New Technology Personnel Needed for 2023 Technology Trends

According to a report from the World Economic Forum, technological change has the potential to create shared prosperity and smart solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. At the same time, the exponential pace of technological change risks overwhelming existing institutions, leaving us exposed to uncontrolled dangers. Geopolitical crises, rising polarization, and a looming climate crisis are compounding this danger.

Technology is More Important Than Ever Before

There is an urgent need for leaders who will seize the opportunity to direct technology towards positive ends. The WEF report posits five likely developments that leaders and their organizations should be prepared for in the year ahead.

1. Green Technology
   
   Alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy, particularly wind and solar power, have fallen dramatically in cost to the point where renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels.  Along with the reductions in cost, new technologies have been developed, most notably green hydrogen, a new clean-burning source of energy which allows energy from renewables to be captured and transported long distances – from regions with abundant wind or solar energy resources, to energy-hungry areas thousands of kilometers away. According to the WEF report, another green technology to watch in 2023 is nuclear fusion, which is still in its early stages of development.

2. Hyper-connectivity and cyber-resilience
   
   Economic and geopolitical dynamics are pushing globalization into retreat and propelling the fragmentation of cyberspace based on competing political blocs. However, the structural forces of technological progress are moving towards more connectivity, not less. In the coming year, 15 billion devices will be connected into the Internet of Things (IoT), and this number is expected to double by 2030. A principal driver of this trend will be the rapid expansion of 5G coverage in 2023, which will allow devices to communicate faster and improve their overall performance.Our dependency on connected devices and infrastructures is growing at an exponential pace, and so are the risks of collapse by accident or as the result of an attack. Governments and regulators can be expected to step up efforts to ensure that connected devices comply with the latest cybersecurity standards. And organizations will need to step up their internal cybersecurity efforts.
3. Quantum ComputingQuantum computing, which uses subatomic particles to create new ways of processing and storing information, promises to be the future of computing. With the promise of operating in orders of magnitude faster than the best processors available today, quantum technology will help to solve complex problems in a fraction of the time.Although quantum technology is still in its infancy, huge government and industry investment means we are likely to see rapid progress in hardware and software in the coming year, as well as quantum products starting to come onto the market. At the same time, business and government leaders will step up efforts to understand and mitigate the risks posed by the technology, ranging from undermining existing cryptography to transforming warfare.
4. Gene EditingUntil recently, gene-editing technology has been predominately used as a research tool to understand the importance of specific genes and discover new drugs. Since the first person received gene-editing therapy three years ago, the technology has been used to treat congenital blindness, heart disease, and sickle cell disease, among others. And while primary use-cases are diseases with a single-gene mutation, early research suggests that conditions like Alzheimer’s and chronic pain could also be treated. In 2023, we are likely to see an expansion of gene-editing in medicine, as well as other sectors, powering a multi-billion-dollar industry, and posing complex ethical dilemmas.
5. AI EverywhereTowards the end of 2022, OpenAI’s interactive conversational model ChatGPT attracted more than a million users in just five days and triggered a new debate on the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence (AI). With AI spending forecast to exceed $500 billion in 2023, there will be rapid advances in adaptive and generative AI. Adaptive AI can continuously retrain its models to learn and adapt based on new experiences, without needing developers to rebuild it, leading to faster and better outcomes. Generative AI uses neural network models to create something new.Recent releases of text-to-image and text-to-video generators are appealing to consumers, but also raise significant concerns around the spread of disinformation, harmful content, copyright protections, and algorithmic biases. Regulators and online watchdogs will be looking at this over the coming year.

As the late French cultural theorist Paul Virilio observed, when things work in new ways they also break in new ways. When we invented the ship, we also invented the shipwreck. The same holds true for new technologies – and the stakes are high.

How Technology is Impacting Different Sectors

Not all of these technology trends for 2023 will affect every sector of society, but every sector will be impacted by some. As green energy becomes increasingly economical, it will necessitate significant capital investment in the conversion to solar, wind, nuclear, and geothermal sources. Additionally, there will be a need for recruiting and hiring individuals with skills and  experience that were not previously required. The growth in connectivity and advancements in AI will lead to increased cybersecurity requirements, as well as a demand for executives who can effectively lead and manage in hybrid and remote environments on an entirely new scale. Current technology skillsets are likely to be insufficient to a quantum computing-based world, and gene editing will transform chemical and pharmaceutical industries in ways that are now unimaginable.

Many if not most of the new hires that are required for these changes will be young – most of them are still in school or early in their careers now, but they will necessarily be the leaders and managers of a future that is no longer distant and is approaching at breakneck speeds.

This should not make us afraid of technological progress, but it should make us humble and mindful of progress being hard-earned and easily lost. Advancing technological change and rolling out new technologies at scale to meet the world’s most pressing challenges is the great imperative of our day and age. If we meet that challenge, our reward will be more prosperous and resilient economies and societies.

Conclusion

What all this points to is a new paradigm for recruiting, hiring, and retention for Technology and Cybersecurity across the entire spectrum of US industries. Given the complexity of the change, companies will need to recruit in a whole new way. A relationship with a recruiting firm that understands and stands for the demands of this new world is likely to produce the best results. An effective recruiting partner will partner with the company to identify the right combination of skill and experience to find the top candidates and to convey to them what the hiring company stands for.

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