The main trends according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes a list of ten technologies every year that can change our lives for the better. This time, in particular, it hit the unbreakable Internet, anti-aging drugs and miniature artificial intelligence.
Unbreakable Internet (after five years)
Already this year, a technology should appear that will forever solve the problem of the safety of personal data. In any case, this is what Dutch scientists from the Delft University of Technology hope for.
Photo: Evgeny Pavlenko, Kommersant.
A team of researchers is now working to create an Internet network that will connect the four cities of the Netherlands and will be built entirely on the basis of quantum computing technology. So far, they have managed to transmit information over such a network over a distance of just over 1.5 km. By the end of the year, they hope to have a stable connection between Delft and The Hague, and a full-scale network in the next five years.
Scientists are using technology that relies on the behavior of atomic particles known as quantum entanglement. Messages transmitted in this form through quantum networks cannot be secretly decrypted and read by someone. Any violation of the state of at least one of the photons will immediately lead to the destruction of the entire transmitted signal.
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Scientists in China had previously created an Internet connection using this quantum technology, but their network used traditional components, which made it vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Hyper-personalized medicine (now)
Genetic engineering has reached the stage of development where scientists can identify a violation in human DNA and develop a medicine that can help correct the disease within just one year. Moreover, we can talk about diseases that are "piece" and the treatment of which until now no one has been involved in the absence of ready-made drugs. Now doctors have at their disposal all the necessary technologies to create a medicine for one specific person.
Photo: Anatoly Zhdanov, Kommersant.
So far, there are very few cases when such drugs have been created. But over time, MIT is confident, this practice will become more common. The only obstacle to the spread of hyper-personalized medicine is its high cost, given that the drug will be developed for one person, and entire laboratories will still work on its creation.
Digital money (this year)
The world's first state digital currency should be launched this year. Several countries are fighting for the right to be the first, and Mark Zuckerberg generally dreams of creating one digital currency for everyone. But his project is still openly stalled due to the many claims of regulators from different countries. But the Central Bank of China has everything ready to launch the digital version of the yuan. So far, only the spread of the coronavirus is slowing down the process, due to which, according to the Central Bank, the work of many government agencies was disrupted.
Photo: Evgeny Pavlenko, Kommersant.
This week, the Central Bank of Sweden announced the start of testing the national electronic currency. Once he became the first in the world to issue paper banknotes, and now he wants to become a pioneer in the digital age of money.
Anti-aging drugs (in less than five years)
A medicine that allows you to live forever, until it was invented. On the other hand, drugs that fight diseases caused by the aging process are already being tested in humans and may appear on the market in the coming years. These are senolytics - drugs that can identify dead old cells and remove them from the body. Usually, the human immune system is involved in this process, but with age, it copes with this task worse and worse, and the accumulation of dead cells causes inflammatory processes, which leads to the emergence of cancer.
Photo: Alexander Petrosyan, Kommersant.
For example, the American pharmaceutical company Unity Biotechnology is engaged in trials of senolytics on humans. And the Alkahest company is trying to cope with aging in a different way - by introducing the components of the blood cells of young people to the elderly. Thus, the company's specialists expect to defeat or at least slow down the development of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia.
AI that detects molecules (after 3-5 years)
Scientists have learned how to use artificial intelligence to find molecules that can then become part of new drugs. Trained neural networks can now survey huge databases of molecules in the world to find those that may have useful properties for the treatment of certain diseases.
Photo: Dmitry Lebedev, Kommersant.
So, in September, a team of researchers from Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine and the University of Toronto, using artificial intelligence, discovered about 30 thousand new molecules with the necessary properties. More recently, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology itself became the first in the world to discover a new antibiotic using artificial intelligence.
Satellite megaconstellations (now)
Tens of thousands of communication satellites orbiting the Earth and broadband Internet anywhere in the world are, if not our present, then already the near future. And Elon Musk and his company SpaceX will make this idea a reality, which plans to launch 4.5 times more satellites than was done in the entire history of space exploration before the launch of the Starlink project.
