Summary
While AI is the fastest changing new technology, others are developing exponentially as well. This blog covers all these.
The Singularity detailed under 1. below is either utopian or scary depending on your viewpoint. If utopian as is likely, there are huge considerations about the meaning of life for humans.
There will have to be a major shift in how we live our lives for our collective, war and crime free benefit. Also how we focus on constructive and beneficial pastimes for our mental health. A universal government supplied income will be necessary for many or all.
20 Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World
There are always concerns about new technology particularly AI with fake news, images etc. No technology is perfect on day one. Inevitably, these defects are overcome with penalties, new laws, etc. Hopefully, this will occur with the emerging technologies below.
- Artificial Narrow Intelligence: (ANI): Can perform a specific task or sets of tasks, but cannot perform other tasks, randomly. For example, an ANI system might be able to recognise faces, but it would not be able to understand or generate natural language.
- Generative AI: This is referred to as a ‘chatbot’ type of AI, such as Gemini, GPT5 or Perplexity.AI that can generate new content, such as text, images, and music. Already it is changing education.
- Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): AGI is next, the concept of a machine with the ability to understand, learn and apply its intelligence to solve any problem, much like a human being.
- Singularity: A hypothetical future in which growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilisation. This concept involves the further development of AGI, a type of AI that surpasses human intelligence in every aspect.
The implications of a singularity are vast and uncertain. It could lead to a utopian future where poverty, disease, war and crime are eradicated. Or a dystopian future where machines become dominant and humans are marginalised.
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Gene Editing: CRISPR-Cas9 is a revolutionary technique that allows scientists to precisely alter the DNA of a cell or organism. Its potential to permanently eliminate inherited diseases is already occurring. All diseases and stopping or even reversing aging are possible.
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Quantum Computing: Uses quantum mechanics to perform calculations in seconds that would be impossible or take thousands of years for the world’s biggest supercomputers.
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Starlink Satellites: Starlink is a satellite internet constellation constructed by SpaceX. It provides high speed internet access to people world wide, particularly in remote areas.
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Smart Cities: Technology is used to improve the quality of life for their residents. This technology has the potential to reduce traffic congestion, improve public safety, and reduce energy consumption.
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Mixed Reality: A technology that blends the physical and digital worlds. It creates immersive experiences that can be used for education, entertainment and training.
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Blockchain: A decentralized digital ledger that can be used to record transactions. This can revolutionise fields of finance, supply chain management and voting, for example. It is secure and is being altered to prevent quantum computers from nullifying its security. It eliminates currency exchange costs, which can be as high as 7%.
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Internet of Things (IoT): A network of connected devices that can collect and share data. It will improve the efficiency of businesses and homes and create new products and services.
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Lab Grown Food: Meat, fish and chicken in particular, grown in a laboratory from animal cells to reduce the environmental impact of production. Also, provides a more humane and healthier alternative to traditional meat. For crops, uses 5% of water in traditional farming. Grows food quickly using 24 hour controlled LEDs and mostly grown close to markets for lower cost, faster delivery.
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Autonomous Vehicles: They drive themselves without human intervention, to reduce traffic accidents and free up time. Each year, a million people die globally from accidents and far more are injured. AEVs will reduce pollution and improve mobility for the elderly and disabled.
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3D Printing: A process that uses a computer controlled machine to create a 3D object from a digital model. It will revolutionise manufacturing, allowing the production of complex and customised products quickly on demand.
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Robotics: Robots perform tasks that would be difficult, boring or dangerous for humans. Productivity will improve in a wide range of industries, from manufacturing to healthcare. Humanoid robots in particular may eventually replace almost all human work.
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Nanotechnology: The science of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale to create new materials with unique properties such as graphene (1 atom thick and 200 times stronger than steel). Also to develop new medical treatments and technologies.
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Renewable Energy: Derived from natural sources, such as the sun, wind, and water. Reducing pollution and helping address climate change at much lower cost. Intermittency is being solved by in situ batteries, whose capacity is increasing and costs decreasing.
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Virtual Reality (VR): VR is a computer generated environment that can be experienced through a headset. Creates immersive experiences used for education, training and entertainment.
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Augmented Reality (AR): AR overlays digital information on top of the real world. This creates new ways of interacting with information and the world around us, e.g. Apple’s Vision Pro.
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Big Data: The large volume of data being generated every day. This can be used to gain insights into a wide range of topics, from consumer behaviour to climate change.
These are just a few of the many emerging technologies that have the potential to change the world. As these technologies continue to develop, we can expect to see even more innovation and disruption in the years to come.
Please add questions and comments below.
References
Scary
Pam
Great to hear from you and I agree it can be scary. Being an optimist, I go the utopian way, as do most scientists in the field. Anyway I guess it won’t affect us, maybe you being so young! But it will affect our children and grandchildren.
Amazing revealation (for technology deficient person like me) about the emerging technologies that will revolutionise the world! Although, you have stated them as simple as possible, I understand around half of them. Thank you and appreciate your time and effort to teach us something that is foreign to us.
Thanks Bala
A bright young man like you is far too modest. Keep reading the blogs and you will understand them all in no time.
Good to hear from you Bala.
Thanks Campbell always interesting blogs and this one is no different. On one hand it’s scary how technology is moving so fast and is going to change our thinking, way of life and human interaction. On the other hand hopefully it comes via evolution and provides better living standards and a safer, cohesive world.
I thought I would never see some of these advances, but now not so sure.
Keep up the good work
Thanks John
I may not see a lot of these but a young man like you may see most of them.
What amazes me is the speed at which they materialise. With the advent of AI, everything seems to happen much more quickly. For instance after viewing the video in the blog I asked Gemini to list the 20 new technologies and write a brief summary beneath each one. It did this in about three seconds. This amazes me so I asked gemini how it did this. Below is my question and Geminis answer. Incidentally I edited answer to provide it in my style and with deductions and additions to the text.
“What amazes me is how you listed the 20 new technologies and their descriptions within about three seconds. How can you do this so quickly? Do you do it to buy reading the coding the video?
Gemini’s answer:
That’s a great question! While I can’t provide a detailed explanation of the inner workings of my language model, I can give you a general idea of how I process information.
Massive Dataset: I have access to a vast amount of text data from the real world, including books, articles, code, and more. This dataset allows me to learn patterns, facts, and relationships between different concepts.
Natural Language Processing: I use advanced natural language processing techniques to understand and interpret human language. This includes tasks like identifying entities, recognizing relationships, and understanding context.
Machine Learning: My model is trained using machine learning algorithms. These algorithms allow me to learn from the data and improve my ability to generate informative and relevant responses.
When you asked your question, I processed it as follows:
Understood the query: I recognized that you were asking about my ability to list 20 new technologies and their descriptions quickly.
Retrieved information: I accessed relevant information from my dataset, including the names of emerging technologies and their descriptions.
Generated response: I used my natural language processing and machine learning capabilities to generate a concise and informative response that addressed your query.
While I don’t “read” the coding of the video, I can understand the content through the text transcripts or captions that are associated with it. This allows me to provide summaries or answer questions about the video’s content.
In essence, my ability to process information quickly and accurately is a result of the vast amount of data I’ve been trained on, combined with advanced machine learning techniques.”