Every year, new technologies emerge that make people's lives easier and more exciting, and each year the editors and writers of the popular website MIT Technology Review select the best of the best from these technologies.
In 2020, they published their annual list of 10 breakthrough technologies that will change the world. We present it to you.
10. Study of climate change
Even earlier this decade, scientists were reluctant to draw parallels between extreme weather events such as hurricanes and storms and climate change.
But the volume of data accumulated over the past few years allows us to say with certainty: 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 for risks (floods, tropical storms, etc.) in advance as global warming intensifies.
One of the most breakthrough technologies of 2020 will also help us understand how to rebuild our cities and infrastructure for a climate-changed world.
9. Anti-aging drugs
Being forever young and healthy remains a distant dream for humanity. However, the first senolytic drugs are already being tested. They help prevent various ailments by slowing the natural aging process. They remove senescent cells that accumulate with age. These cells do not multiply or die, but they can develop into malignant cells or trigger inflammation, which suppresses normal cell repair mechanisms and poisons the microenvironment of tissues and the entire body.
In June 2019, reports emerged of the first positive results from the use of senolytics in patients with knee osteoarthritis. Similar drugs are already being developed for the treatment of age-related eye and lung diseases.
8. Differential Privacy
How can we collect statistical data on millions of Americans while preserving their identities? By law, the US Census Bureau must ensure that citizens' identities are not compromised. To achieve this, they add "noise" to the statistics. For example, they can make some people appear younger, others older, or turn black people into white people, or vice versa.
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 can we cram such a huge amount of data into a miniature AI? The answer is to use new algorithms that will allow us to compress existing deep learning algorithms without losing their full capabilities. These are the very algorithms 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 "intelligent assistant." Last May, the company announced that its mobile Google Assistant can now operate without sending requests to a remote server. In iOS 13 for Apple smartphones, Siri speech recognition and the QuickType keyboard now work locally. IBM and Amazon have also adopted the capabilities of miniaturized AI.
So in the future, the AI used in a mobile phone may be smarter than some users.
6. Quantum Supremacy
Quantum computers can, theoretically, quickly solve problems that would take today's most powerful computers centuries, if not millennia, to solve. For example, they can simulate the precise behavior of molecules to create new drugs and materials.
Last October, Google demonstrated "quantum supremacy." A computer with 53 qubits—the building blocks of quantum computing—completed a calculation in three minutes that Google said would have taken 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 still needs to create a computer capable of solving useful problems. This is an extremely difficult task: the more qubits there are, 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 science fiction, but a reality. SpaceX alone plans to launch 4.5 times more satellites into orbit in a single decade than during the entire satellite era.
This will facilitate the spread of the internet and improve communications on Earth. However, this technological breakthrough also has a downside. Some researchers fear these objects will interfere with astronomical research. Worse than that is the prospect of satellite collisions, which would create a large amount of space debris.
4. Molecules discovered by AI
You'd be hard-pressed to count the molecules that could potentially lead to the creation of valuable drugs. Researchers estimate their number to be as high as 10 to the power 60. That's more than the number of atoms in the solar system.
And thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), scientists can access vast databases of existing molecules and their properties. This will enable the development of new drugs faster and more cost-effectively.
3. Electronic money
Electronic money like WebMoney is nothing new in Russia. But what about introducing a single digital currency nationwide? That's a truly exciting and groundbreaking technology.
Last June, Facebook unveiled a "global digital currency" called Libra. The idea was not well received, and the project may be shelved.
However, a few days after Facebook's announcement, an official from the People's Bank of China suggested the emergence of a Chinese digital currency.
Now China is preparing to become the first global economy to issue a digital version of its money, which will be used as a replacement for cash.
2. Personalized medical services
Some of the most terrifying diseases known to mankind are so rare that they occur in one in ten thousand cases, or even less. And sometimes, for a rare disease, there is no cure.
But this sad situation could change, thanks to new classes of drugs that can be tailored to human genes. If this extremely rare disease is caused by a specific DNA error, modern science at least gives the patient a chance to correct it.
New drugs could act as a kind of molecular eraser, erasing or correcting faulty 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. Treatment with Milasen didn't completely cure Mila, but it stabilized her condition.
The only problem is who will pay for such drugs when they help one person, when it is much more profitable for pharmaceutical companies to produce widely used drugs.
1. Internet protected from hackers
Quantum technologies will help create an unhackable network. This is precisely the task being pursued by a team from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. They are building a network connecting four cities in the Netherlands that uses exclusively quantum methods for information transmission.
The technology is based on the quantum behavior of atomic particles—so-called "quantum entanglement." The main challenge in creating the network is that entangled particles are difficult to create, and even more difficult to transmit over long distances. Researchers at Delft University have so far succeeded in sending data over more than 1.5 kilometers, and they are confident they will be able to establish a quantum connection between Delft and The Hague by the end of this year.