Each year, Global Biz Outlook searches for innovative technologies that have the potential to significantly change the world. These are the innovations that, in our opinion, are most important at the moment.
1. AI everywhere
The AI era is currently upon us. A vast number of individuals have engaged directly with generative technologies such as ChatGPT, which generate text, photos, videos, and other media based on prompts. Because of its widespread appeal, OpenAI has become a household name and has prompted major investments in the technology from Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
2. Incredibly effective solar cells
The use of solar energy is expanding quickly worldwide and is essential to the global effort to cut carbon emissions. However, not all of the sunlight that strikes modern panels is turned into electrical power. Solar panels could be more effective if a layer of microscopic crystals was added.
3. The Apple Vision Pro
The Vision Pro, Apple’s first mixed-reality headset, will go on sale this year. The highest-resolution display yet created for a gadget of this kind is its standout feature. Will a game-changing app exist? Although it’s early, the most valuable corporation in the world has placed a risky wager that the answer is indeed yes.
4. Drugs for weight loss
The World Health Organization has referred to the growth in obesity worldwide as an epidemic. These days, some of the most effective tools available to patients and doctors to treat it are medications like Mounjaro and Wegovy. Research indicates that they may potentially offer protection against strokes and heart attacks.
5. Advanced geothermal systems
Geothermal energy is almost infinite, pure, and constantly available. But due to technical difficulties, we have only just begun to explore its potential. More of the Earth’s heat is being released into the atmosphere to create renewable energy thanks to new drilling techniques that can go deeper and farther than previously possible.
6. Chiplets
The trend that defines Moore’s Law and has propelled advancements in computing for decades is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve in terms of transistor size. These days, engineers have to come up with innovative ideas to speed up and improve computers. Chiplets are tiny, customized chips with several uses that can be combined to do all the functions of a standard chip plus more.
7. The very first gene-editing procedure
For many years, researchers have been developing novel CRISPR-based therapies. One from Vertex became the first to receive regulatory approval in the US and the UK in the last few weeks of 2023 for its potential to treat the fatal illness sickle-cell disease. This isn’t the end of it.
8. Exascale computing systems
Today’s fastest supercomputers are capable of processing more than one exaflop, or one followed by eighteen zeros, of data. Scientists will be able to run increasingly complex simulations of the climate, nuclear fission, turbulence, and other topics thanks to new devices that can process scientific data at these speeds.
9. Heat pumps
Don’t be misled by the name. Wider use of heat pumps, which are electric appliances that can heat and cool buildings, might significantly lower emissions. Globally, sales have soared; in the US, they have now overtaken gas furnaces. Higher-temperature variants may also aid in the decarbonization of industry.
10. Twitter trolls
Almost everything about the site that is now known as X has changed since Elon Musk purchased it in 2022. He scared off both users and advertisers by sacking the majority of the workforce and doing away with content filtering. As alternatives such as Threads, Bluesky, and others gain traction, private rooms are replacing the central town square.
