AI for everything: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024
WHO
Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI
WHEN
Now
When OpenAI launched a free web app called ChatGPT in November 2022, nobody knew what was coming. But that low-key release changed everything.
By January, ChatGPT had become the fastest-growing web app ever, offering anyone with a browser access to one of the most powerful neural networks ever built. We were dazzled and disturbed.
And that was only the start. In February, Microsoft and Google revealed rival plans to combine chatbots with search—plans that reimagined our daily interactions with the internet.
Early demos weren’t great. Microsoft’s Bing Chat went off the rails, quick to churn out nonsense. Google’s Bard was caught making a factual error in its promo pitch. But the genie wasn’t going back in its bottle, no matter how weird it was.
Microsoft and Google have since moved beyond search to put chatbot-based assistants into the hands of billions of people via their office software. The tech promises to summarize emails and meetings; draft reports and replies; generate whole slide decks—titles, bullet points, and pictures—in seconds.
Microsoft and Meta released image-making models that let users generate shareable images of anything with a click. Cue a nonstop stream of zany mash-ups—and dozens of posts about Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants flying a plane into the Twin Towers.
Google’s new phones now use AI to let you edit photos to a degree never seen before, exchanging sad faces for happy ones and overcast afternoons for perfect sunsets.
Never has such radical new technology gone from experimental prototype to consumer product so fast and at such scale. What’s clear is that we haven’t even begun to make sense of it all, let alone reckon with its impact.
Is the shine coming off? Maybe. With each release, the astonishing becomes more mundane. But 2023’s legacy is clear: billions have now looked AI in the face. Now we need to figure out exactly what’s looking back.
The first gene-editing treatment: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024
WHO
CRISPR Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, Precision BioSciences, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
WHEN
Now
The first gene-editing cure has arrived. Grateful patients are calling it “life changing.”
It was only 11 years ago that scientists first developed the potent DNA-snipping technology called CRISPR. Now they’ve brought CRISPR out of the lab and into real medicine with a treatment that cures the symptoms of sickle-cell disease.
Sickle-cell is caused by inheriting two bad copies of one of the genes that make hemoglobin. Symptoms include bouts of intense pain, and life expectancy with the disease is just 53 years. It affects 1 in 4,000 people in the US, nearly all of them African-American.
So how did this disease become CRISPR’s first success? A fortuitous fact of biology is part of the answer. Our bodies harbor another way to make hemoglobin that turns off when we’re born. Researchers found that a simple DNA edit to cells from the bone marrow could turn it back on.
Many CRISPR treatments are in trials, but in 2022, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, based in Boston, was first to bring one to regulators for approval. That treatment was for sickle-cell. After their bone marrow was edited, nearly all the patients who volunteered in the trial were pain free.
Good news. But the expected price tag of the gene-editing treatment is $2 to $3 million. And Vertex has no immediate plans to offer it in Africa—where sickle-cell disease is most common, and where it still kills children.
The company says this is because the treatment regimen is so complex. It involves a hospital stay; doctors remove the bone marrow, edit the cells, and then transplant them back. In countries that still struggle to cover basic health needs, the procedure remains too demanding. So simpler, cheaper ways to deliver CRISPR could come next.
Heat pumps: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024
WHO
Daikin, Mitsubishi, Viessmann
WHEN
Now
We’ve entered the era of the heat pump.
Heat pumps are appliances that can cool and heat spaces using electricity. Many buildings today are still heated with fossil fuels, specifically natural gas. Switching to electric heat pumps that run on renewable energy could help homes, offices, and even manufacturing facilities cut their emissions dramatically.
While heat pumps have been used in buildings since the mid-20th century, the technology is breaking through in a new way. Global sales of heat pumps grew by 11% in 2022, the second consecutive year of double-digit growth, though that rate may have slowed in 2023. Europe saw the most dramatic shift, with a 40% growth in heat pump installations through 2022, largely driven by the energy crisis stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war and by efforts to move away from natural gas.
Asia is another hot spot, with China leading global installations and China and Japan together accounting for more than half of new patents filed on heat pump technology since 2010. New approaches are enabling heat pumps to reach higher temperatures, which could allow the technology to help clean up industrial manufacturing by supplying power to generate steam used in food processing and paper making.
In total, heat pumps have the potential to cut global emissions by 500 million tons in 2030—as much as pulling all cars in Europe today off the roads. That would require the total number of heat pumps installed to reach about 600 million by the end of the decade. (That’s about 20% of the heating needs for all the world’s buildings.)
There are still big challenges ahead for heat pumps, including ramping production to meet rising demand and ensuring that the electrical grid is robust enough to supply electricity to these and other climate-focused technologies. But all signs indicate that heat pumps are entering their heyday.
Twitter killers: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024
WHO
Bluesky, Discord, Mastodon, Nostr, Threads
WHEN
Now
For the better part of 17 years, the roiling, rolling, fractious, sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying, never-ever-ending global conversation had a central home: Twitter. If you wanted to know what was happening and what people were talking about right now, it was the only game in town.
But then Elon Musk purchased Twitter, renamed it X, fired most of its employees, and more or less eliminated its moderation and verification systems. He put in place a new financial structure that incentivized creators to spread and amplify lies and propaganda. Many people have begun casting about for a replacement service—ideally one that is beyond any individual’s control.
Decentralized, or federated, social media allows for communication across independently hosted servers or platforms, using networking protocols such as ActivityPub, AT Protocol, or Nostr. It offers more granular moderation, more security against the whims of a corporate master or government censor, and the opportunity to control your social graph. It’s even possible to move from one server to another and follow the same people.
To be sure, the dream of a decentralized Twitter-like service has been around for years. History is littered with failed attempts—most notably App.net and Identi.ca. A real competitor never broke out because not enough people had a strong reason to leave Twitter, or a place to go if they did. Now they have both.
According to Similarweb, X’s traffic is down by nearly 20%, year over year. Another study, by Apptopia, found that the number of daily active users went from 141 million to 120 million. Meanwhile, decentralized services like Mastodon, Bluesky, and some Nostr clients have surged in popularity.
But it’s Threads, from Meta, that’s been the big winner. Meta disclosed in September that Threads already had nearly 100 million monthly users. (As of press time, Threads has not yet implemented ActivityPub, but it promises to do so.) Nerd favorite Mastodon is a distant second at 1.5 million active users but is growing, while the still invite-only Bluesky, which runs on the AT Protocol, is at 2 million.
And of course, the real Twitter killer? That’s Elon Musk.