Every year, new technologies emerge to make people's lives easier and more fun, and every year the editors and authors of the popular MIT Technology Review site choose the best of the best from these technologies.
So in 2020 they published their annual list of 10 disruptive technologies that will change the world. And we present it to your attention.
10. Study of climate change
As early as the beginning of this decade, scientists did not seek to draw parallels between extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and storms, and climate change.
But the amount of data accumulated over the past few years makes it safe to say that climate change almost certainly played a role in the occurrence of adverse weather events. By studying this relationship, it will be possible to create simulations and prepare in advance for risks (floods, tropical storms, etc.) as global warming intensifies.
One of the most disruptive technologies of 2020 will also help us understand how to rebuild our cities and infrastructure for a climate-changed world.
9. Anti-aging drugs
To be forever young and healthy is still a pipe dream of humanity. However, the first senolytic drugs are already being tested, which help prevent various ailments by slowing down the natural aging process. They remove aged (senescent) cells that accumulate with age. Such cells do not multiply and do not die, but they can degenerate into malignant or provoke inflammation, suppressing the normal mechanisms of cell repair and poisoning the microenvironment of tissues and the whole organism.
In June 2019, there were reports of the first positive results of using senolytics for patients with osteoarthritis of the knee joint. And similar drugs are already being developed for the treatment of age-related diseases of the eyes and lungs.
8. Differential privacy
How can we collect statistics on millions of Americans while keeping their identities private? By law, the US Census Bureau must ensure that the identity of citizens is not disclosed. To achieve this, "noise" is added to the statistics. For example, you can make some people younger, others older, turn blacks into whites, or vice versa.
And differential privacy is a mathematical method that makes this process manageable by measuring how much privacy increases when "noise" is added to the data. This method is already used by Apple and Facebook to collect aggregated data without identifying individual users.
7. Miniature artificial intelligence
In their quest to create powerful artificial intelligence, researchers are using ever-increasing amounts of data, relying on centralized cloud services.
But how do you cram a huge amount of data into a tiny AI? With the help of new algorithms that will compress existing deep learning algorithms without losing all their capabilities.These are the algorithms that are implemented in the new generation of specialized AI chips that will be used in our smartphones and other gadgets.
The simplest example is Google's “smart assistant”. The company announced last May that its mobile Google Assistant can now work without sending requests to a remote server. In iOS 13 for Apple smartphones, Siri speech recognition and QuickType keyboard work locally. The capabilities of miniature AI have also been adopted by IBM and Amazon.
So in the future, the AI used in the mobile phone may be smarter than some users.
6. Quantum superiority
Quantum computers, in theory, can quickly solve problems that would take centuries, if not millennia, for today's super powerful computers. For example, simulate the exact behavior of molecules in order to create new drugs and materials.
Last October, Google demonstrated "quantum superiority." A computer with 53 qubits - the main building block of quantum computing - did the required calculation in three minutes, which according to Google, would take the world's largest supercomputer 10,000 years (1.5 billion times longer than a quantum computer).
However, this is still a demo version, and the company has to create a computer capable of solving useful tasks. And this is an extremely difficult task: the more qubits, the more difficult it is to maintain their fragile quantum state.
5. Satellite mega-complexes
The ability to build, launch and operate tens of thousands of satellites in orbit is no longer a fantasy, but a reality. According to the SpaceX project alone, it is planned to send 4.5 times more satellites into orbit in one decade than in the entire "satellite" period.
This will help spread the Internet and improve communications on Earth. However, there is a downside to this technological breakthrough. Some researchers fear that these objects will interfere with astronomical research. Worse than that, there can only be the prospect of a collision of satellites, which will create a large amount of space debris.
4. Molecules discovered by AI
It’s unlikely that you can manually count the molecules that could potentially lead to the creation of valuable drugs. Their number, according to researchers' estimates, reaches 10 to 60 degrees. This is more than atoms in the solar system.
And thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), scientists can get huge databases of existing molecules and their properties. This will allow new drugs to be created faster and cheaper.
3. Electronic money
Electronic money like WebMoney in Russia will surprise no one. What about the introduction of a single digital currency nationwide? This technology can really be called interesting and breakthrough.
Last June, Facebook introduced a "global digital currency" called Libra. The idea was not approved and the project may be put on the back burner.
However, days after Facebook's announcement, an official from the People's Bank of China speculated about the emergence of a Chinese digital currency.
Now China is gearing up to be the first world economy to release a digital version of its money to be used as a cash substitute.
2. Personalized healthcare
Some of the most terrible diseases known to mankind, so rare that they occur one in ten thousand times, or even less often. And it so happens that there is no cure for a rare disease.
But this unfortunate situation could change, thanks to new classes of drugs that can be adapted to a person's genes. If this extremely rare disease is caused by a specific DNA error, then modern science gives the patient at least a chance to correct it.
New drugs could act as a molecular eraser that erases or corrects erroneous genetic information. An example of such a personalized drug already exists; doctors created it for a little girl Mila Makovets, who suffers from Betten's disease caused by a unique mutation in the MFSD8 gene. Mila's treatment did not completely cure Mila, but stabilized her condition.
The only problem is who will pay for such drugs when they help one person, if it is much more profitable for pharmaceutical companies to produce widely sought-after drugs.
1. Internet protected from hackers
Quantum technology will help create a network that cannot be hacked. This is precisely the task that the team from the Delft Technical University in the Netherlands is tackling. She is building a network that connects four cities in the Netherlands and uses purely quantum methods to transfer information.
The technology is based on the quantum behavior of atomic particles - the so-called "quantum entanglement". The main difficulty in creating a network is that entangled particles are difficult to create, and even more difficult to transmit over long distances. So far, researchers at the University of Delft have been able to send data more than 1.5 km away, and they are confident they can create a quantum connection between Delft and The Hague around the end of this year.