Bloomberg Opinion informed perspectives, an expert, data driven commentary on breaking news. Well, Hi, everybody, this is Bloomberg Opinion with Tim Culpan, Bloomberg Opinion columnists joining us to look back at what might have been. It might have been one of the worst years for the tech industry that we've seen in some time, and whether or not we might see some light in the coming year. Tim, what say you is you know, is it was it actually a good year or a bad year? Well, the numbers point
a really bad year. The NANSDACK is on track for its worst year in a decade, possibly two decades, depending on how it plays out the next couple of days. Uh, And of course the NASTAC is tech heavy. We also saw crypto meltdowns after quite a lot of drama going on this year in crypto. We saw a continuation of some supply chain issues and chips being all out. Actually see it as a good year because it's set up
a very good future. There's a lot of things that happened to you that I think will make the next five to ten years for tech very very exciting. And to that end, Tim, you talk about the new paradigm, I mean, what is that? Is it about algorithms? What are we what are we waiting to see? Well, one of the things that that we know is coming, we
don't know quite when is quantum computing. Now quantum computing in a nutshell incident, Instead of crunching numbers in binary units, bits, ones or zeros, you can do it in larger chunks of information at a time. Uh. And that is really really exciting, except if you're in charge of security, because security would be could be compromised by quantum computing because
they're so powerful. But new standards came out this year, new algorithms and equations for encrypting information that should make the future quantum safe. This is very very geeky stuff and there's really only a handful of people in the world who are going to be getting their hands dirty on is. But it is very important for the future, for for email, for fintech, and and all sorts of
other applications that require security. And what this means is that the industry can start moving forward, getting ready deploying new systems and networks and infrastructure over the next few years, knowing that you know, twenty years down the track, they will be safe so it's the kind of thing that that was sank below the surface of visibility this year, but it was very important and it does make the
future of a post quantum era very very exciting. There are always ethical issues tied to developments in artificial intelligence, and just recently, I mean it's really only the past couple of months that we've heard people talking about chat GBT and that the fact that in that kind of of intelligence, you know, you can get all kinds of creative stuff put together, are the big ethical questions with
how far we can go there our huge questions. I mean chat GPT and some of the chat apps have now been used to write college essays, which of course is a big problem for for sagearism and academic ethics. But then we also have, you know, on the artwork side and the visual arts side, we've got Daly and
various others that create artwork. You just type in a few things like, uh, you know, draw a photo of Brian and Doug sitting in a microphone and you'll do it for you right, um And and that's exciting, but nobody would want to see that. We all have a good face for radio, don't we. Um. So The thing about that is that it sucks up and hoovers up a lot of photos and graphics out there on the
internet with our permission. So it's actually basing it on real artwork made by real human artists and then adapts that and uses that style. That's a real ethical issue because essentially it's theft. It's it's ip and artistic theft. So that's a big problem going forward. It really could put out a lot of people out of out of jobs, out of work. But you know, progress technology and progress does that. You know, we don't have people making buggy
whips anymore because we have motor cars. So you know, there is definitely a lot of ethical issues with AI, but a lot of the developments we've seen in the last top of months are very very exciting and and frankly, it's progress and you can't stop progress. Tim one thing that's defined is to take war within the US and China. The US now wants to onshore chip production. TSMT has already set up shop in Arizona. Will it work? Will the US realize his dream? Well? I think their dream
is very grand. It's basically a moonshop project. I think I think it'll be harder for them to get chip independence that it was for the US to land a man on the moon sixty years ago, But they're trying. I think they won't get to full chip independence, but clearly TSMC, as well as Samsung and even local names like Intel on Texas Instruments are spending a lot of money to build fabs. T SMC will bring some of that technology to the US. They will still lag Taiwan,
but they'll get closer and closer to their goal. Just briefly, Tim, did blockchain and cryptos get kicked in the knees this year? Ah seriously got a real low blow this year across the board. Obviously, the stuff that happening at FDx is is what everyone's talking about now. It's a real dense to the credibility of the crypto space. But you know what happens is that a lot of it, It clears out a lot of the charlatans in the industry, and there's a lot of them, makes it stronger in the
long run. Many thanks s Bloomberg opinion columnist Tim Culpen. You can find that on the terminal by typing O p I n GO