Top 5 Challenges in Artificial Intelligence in 2024

Global interest in generative artificial intelligence has skyrocketed over the past two years. Searches for the term “generative AI” hit a huge score of 100 index points in mid-February 2023, coinciding with the rise of ChatGPT after its launch in late 2022. ChatGPT is just one example of the groundbreaking innovation in Artificial Intelligence. To put it into perspective, the AI market will show strong growth in the coming decade. Its nearly USD 100 Billion value will grow 20x by 2030, up to nearly USD 2 trillion. The AI market covers various industries, from financial services, supply chains, marketing and product making to education and healthcare. So we can expect more industries to adopt artificial intelligence within their business models. 

While the growth of AI seems exciting, we must be mindful of the challenges and risks that come along. There are justified concerns around potential job losses due to automation, gaps in regulation and accountability for AI decisions, lack of transparency in AI systems, unfair bias in data and algorithms, and privacy threats.

Similar Read: The Untold Cost of Generative AI: How to Overcome Hidden Costs and Challenges

Top Challenges in AI in 2024

Let’s understand the challenges of Artificial Intelligence in detail:

Creation of E-Waste

The increase in AI technologies contributes significantly to the creation of electronic waste (E-waste). For business owners, this presents a dual challenge: environmental responsibility and the cost of properly disposing of or recycling obsolete technology. A record 53.6 million metric tonnes (Mt) of electronic waste was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21 per cent in just five years, according to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor. The report predicted that the global e-waste – discarded products with a battery or plug – will reach 74 Mt by 2030. 

For businesses, there is often pressure to constantly upgrade to the latest hardware to remain competitive. Businesses can mitigate these risks by investing in sustainable AI technology. Cloud platforms like Hyperstack allow access to state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPUs on demand through the internet. With our cost-effective cloud GPU pricing, you only pay for what you use rather than constantly upgrading local servers.

High Carbon Footprint

AI's carbon footprint is also a growing concern and a huge challenge as training AI models requires extensive computational power that necessitates similarly substantial energy consumption. As a result, these models are costly to train and develop, both financially, due to the cost of hardware and electricity or cloud computing time, and environmentally, due to the carbon footprint required to fuel modern tensor processing hardware. Research by the University of Massachusetts found that training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes. This poses a risk for businesses in terms of regulatory compliance and public perception. To address this, companies can invest in green AI strategies, such as optimising algorithms for energy efficiency or using renewable energy sources for data centres. For example, Hyperstack is 100% renewably powered - our servers are powered by hydro-energy, and housed within sustainable data centres. 

Workforce Disruption

AI's impact on the workforce, especially through automation, is a major challenge. According to a McKinsey report, by 2030, up to 30% of the global workforce could need to switch occupations. This disruption poses risks in terms of employee morale, retraining costs, and potential layoffs. Businesses can mitigate these risks by investing in the upskilling of their workforce, building a culture of continuous learning, and exploring AI-augmented jobs that complement human skills rather than replace them. This approach can turn potential disruption into an opportunity for workforce development and innovation.

Data Privacy and Security

With AI's reliance on large data sets, data privacy and security become paramount. A breach can lead to significant financial losses and damage to a company's reputation. The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over 3 years.

The increasing complexity of emerging technologies, such as data centres, cloud services, and IoT systems, has led to a significant rise in their user base and demands. This growth has unfortunately attracted cybercriminals, who are now launching more sophisticated attacks. These attacks often go undetected by traditional cyber threat monitoring systems, surpassing simpler threats like phishing and credit card fraud. Today, networks risk infiltrating with malicious code and ransomware, a threat heightened by the lack of comprehensive security measures like Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) in many organisations.

To combat these advanced threats, businesses must adopt data-centric strategies and technologies like behavioural analytics, pattern detection, IP monitoring, and systems that identify anomalous or fake logins. The deployment of these sophisticated AI-driven systems demands high processing power. This is necessary not just for developing and training machine learning and deep learning algorithms, but also for powering analytics and enhancing threat detection capabilities. GPU servers are increasingly being recognised as a solution to these challenges. They provide the necessary computational strength for various advanced cybersecurity tasks, including data analytics, pattern recognition, behaviour monitoring, security incident identification, log management, and more.

