The New AI Economy, the title of Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith’s keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, could arguably double as the theme of this year’s exhibition and its sister event 4YFN, a conference that takes place at the same time focused on startup innovation.
AI’s breakneck diffusion across tech was confirmed at this year’s MWC, almost completely supplanting the metaverse as the talk of the show, which attracted more than 90,000 visitors, Around 500 exhibitors listed some AI capability, twice as many as last year, and with hundreds more talking about it, notes research firm Enders Analysis.
AI also took center stage at 4YFN. More than a dozen sessions focused on the topic. (The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief moderated two of them. See the accompanying photo).
The 2024 gathering in Barcelona served as a kind of coming out party for multilingual LLMs; mobile phones positioned themselves as the biggest consumer window into AI’s new features and services; there was a focus on quantum technologies, which are being driven by AI; and a glimpse of what’s next including flying cars, the spiral economy and a growing list of exponential technologies. Paying subscribers can read on to get the key takeaways.
