SXSW 2024: Key Trends

A technology "supercycle" of accelerated progress is getting underway, ushering in a new era of transformation. At the launch session for Future Today Institute’s 2024 Emerging Trends report, CEO Amy Webb explained that this is powered by not one, but three general purpose technologies that are converging: connectables, biotechnology and of course, AI. And it’s this convergence that will supercharge innovation.

Already, the pace of development “is so fast and so vast, our mental models can’t capture it,” said futurist Ian Beacraft noting that an average Tuesday in February alone saw the launch of three new AI models (Open AI’s Sora, Google’s Gemini 1.5 and Meta’s V-JEPA). Progress will only accelerate from here, but if we get it right, it could unleash “a new era of abundance for humanity, like the second coming of the Industrial Revolution,” said Amazon’s head of artificial general intelligence, Vishal Sharma.

Emerging developments under discussion included multimodal AI, which now goes beyond text inputs to gather streams of data via “senses" like vision, sound and even smell, to unlock deeper insight and utility. Embodied AI (that is integrated into a physical body), is driving thinking in this space, according to Sharma.

Humanoid robots are seeing a renaissance as a result. Austin-based Apptronik’s Apollo robot (above) made an appearance at a fireside chat alongside company co-founder Jeff Cardenas. Robots like Apollo are being touted as a solution to global labor shortages because they can easily fit into our infrastructure thanks to their human form. Cardenas predicts “a Cambrian explosion of robots" and says in ten years every home will have one.

As noted in our CES roundup, AI will soon acquire agency, with LLMs (Large Language Models) evolving into LAMs (or Large Action Models), that are able to execute a sequence of tasks. Jake Brody of Accenture Song conjured a future where AI agents engage and negotiate on people’s behalf, including with brands, asking: “How do you retain brand essence in an age of agent-to-agent conversation?"

One solution to the connection crisis could lie in fostering empathy. Filmmaker Cheryl Miller Houser described how stories that transport us quite literally synch our emotions, making us feel like participants. Experience can also offer an unlock for empathy, illustrated by a session that showcased Strap Technologies’ ARA navigation device for people with impaired vision. As the audience listened in semi-darkness, CEO Diego Roel Chapa shared his unique approach for triggering empathy in new recruits, which involves installing them blindfolded in an apartment for several days. “Once we build empathy” said Chapa, “we are humbled.”

At the Creative Industries Expo, US HR tech company Checkr hosted its "Beyond the Bars" gamified empathy experience. The escape room style activation invited visitors to assume the role of a newly released prisoner trying to rebuild their life. Equipped with a tiny budget and few other resources, participants quickly grasped the need to navigate a sea of red tape to find work and housing, all while complying with the requirements of parole. Ken Oliver, VP of Corporate Social Responsibility at Checkr, tells VML Intelligence that “the barriers facing justice-impacted people can be overwhelming. I wanted to put participants in the shoes of someone coming out of prison to show them how difficult re-entry can be.”

At the DataWagashi session, design and technology duo Tiange Wang and I-Yang Huang introduced the concept of “data empathy” to convey complex issues like climate change, which are too often communicated by bewildering charts and graphs. Might food offer a more approachable medium, fostering empathy and nudging positive behaviors via a multisensory experience? DataWagashi explores themes like carbon footprint or ocean heating via the senses in the form of Japanese desserts called wagashi. This traditional sweet has a simple form factor and by varying the recipe, the desserts can communicate and connect, via color, shape, texture and flavor.

Apple’s Vision Pro has ignited renewed excitement in XR, but it’s the category’s convergence with AI that looks set to be more significant.

At the XR in the age of Vision Pro panel, speakers enthused over the breakthroughs in AI storytelling on show at the XR Experience exhibition, specifically calling out a piece called The Golden Key by Marc da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser, winner of the XR Experience Jury Prize. The work depicts an infinite fairy tale unfolding across three giant screens, generated by an AI trained on a global dataset of tales and myths. At SXSW, audience members were invited to shape and personalize the narrative by introducing their own characters and story elements.

Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz suggested what he calls "storyworlds" could be the next killer app for XR. Storyworlds or “cinematic reality spatial movies” will go beyond film to fully immerse the viewer in a “rich detailed container for culture, art or music.” He pointed to a demo app experience shipping with the Vision Pro called Encounter Dinosaurs created by filmmaker Jon Favreau as an early sign of what’s to come.

Near futurist Neil Redding called this convergence of spatial and AI a “huge unlock for the promise of co-creating reality,” thanks to its ability to deliver a sense of presence and togetherness. Reality is no longer objective he said, pointing to OpenAI’s SORA as a precursor for how we will conjure our own realities. We’re at a turning point where “quantum reality becomes reality” said Redding, and once we realise that “we co-create reality, everything becomes possible.”