The pandemic turbo-charged ground breaking mRNA vaccine technology and the latest iteration of the open source AI tool ChatGPT-3 was the talk of late 2022. But what new technological leaps will grab our attention this year?
Every year in early January, the tech world descends on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The event is seen by many, and described by itself, as “the most influential tech event in the world” and sees the world’s best-funded R&D departments present their shiniest new tech.
Many of the gadgets and other technologies on display at CES are concept designs that will never see the light of day commercially. But others offer a first glimpse at new technologies that will become commonplace and change how we live to a greater or less extent. Or the latest evolution or iteration to improve already popular gadgets.
Digital health, transportation technology, the metaverse and Web 3.0 were three well-represented tech sectors at this year’s CES, whose official “theme” this year was tech designed to address the world’s greatest challenges.
But while CES is a major event in the tech world, far from all of the emerging and evolving technologies that will capture the imagination and prove most significant in 2023 will have been on show there. Biotech, for example, and the application of AI in medicine and drug discovery are not consumer-facing technologies but fields that are currently progressing at a rapid rate and will change human society and the world around us.
There will also be new technologies that attract a lot of fanfare but don’t ultimately prove to be the game changers they are billed as and many become convinced they are. One recent example of the kind of tech fads that often arrive with a big before fizzling out is NFTs, digital files verified as unique originals by blockchain technology. NFT artworks and other proposed use cases generated a lot of noise in 2021 before fading quickly away again last year.
Sometimes new technologies that generate buzz before fading away come back stronger in future years after they’ve been refined and improved on, or a better use case or business model is arrived at. That happened with internet businesses after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and could still prove to be the case for hydrogen-powered cars as an alternative to electrification.
Will cryptocurrencies and blockchain spend 2023 in hibernation?
There are plenty who remain convinced cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will make a comeback that mirrors online business models two decades ago. Sceptics argue that it’s still not clear if the world will ever have a genuine use for cryptocurrencies beyond financial speculation. And that blockchain technology itself has yet to appear in a form that represents a convincing argument it will genuinely represent the promised tech revolution.
However, even if the cryptocurrency market and blockchain technology sector recalibrates and makes a comeback in a sustainable and influential way, it seems unlikely that will happen this year. The extent of the sector’s 2022 collapse, both in terms of cryptocurrency valuations and structurally as high-profile firms folded and examples of huge systemic fraud were uncovered, means 2023 could well be one the sector spends in hibernation licking its wounds and reimagining itself.
Environmental and sustainability technology
Environmental technologies that wouldn’t traditionally be considered ‘consumer electronics’ were, however, a visible theme at the 2023 edition of CES. One example highlighted by VOA News was a battery-operated WasteShark produced by Dutch firm RanMarine Technology.
The autonomous surface vessel is designed to remove algae, biomass, and floating pollution such as plastics from lakes, ponds, and other coastal waterways.
“There’s a lot of people doing really great stuff out in the ocean and cleaning that up,” said company CEO Richard Hardiman, who spoke with VOA via Skype.
“Our mandate for our company is to clean it before it goes into the ocean,” he said. “So we’re trying to, sort of, what we call, ‘capture that waste at source,’ before it pollutes the ocean.”
Clean and renewable energy technology and projects are also set to continue to be a major theme with the meta trend taking new impetus from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the impact on global energy markets the war has had. Countries, especially those that are net energy importers, are newly motivated to invest in and support renewables as a matter of priority now their role in domestic energy security has become clear.
Energy storage is another long running meta trend closely linked to clean energy generation that will almost certainly continue to represent one of the dominant global tech trends in 2023. Carbon capture technology breakthroughts and pilot projects should also grab headlines over the year.
AI tools
The latest iteration of OpenAI’s natural language processing model, ChatGPT-3 started causing a major stir on its launch at the tail end of last year and that hasn’t died down in early 2023. The tool is currently open source, though OpenAI says it may have to charge at some point due to compute expenses, and early adopters are raving about how useful it is as a support tool for a range of tasks.
For example, when asked “what kind of everyday professional tasks would ChatGPT-3 be best at assisting?”, ChatGPT-3 replies:
ChatGPT-3, tools built on it, and other AI assistants designed for specific applications, such as GitHub’s copilot AI tool that helps software developers write code, look set to make a mainstream breakthrough this year.
The Metaverse
While it is unlikely that 2023 will be the year spending time as digital avatars in virtual and augmented reality environments goes mainstream, there is likely to be a lot of buzz around the technology. Facebook’s renamed holding Meta Platforms has effectively staked its future on becoming a key player in the metaverse, even if it doesn’t yet seem to have a clear concept of what it will eventually look like and consist of.
Despite its nascent character, the amount of money flowing into the metaverse from Meta and other pioneers determined to establish themselves as leaders in what many see as the next evolution of the digital economy and digital transformation means we can expect plenty of noise. There will be demonstrations of pilot projects and hardware like headsets and glasses and attempts to popularise new metaverse platforms.
Like driverless vehicle technology, the metaverse may take a lot longer to take shape and mature than those at the early vanguard are currently convinced it will. But whether virtual and augmented reality becomes a regular part of our private and work lives sooner or later, 2023 will likely be dominated by the voices loudly proclaiming it will be sooner. And we’d all better get onboard if we don’t want to be left at the station!
Internet of Things
Another tech trend not exclusive to 2023 but expected to gather pace is the further development of the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. IoT refers to connected devices whose abilities and performance are made possible and informed in real time by a combination of the localised data their sensors and other hardware gather and the huge pool of such data gathered by the wider network of similar devices.
IoT is starting to revolutionise and optimise everything from home heating to traffic light systems and individual health monitoring through increasingly sophisticated wearables that track biological data and readings.
The overall trend towards connected devices informed by big data will continue and specific developments could include more universal standards and protocols to allow IoT devices to communicate with each other, enabling more complex machine-to-machine interactions. Improving the security of IoT devices will also be in focus.
Quantum computing
Nations, research institutions and private companies are in a race to develop scalable quantum computing technology. Quantum computing, which harnesses the properties of subatomic particles to create new methods of processing and storing data, is thought to have the potential to revolutionise the computing industry by enabling computers to operate at a trillion times the speed of current traditional processors.
However, the major concern is that the advanced computational power of quantum computers could potentially make current encryption methods obsolete, allowing nations who have developed an edge in quantum computing technology to gain access to sensitive information from other countries, businesses and security systems.
As countries such as the US, UK, China, and Russia as well as private companies continue to invest heavily in the development of quantum computing, it will be a trend to keep a close eye on in 2023.
Biotech
Biotechnology breakthroughs, much of them also powered by new AI capabilities, have been accelerating in pace over recent years. Drugs discovery and personalisation will continue to be a source of news on new advancements and 2023 could be a big year for the mRNA technology first used in Covid-19 vaccines.
Biontech, the German biotech startup which developed one of the first approved Covid vaccines has returned to its core mission of mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies. A strategic partnership between the company and the NHS to fast-track trials of personalised mRNA therapies for cancer patients has just been announced.
Inevitably, some of the tech trends mentioned here will fail to generate much excitement this year and there will be others which cause a stir that few are mentioning yet or paying attention to. But there’s a high chance there will be significant and exciting developments in many of the categories of technology mentioned. And if not those, other new technologies will appear from under the radar.
The next gadget, technology or tech business to change our lives the way the smartphone, cloud computing and Amazon did over the past decade or so may not enter the collective consciousness in 2023. But it might and it may well be part of one of the trends just discussed.
Comments (0)
Average Rating: No ratings yet/5 (0 reviews)
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!