One of the technologies highlighted in the Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report 2023 is wearable plant sensors. Other innovations include flexible batteries, generative AI, and sustainable aviation fuel.
These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to lead to substantial breakthroughs in various disciplines, according to WEF research created in partnership with Frontiers.
A World Economic Forum (WEF) report published on June 26 identified the technologies that will improve the world in the next three to five years. One of the technologies highlighted in the Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report 2023 is wearable plant sensors. Other innovations include flexible batteries, generative AI, and sustainable aviation fuel. According to the WEF research created in partnership with Frontiers, these cutting-edge technologies have the potential to advance many disciplines significantly. The study offers a qualitative evaluation of the possible effects of each technology on people, the environment, economic development, and different industries.
The study examines several cutting-edge technologies with great promises, such as flexible batteries for wearable medical devices, flexible circuits with brain interfaces, virtual shared spaces for mental health support, modified viruses for health enhancement, generative AI to create original content, and spatial omics that provide a molecular-level understanding of biological systems.
The World Economic Forum’s managing director and the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution director, Jeremy Jurgens, predicts that new technologies will disrupt industries, spur economic growth, enhance the quality of life, and safeguard the environment.
Jurgens states, “New technologies can disrupt industries, grow economies, improve lives, and safeguard the planet – if designed, scaled, and deployed responsibly.” He hopes this year’s report will serve as an essential resource for business executives and policymakers, enabling them to realize emerging technologies’ transformative potential fully.
The top 10 emerging technologies for 2023 are shown below:
- Flexible Batteries: Lightweight, thin batteries that are flexible and can be bent, twisted, and stretched. The report claims they can be used in smartwatches, biological sensors, flexible displays, and wearable medical devices.
- Generative artificial intelligence: By ingesting massive datasets, generative AI can generate new and original material. With the availability of ChatGPT to the general public, its importance increased.
- Sustainable Aviation Fuel: The aviation sector is responsible for the world’s yearly carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. SAF, or sustainable aviation fuel, is a promising alternative to decarbonize the industry in the short to medium term. SAF is created from both biological sources, like biomass, and non-biological sources, like CO2.
- Designers Phages: Viruses called phages specifically infect particular bacterial species. Thanks to the development of ever more powerful genetic engineering techniques, scientists can now reprogramme phages to target the bacteria of their choice, including those in plants, animals, and humans.
- Metaverse for Mental Health: Shared online environments are being created to promote mental health. The future metaverse, combined with the integration of cutting-edge wearables that may provide tactile sensations and react to the user’s emotional condition, shows enormous promise for addressing the growing mental health epidemic.
- Wearable plant sensors: These days, tiny, non-intrusive sensors may be affixed to plants, enabling continuous monitoring of temperature, humidity, moisture, and nutrient levels. This reduces expenses, improves plant health, and boosts yields.
- Spatial Omics: By integrating cutting-edge imaging methods with the precision of DNA sequencing, spatial omics enables researchers to “see” biological activities at the molecular level inside cells. This advanced technology may make visible biological structures and events that couldn’t have been seen before and aid in discovering novel illness treatments.
- Flexible Neural Electronics: Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) create an open communication channel between the brain and other electronic systems. According to the paper, BMIs show promise for treating several medical disorders, including epilepsy, depression, and paralysis.
- Sustainable Computing: The paper claims that the convergence of multiple technologies, commonly called “sustainable computing,” including liquid cooling systems, AI analytics, and modular data centers, will make net-zero-energy data centers a reality.
- Healthcare Facilitated by AI: This study focuses on how AI can benefit the entire healthcare system, from monitoring pandemic outbreaks to reducing hospital wait times.
