Ice fishing and National Prediction Month

Here in the Midwest, there are two things that get us excited in January. First, we can safely go ice fishing. The “safely go ice fishing” was a little iffy this season. We had to walk rather than drive out to the best spots, but we finally had a cold streak that gave us a good foot of ice on most Minnesota and Wisconsin lakes. The second thing is that it’s National Prediction Month.

At Tamarack, we love prediction because it’s our favorite definition of AI. Last year, we celebrated by talking about how the economic indicators were pointing in all directions (link). Like us, you’ve probably read a number of the annual predictions from technology and business pundits (including some from us published in Equipment Finance News). This year there seems to be a consensus on two things: AI is going to “move from theory to practice” and politics is going to take up a fair amount of head space.

As we begin this new year, we’re excited about all the companies that already apply AI. The reality is that AI moved from theory to practice in the early 1990s for industrial applications and jumped ahead significantly for all of us with e-commerce and streaming in the early 2000s. But the emergence of ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in 2023 now has everyone focused in 2024 on putting the technology to work regardless of application or sector.

In times of technology hype, we usually see two responses: passionately discussing the topic to drive the hype and digging in to find the practical value and build things. While we can “talk the talk” with the best of them, we are builders at Tamarack and are excited to have found numerous customers with the same attitude who are already benefiting from the value of AI predictors and fast learning.

Drop us a line if you would like to put technology to work to improve your 2024 forecasts.

Scott Nelson, president and CTO, Tamarack