Photo: Kristina Kormilitsyna, Kommersant.
The first 60 Starlink satellites were launched last May. Now, there are already about 300 of these satellites in orbit - according to this indicator, SpaceX has come out on top in the world. In total, Elon Musk's company received permission to launch 12 thousand of such satellites into orbit and is trying to obtain permission to launch another 30 thousand. President and COO of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell promised that the satellite network will be launched in the middle of this year.
Quantum superiority (5-10 years and more)
In September 2019, Google announced a quantum computer that surpasses the capabilities of today's most powerful silicon-based computer. The company said that its processor is capable of performing a calculation in 3 minutes and 20 seconds, which would have taken the world's most powerful computer - Summit from the American company IBM - about 10 thousand years. Thus, the company managed to achieve "quantum superiority".
Photo: Dmitry Lebedev, Kommersant.
IBM questioned the authenticity of the figures presented by a competitor, saying that Google was probably able to increase the speed of calculations thousands of times, but not in any way by the declared 1.5 billion times. In any case, Google's achievement was a historic moment. Now, manufacturers of quantum computers need to create machines that will solve not a conventional mathematical problem, but perform really useful tasks. And this is problematic - the more qubits there are in the computer, the more difficult it is to maintain them in the desired state. Google experts are confident that the technology they used will allow them to create a computer for both 100 and 1000 qubits. Such a computer, in theory, will already be able to perform some tasks useful for an ordinary user. True, no one knows yetwhat and how many qubits are needed, in principle, for a quantum computer to perform the same tasks that ordinary PCs are capable of performing today.
Miniature artificial intelligence (now)
Traditionally, the creation and training of artificial intelligence is associated with huge amounts of data and the need for a constant connection to a cloud server. But tech companies and scientists have learned how to create specialized AI microchips that can combine large computing power with a compact size.
Photo: Anatoly Zhdanov, Kommersant.
In addition, the AI itself no longer needs constant contact with the remote server. Google and Apple virtual assistants no longer need a network connection. And this means that their response to voice commands has become faster (since the intermediate stage of connecting to a remote server and receiving a response from it has disappeared), and user data does not leave his device, which increases the level of security in handling personal data.
Differential privacy (now)
The term "differential privacy" was coined in 2006 by Cynthia Dwork, an American privacy expert. It means a set of mathematical methods that allow you to determine the degree of loss of confidentiality of data when they are partially disclosed to create an information product.
Photo: Alexander Koryakov, Kommersant.
For example, the US Census Bureau collects information on 330 million people in the country, and then transfers this data to representatives of the scientific community and authorities for analysis. However, it is impossible to transfer them in their pure form, as this will lead to the disclosure of all personal data of citizens. Therefore, “white noise” is added to the databases - part of the information is mixed between citizens so that they cannot be de-anonymized. At the same time, the accuracy of statistical samples by groups should not decrease as a result of such manipulations. Differential privacy is precisely the mathematical model that allows you to find out to what extent data can be shuffled so that samples remain useful and truthful. Such models are already used by Facebook, Apple and will be used in 2020 by the US Census Bureau. Now other countries are looking at this technology as well.
Climate change attribution (now)
Even at the beginning of this decade, scientists could not accurately answer the question of whether these or those natural disasters are the consequences of global climate change. But in recent years, with the development of computer power and the ability of satellites to track natural phenomena in detail, scientists have more opportunities for a clearer answer to this question. For example, the World Weather Attribution project launched two computer simulations of the world: in one case, there was global warming, in the other - not. As a result, scientists have found that tropical storm Imelda, which hit Houston last year, was a direct consequence of global climate change.
Determining the role of climatic changes from other factors affecting the weather will help predict what natural disasters, where and what force humanity can expect. This means that people will be able to prepare for the coming shocks and avoid many victims.
Kirill Sarkhanyants