually hasn't delivered the answer yet. It's digging more individual sites.

SANTI: Again, I use three sources. Copilot did. Food Network, Health News, and Whole Foods Market. If you have a Whole Foods in your area, you know it's an awesome place to visit. That's where it got its answers from. Interesting. Did ChatGPT come back with anything?

GEORGE: A much, much longer answer that I'm not going to completely go through, but they are all very food-specific.

SANTI: Are they similar though?

GEORGE: Not at all.

SANTI: Really? Interesting.

GEORGE: Buckwheat as the it grain. The second one is use of botanicals. There's innovative use of mushrooms, spicy and sweet flavor combinations. There's a handful of other ones, but it came up with 12 in total. Actually, they do do a quote reference on some of these. They've come from different places, but it's a much, much longer list, which generally, with GPT-4, you get a very long list and you need to, to cut it back.

SANTI: Interesting. All right, let's go to the next one. What's the next one, George?

GEORGE: The next question is, what will be the most popular travel destination in 2024? Again, each of these questions so far are written in a way that they really should give a single answer.

SANTI: Yes, let's see here.

GEORGE: They're not, they're giving a list. Let's give this one a shot and see what happens. I'll run this in the background on ChatGPT as well.

SANTI: Oh wow.

GEORGE: I'm going to modify my question to say, what will be the single most popular travel destination in 2024? Let's see what it comes up with.

SANTI: This is interesting. Most popular travel destinations in 2024. The first one was Denmark. [chuckles] I never would've thought of Denmark as a popular-- then the second one is Columbia, specifically Cartagena. Cartagena, Colombia. That's specific. By the way, it gives you the description or the narrative as to why, and of course where it got it from. All these are coming from travelandleisure.com, and one of them is coming from CNBC actually and in the New York Post.

Anyway, number one is Denmark. How do you pronounce that first, is that Aalborg? Aalborg, Denmark. Then you have Cartagena, Colombia. Albanian Alps in Albania. That sounds interesting, actually. Then it gives you a footnote. It says, "Other sources suggest that Spain, Italy, Greece, and France will be popular travel destinations in 2024." By the way, I will be in Spain in November, so I guess it's right. [chuckles] It predicted.

GEORGE: For ChatGPT basically, it's one of these challenging answers where it refuses to answer.

SANTI: Really?

GEORGE: This is a, it's a complicated thing to figure out. There's a lot of travel destinations, cities like Paris, Tokyo, and New York are historically popular. There's on and on with it. I could refine this. I don't want to do it at the moment. There are ways to continue to drill down into this and refine the answer and get a better answer or a more specific answer. It's trying not to answer the question effectively. Let's move on to the next one. The next one is, and again, these are deliberate questions that if you asked a person, they would probably give you a single answer. Likely to see multiples for this. What will be the most popular movie genre in 2024?

SANTI: Let's take a look. It's interesting because it opened up, it opened up with, "I have searched the web and I have found the Rotten Tomatoes." It's interesting. It's giving you the-- and it says here, Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the most anticipated movies for 2024. The list includes a variety of genres from action franchises to blockbuster superhero fair. It's not really, it couldn't find a more specific answer to your question. It gave us a broad response. Then it gave us basically the links to Rotten Tomatoes and Wikipedia and IMDb.

GEORGE: I got a better answer.

SANTI: Interesting.

GEORGE: I did again, get a, "Hey, I'm not answering this because it's really challenging," but it did close with several high-profile superhero films are slated for release in 2024 and have an enduring fan base. This very well could be the most popular genre of the year. We did actually get a prediction on one of these.

SANTI: Two different results. So far, Copilot has been producing the best-generated answers when you compare the two-- but on this one, we stumped out a little bit. It just said, "Hey, expect to see some of this," and it does mention superhero. I like that ChatGPT brought that one up to the top and said,"Hey, this is probably going to be the most popular that you're going to see in 2024." It's weird how you get the different results. I almost feel like sometimes you got to ask the same question twice.

