{"id":167632,"date":"2023-01-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=167632"},"modified":"2023-01-12T16:31:36","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T21:31:36","slug":"looking-back-and-looking-forward-the-year-we-had-in-tech-and-what-is-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2023\/01\/looking-back-and-looking-forward-the-year-we-had-in-tech-and-what-is-to-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking back and looking forward: the year we had in tech and what is to come"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With 2022 firmly behind us, we take a brief look back at some key developments and events that are likely to shape 2023 both globally and in the Caribbean region.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy New Year! For many of us, 2023 has started with a bang! Gone are the days when the first few weeks of January were slow and sleepy, thus allowing us to continue to recover from Christmas festivities and take our time to get in gear for the year to come. Friends and colleagues have been lamenting that they are up to their eyeballs with work, and it is not yet 15 January!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every year holds great promise, but whether we can truly leverage those opportunities remain to be seen. It is thus through that lens that we are taking a quick look back at the year that was, and briefly highlighting a few of the areas that will continue to resonate this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A year of highs and lows<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you listened to our 2021 trends briefing episode on the ICT Pulse Podcast, our guests predicted that fintech would be big in the Caribbean region in 2022. To be fair, fintech had been gaining momentum across the region, thanks to, among other things, the launch of Central Bank-backed Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in The Bahamas and the main member countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the then continuing rise in the value of crypto globally, and the growing visibility of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, in 2022, fintech gained more visibility. A variety of new products and services were launched, such as Jamaica\u2019s CBDC, discussions were also had on global happenings and trends, and to highlight some of the innovation that has been occurring across the region. Star-studded and very exclusive events were held, which all suggested that the Caribbean region was the place to be in the fintech\/digital assets space!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Caribbean countries that were not especially prominent in the fintech conversation seemed to benefit from the glow of the region and were able to leverage it to focus on their own interest, such as the metaverse, digital identity, the digital economy, etc. By the end of the third quarter, there was a definite buzz with all of us eagerly anticipating the strides that would be made in the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, by early November, a fallout was imminent, as the woes of global crypto exchange, FTX, which was headquartered in The Bahamas, started to emerge. By year-end, FTX had filed for bankruptcy both in The Bahamas and in the United States (U.S.), which left up to one million creditors in the lurch, had whatever assets it had frozen, and its Chief Executive Officer charged with fraud and being extradited to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, other announced initiatives in 2022, which were likely to be realised in the coming year, such as the adoption of Bitcoin Cash as legal tender in Saint Kitts and Nevis and the issuance of a Dominica national token and digital identity based using the decentralized, open-source blockchain-based operating system, TRON, have come under considerable scrutiny. The volatility of crypto and the fact that only the Eastern Caribbean Dollar and its CBDC are legal tender in the currency union, which includes Saint Kitts and Nevis (Source: Loop<\/a>), and growing concerns about TRON\u2019s connection with FTX (and Alameda Research) (Source:\u00a0 Dirty Bubble Media<\/a>), may cause those projects not come to fruition in the timeframes envisaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, and though it is still early days, it seems that the euphoria that had emerged around fintech in the Caribbean region has become a bit muted. Waggonists who were prepared to ride the perceived gravy train are likely to have been given \u201ccause for pause\u201d, and policymakers who planned to give prospective fintech investors wide berth \u2013 essentially to do as they pleased \u2013 may now need to revisit that posture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Becoming more, or less, human?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On another note, and since around December 2022, the buzz around Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been getting louder and louder. Yes, it has always had some visibility, but it is starting to take up space in mainstream consciousness, thanks to platforms, such as OpenAI\u2019s chatbot, ChatGPT, and AI photo generator, Lensa AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, there is considerable excitement around these developments, as more people discover them, have their minds blown regarding what they can do, and explore ways these technologies can potentially be used. However, on the heels of this exhilaration, a reckoning already is likely \u2013 as often occurs in tech \u2013 when too-good-to-be-true technologies or ventures are released, and negative implications start to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With ChatGPT, which was just released in November 2022, students have been using it to do their homework and prepare papers, and it has already been banned by the New York City Department of Education (Source:\u00a0 The Byte<\/a>). In the art space, image AI platforms, including DALL-E 2<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Midjourney<\/a>, are challenging us on, among other things: what is and is not art; the creative process; and intellectual property rights. However, more questions are likely to emerge over the coming months and even years, as we try to figure out how to comfortably integrate AI (and other technologies) into our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shifting our fundamental beliefs and expectations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If the last few weeks have been anything to go by, 2023 will be an exciting year in the regional and global tech space. As we continue to come to grips with how some of the technology available can be used and can transform our lives, some of our fundamental beliefs and expectations will also be challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasingly, we will be called to make a distinction between a particular technology, and the fact that it can be used towards good or bad ends, which at this point, is being driven by the humans behind them. Hence, the propensity to throw the baby out with the bathwater, such as regarding Bitcoin, blockchain technology, crypto and AI and robotics, will need to be revisited. These technologies are not going away; they are becoming increasingly integrated into our lives whether we like them or not. Strategically, it would be better that we understand them, are able to leverage them, and know and can implement the types of safeguards that are needed so that we benefit from the good and minimise the ills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image credit: \u00a0Jan Kop\u0159iva\u00a0and Nathan Dumlao (Unsplash<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With 2022 firmly behind us, we take a brief look back at some key developments and events that are likely to shape 2023 both globally and in the Caribbean region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[259,71,358,212,12,15],"class_list":["post-167632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ict-tech","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-businesses","tag-financial-technology","tag-policy-2","tag-regulation","tag-trends","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Looking-back-and-looking-forward-what-is-in-store-for-2023-Jan-Kopriva-and-Nathan-Dumlao-Unsplash.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-HBK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167636,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167632\/revisions\/167636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}