Similar Read: How GPUs Power Up Threat Detection and Prevention 

Ethical Complexities

AI introduces complex ethical challenges, including bias in decision-making and accountability for AI-driven decisions. These issues can lead to legal implications and public backlash. A survey by Capgemini found that 62% of consumers would place higher trust in a company whose AI interactions they perceive as ethical. Businesses must develop AI ethics guidelines, ensure diversity in AI development teams, and implement transparent AI systems to gain consumer trust and avoid ethical pitfalls. Your consumers have the right to understand how AI decisions impact them. This means making AI systems interpretable, allowing them to comprehend how outcomes are reached and challenge unfair results. 

What's Next for AI in 2024?

The latest trend in artificial intelligence is multitasking. Instead of training multiple models for each specific job, researchers are now creating single and powerful models that can handle a wide range of tasks, from writing movie scripts to controlling robots. As I mentioned earlier OpenAI's Chat GPT has been dominating headlines since its release. With a little extra training, it can code, write scripts, and even ace biology exams. And guess what? It's not alone. Multimodal models like GPT-4 and DeepMind's Gemini tackle both visual and language tasks with ease.

The same comprehensive approach can allow robotic systems to multitask instead of needing dedicated models for individual capabilities. For example, a single model controlling a robot chef can toss salads, stir soups, chop vegetables and even open the oven door for baking - there’s no need for separate models to carry out each action. And in 2023, we saw exciting progress in this area:

• DeepMind's Robocat: This self-taught robot master learns by trial and error, controlling various robot arms, not just one! 

• Self-driving cars: Startups like Wayve, Waabi, and Ghost are using single large models to steer their cars, ditching the traditional multi-model approach.

Of course, the future of AI calls for a lot more. It is not just limited to robotics, we can expect advancements in Neuromorphic Computing, Quantum AI, Emotionally Intelligent AI, Brain-computer Interfaces, Assistive Technologies, Legal Research, Drug Discovery, Climate Change and more. The list is never-ending since the field of Artificial Intelligence is full of possibilities. It promises greater efficiency, flexibility and ultimately, more capable AI systems across different domains. 

Final Thoughts 

Advanced cloud computing with GPUs allows businesses to rapidly accelerate AI capabilities. For instance, Cloud GPUs provide cost-efficient and scalable infrastructure that delivers the massive parallel processing power needed for AI and machine learning models. These solutions handle time-intensive tasks like model building, deployment, maintenance and governance—allowing you to purely focus on applying AI to your business value. 

Businesses opting for cloud-hosted GPUs will be able to experiment with emerging AI techniques like predictive analytics, speech recognition, computer vision and natural language processing to enhance their products, services and workflows.

The ability to leverage AI also offers an immense competitive advantage to businesses in the years ahead. However, on-premise compute investments may lead to significant cost and technology lock-in over the long-term AI journey. Our affordable cloud GPU resources deliver optimal flexibility and scale to adjust to unpredictable breakthroughs in AI research.

FAQs

What are the challenges in AI for business?

Businesses adopting AI face challenges managing e-waste and high carbon footprints from extensive hardware infrastructure, securing data and algorithms from breaches or bias given AI’s reliance on personal data, workforce disruption as roles and required competencies shift to human-AI collaboration, and ensuring ethical practices around transparency, and accountability. 

What is the biggest AI concerns in 2024?

One of the biggest artificial intelligence challenges in 2024 is around AI systems that leverage personal data raising ethical concerns around consent, data minimisation, and purpose limitation. Strict data governance, audits of bias/ fairness, and robust cybersecurity are needed to build trust and prevent unauthorised access or misuse when handling sensitive user information.

What is the biggest challenge facing AI?

The biggest challenge facing AI is ensuring data privacy and security. AI systems rely on vast amounts of data, including personal and sensitive information, raising significant concerns around consent, ethical data collection practices, and securing data against breaches or misuse.

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