GEORGE: We'll refine or narrow down the responses. Let's take a look at the next one. The next one is what will be the most popular music genre in 2024.

SANTI: I can tell you that. I'm going to say, it's going to be rock because it never dies. Let's see. Let's let it complete its response before we read it out loud here. Rock was not mentioned. According to Little Take; so that's where it got its responses from. Indie pop, so independent pop, which by the way, I love independent artists. So that's pretty good. I never heard of emo rap, emo the term emo. I don't know what that means. Latin music has been popular, honestly, for the past maybe decade. It's been really always at the top of the list. Then it has experimental pop, which honestly, I've never heard of the term experimental.

It says this genre often features unconventional structures, experimental production techniques, and lyrics. I don't know what the difference is between that and indie because indie can sound like that too. Anyway, so there you go. Indie pop, emo rap, Latin music, and experimental pop will be the top four music genres in 2024.

GEORGE: We got a more specific, but not committal answer from ChatGPT. ChatGPT, it's a little more specific. It gave a couple of multiple elements, but it says hip hop has been increasingly influential, dominating streaming platforms and influencing other genres. That one is a little more straightforward. The final one, I think we're both going to have to play around here to see what kind of an answer we can get.

Which team do you predict will win the Super Bowl this year? We've done some things on lottery before, but we did it on very database information. I'm going to take the prompt as is on this one. You'll take the prompt as is. Let's see what we get as an answer, which I think is not going to be an answer, but maybe if we probe it a little bit, we'll get it. I can tell you upfront, I'm not looking at your screen at the moment. I did not get an answer. Inherently difficult, team performance, player health, unforeseen events. I don't have the ability to predict the future. Go through yours actually.

SANTI: Mine, it was a very broad statement. I didn't get an answer. It says, "I have searched the web and found that Kelly Clarkson has made her prediction for Super Bowl, which is scheduled to take place February 11th, 24. However, I could not find any reliable sources that predict the winner of the Super Bowl. That was a very broad-- I don't know if Kelly Clarkson's prediction is something that we should take seriously, but I want to ask the question slightly differently since we're here and we're having some fun.

GEORGE: I changed my question too. Based on previous Super Bowl winners and the current standings on espn.com, which team is most likely to win? I don't think I'm getting an answer, but I'll give it a shot.

SANTI: I'm going to ask, will the Dolphins make it to the Super Bowl? [chuckles]

GEORGE: There are odds out there. I saw them a couple of days ago. There's odds of matchups based on betting odds.

SANTI: Yes, there are some current matches here.

GEORGE: Actually, it hit espn.com, but now it's going to Fox Sports so I can see it going through.

SANTI: It's not giving me football matches. Anyway, it says "I've searched the web and found that the Miami Dolphins have had a number of talented players that have impacted their season in 2023. They received the honor of being named a 2024 Pro Bowl games the week before Super Bowl, however, I couldn't find any reliable sources that predict the winner."

GEORGE: GPT-4 is still cranking away here, so let's give it a second, but it appears to be looking at a lot of data. I'm slightly optimistic that we will get a specific answer, at least a ranking of teams when this finally gets through its analysis. This is the challenge.

SANTI: I'm surprised that it didn't mention the 49ers since-- if you look at the teams, I think everybody is pretty much predicting that it's going to be the 49ers and somebody else. It's not willing to even do that, so I don't know.

GEORGE: This, I, again, I can see what it's doing. It's showing me on GPT-4, all the individual elements it's looking at. It went through statistics. Here we go. [silence] As of the latest standing. It looked at rankings. I have an answer. I will read what's on here. I'm going to read it as I'm pre-scanning it. I don't know exactly what it's going to say at the end. As of the latest standings, the top teams in the AFC are the Ravens, Dolphins, Chiefs, and Jaguars. In the NFC, the teams are the 49ers, Eagles, Lions and Tampa Bay. That's not currently accurate because I think Dallas is above the Eagles in the standings now.

