Boo! TechArena's Spookiest Tech Trends Heading to 2025
Do you hear mysterious footsteps in your data center? Are there otherworldly forces controlling your data? To celebrate Halloween, TechArena introduces the top 3 spooky tech trends heading into 2025.
1) Zombie data: Before you start thinking that the TechArena team spent last weekend with a Night of the Living Dead binge watch, zombie data is a real issue for data centers that's genuinely spooky for its potential costs to IT managers. What is it? Zombie data is data living inside organizations that is, well, dead, because it's tied to sources such as employees no longer at the company. Alive...but dead...hmm.
This is no laughing matter when you consider, for example, that data center storage consumes approximately 25% of all data center power. What can you do to finally put the zombie data to rest? You can tackle this at the individual and organizational level.
Individuals can receive training to delete twice and be aware of potential zombie data sharing from USB drives. Organizations can implement use of data management tools and smart data processing, tapping AI scanning for the undead data stores. Use of professional IT disposal services with an eye on responsible circularity will also help ensure lack of spread of zombie data.
Before we leave the topics of zombies aside, a bonus tip we had to include was TechArena guest Jonathan Koomey's aptly titled Zombie Data Center session at OCP Summit - well worth a look!
2) AI hallucinations: Our number two trend touches on a spooky trend that has run across the headlines of tech media in 2024. While TechArena is headquartered in Oregon, the first state to feature legal hallucinations, this trend is not influenced by that kind of trip. These AI hallucinations are much spookier for enterprises seeking to engage gen AI solutions across their businesses. What are they? In purest form, AI hallucinations are the perpetuation of false information based on that information's inclusion in AI training. This false information can have serious consequences, for example, extending bias into decision making, providing inaccurate recommendations to customers, delivering inaccurate medical diagnoses and spread misinformation. All of these can contribute to cratering a company's brand profile, so the threat must be taken with utmost seriousness.
What can companies do? Doing a great job at data collection and review prior to training an algorithm is a great place to start. This not-as-sexy element of the AI data pipeline helps reduce risk of improper sources getting into corporate AI tooling and cannot be an area that is under-resourced. Tools like RAG can help along this journey, and TechArena will continue to cover solutions to this challenge in the months ahead.
3) Cyborg Revolution: With the 40th anniversary of the release of Terminator this week, TechArena selected the rise of human and machine integration as our penultimate spooky tech trend. For those who do not follow the advancement of cyborg tech, this integration is most advanced in the development of machine controlled artificial limbs, an area that can give new mobility to people who have suffered the loss of a limb. Cochlear implant technology works in a similar fashion, giving the brain new access to hearing.
But...no spooky post would be complete in 2024 without a mention of Elon Musk. His Neuralink effort achieved a milestone in 2024 with the first implantation of a brain chip in a live human brain. With a vision to supercharge human intelligence well beyond the limits of biology, Neuralink and other efforts in this arena may redefine what it means to be human...or who controls humanity. With consideration of that future state that we deem beyond eerie, the entire TechArena team wishes you all a spookiest of Halloweens.
Do you hear mysterious footsteps in your data center? Are there otherworldly forces controlling your data? To celebrate Halloween, TechArena introduces the top 3 spooky tech trends heading into 2025.
1) Zombie data: Before you start thinking that the TechArena team spent last weekend with a Night of the Living Dead binge watch, zombie data is a real issue for data centers that's genuinely spooky for its potential costs to IT managers. What is it? Zombie data is data living inside organizations that is, well, dead, because it's tied to sources such as employees no longer at the company. Alive...but dead...hmm.
This is no laughing matter when you consider, for example, that data center storage consumes approximately 25% of all data center power. What can you do to finally put the zombie data to rest? You can tackle this at the individual and organizational level.
Individuals can receive training to delete twice and be aware of potential zombie data sharing from USB drives. Organizations can implement use of data management tools and smart data processing, tapping AI scanning for the undead data stores. Use of professional IT disposal services with an eye on responsible circularity will also help ensure lack of spread of zombie data.
Before we leave the topics of zombies aside, a bonus tip we had to include was TechArena guest Jonathan Koomey's aptly titled Zombie Data Center session at OCP Summit - well worth a look!
2) AI hallucinations: Our number two trend touches on a spooky trend that has run across the headlines of tech media in 2024. While TechArena is headquartered in Oregon, the first state to feature legal hallucinations, this trend is not influenced by that kind of trip. These AI hallucinations are much spookier for enterprises seeking to engage gen AI solutions across their businesses. What are they? In purest form, AI hallucinations are the perpetuation of false information based on that information's inclusion in AI training. This false information can have serious consequences, for example, extending bias into decision making, providing inaccurate recommendations to customers, delivering inaccurate medical diagnoses and spread misinformation. All of these can contribute to cratering a company's brand profile, so the threat must be taken with utmost seriousness.
What can companies do? Doing a great job at data collection and review prior to training an algorithm is a great place to start. This not-as-sexy element of the AI data pipeline helps reduce risk of improper sources getting into corporate AI tooling and cannot be an area that is under-resourced. Tools like RAG can help along this journey, and TechArena will continue to cover solutions to this challenge in the months ahead.
3) Cyborg Revolution: With the 40th anniversary of the release of Terminator this week, TechArena selected the rise of human and machine integration as our penultimate spooky tech trend. For those who do not follow the advancement of cyborg tech, this integration is most advanced in the development of machine controlled artificial limbs, an area that can give new mobility to people who have suffered the loss of a limb. Cochlear implant technology works in a similar fashion, giving the brain new access to hearing.
But...no spooky post would be complete in 2024 without a mention of Elon Musk. His Neuralink effort achieved a milestone in 2024 with the first implantation of a brain chip in a live human brain. With a vision to supercharge human intelligence well beyond the limits of biology, Neuralink and other efforts in this arena may redefine what it means to be human...or who controls humanity. With consideration of that future state that we deem beyond eerie, the entire TechArena team wishes you all a spookiest of Halloweens.