Then looking at historical Super Bowl performances, the 49ers and Baltimore have a strong track record. I would loosely take that as a prediction.

SANTI: I would agree.

GEORGE: The 49ers have won five Super Bowls and have a winning percentage of 714. The Ravens have fewer appearances, but they've won both appearances. Then it says in terms of seasons performance factors like expected points added per play, strength of schedule, efficiency of converting down says a whole bunch of metrics doesn't give anything on that. Then given these factors, the 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens appear to be strong contenders on historical performance. We've already said that.

SANTI: it's hard to argue that. I think that's a pretty solid prediction honestly based on--

GEORGE: It doesn't say one is the winner but I'm going to ask one last question, if it is--

SANTI: While you ask the question, just for the records because once we say it on a live podcast, it is forever etched in the interwebs. I am predicting that the Dolphins will win the AFC championship at the very least. We'll take it, I'll take that because we've had a struggling team for a while.

GEORGE: I changed this question and we're going to have to sit here and do a little banter for a minute. I said if it is the 49ers and the Ravens in the Super Bowl be specific here, who is most likely to win and what will the score be based on past history? Let's see if we get an answer. I suspect we will not get an answer but let's see what we got here. We did get a prediction of both teams in the Super Bowl. Again somewhere I saw there's a betting line that you can do a future bet of who's going to be in the game.

I think that was number one on the betting line.

SANTI: I have news for you. I asked a question while you were typing. I asked Copilot, "Will the 49ers and Ravens go to Super Bowl in 2024?" And I got an answer. According to MSN, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens are currently favored to win the Super Bowl. The 49ers are listed as, and it gives you the odds. Then it gives you what I think is a prediction. No, this is December 25th. There's I guess the last game that they played together. It gives you their scores but it did say here that those are the two teams that are favored to win the Super Bowl.

GEORGE: I did so on GPT with that last prompt. I did get a much quicker response and basically now it's refusing to predict the score due to many factors. In-game decisions, coaching, player performance, injuries, all kinds of stuff. Can I think of a final prompt here to try to get it? I did say based on past performance so let me do it one more time.

SANTI: Oh, so the Ravens have 12 wins and the 49ers 11. I thought the 49ers had more wins. Ravens are leading. Man, this is going to be an interesting football season for sure.

GEORGE: I'm doing one final question here before we close out, is what I'm saying. I understand that talking to this like it's a real person but if you had to pick one as the winner, who would it be?

SANTI: That's ChatGPT you're asking?

GEORGE: That's ChatGPT, it's in GPT-4.

SANTI: which by the way--

GEORGE: It is predicting.

SANTI: What's the prediction?

GEORGE: It's predicting the 49ers as the winner of the Super Bowl.

SANTI: Very interesting. Just for clarity, when you ask Copilot a question, it is technically going to ChatGPT-4 to generate its answers but--

GEORGE: Plus integrating with Bing though.

SANTI: Correct. That's right.

GEORGE: Even though GPT-4 goes out and searches the web, I think it's technically using Bing. It seems to be a different approach.

SANTI: It does seem to be a different approach because it's using Bing as a source whereas ChatGPT has a database that it uses or a knowledge base that cuts off at a certain date. Every time we do this and we see the results, it's just interesting, that's all. People don't get a chance to see that so that's why I like doing these things because we compare the two. In one case you get a really good response and then the other one doesn't do well but then one doesn't do well and the other one all of a sudden comes up with this elaborate response.

Look at this, it was ChatGPT who ultimately really gave you a solid prediction whereas Copilot danced around a little bit. Anyway, folks, that brings this podcast to an end. We have made some predictions for 2024.

GEORGE: I'm not sure how valuable any of those predictions are, but yes, we made some predictions.

SANTI: Don't hold us to them but that was pretty good. Folks, remember to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform. That includes YouTube and any of the audible platforms as well. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected.

CLOSING VOICEOVER: Visit www.fusionconnect.com/techunmuted for show notes and more episodes. Thanks for listening.

Episode Credits:

Produced by: Fusion Connect