WEF Identifies Top 10 Emerging Technologies Of 2024
Aimed At Addressing Global Challenges
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has unveiled its highly anticipated annual report on the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024. The report spotlights innovations and provides a roadmap for the future, indicating the technologies poised to reshape societies and economies in the coming years.
This year’s selection, presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, covers breakthroughs across various sectors crucial for global progress.
The Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report, now in its 12th edition, is a vital source of strategic intelligence for professionals. It draws on insights from over 300 scientists, researchers, and futurists. It uses a rigorous selection process integrating academic literature, funding trends, and patent filings to identify technologies expected to achieve significant scale within the next five years.
In addition to promising significant benefits to societies and economies, these emerging technologies are disruptive, attracting the attention of investors and researchers. They are expected to achieve considerable scale within five years, sparking intrigue and engagement in the professional community.
Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, highlighted the transformative potential of these technologies: “The technologies identified in our report are not just revolutionary in their respective fields; they are the key to addressing pressing global challenges from climate change to healthcare, offering a beacon of hope in the global conversation.”
The Top 10 Emerging Technologies Of 2024:
- AI for scientific discovery: While artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in research for many years, advances in deep learning, generative AI and foundation models are revolutionising scientific discovery. AI will enable researchers to make unprecedented connections and advancements in understanding diseases, proposing new materials, and enhancing knowledge of the human body and mind.
- Privacy-enhancing technologies: Protecting personal privacy while providing new opportunities for global data sharing and collaboration, ‘synthetic data’ is set to transform how information is handled with powerful applications in health-related research.
- Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: These innovative surfaces turn ordinary walls and surfaces into intelligent components for wireless communication while enhancing energy efficiency in wireless networks. They hold promise for numerous applications, from smart factories to vehicular networks.
- High-altitude platform stations: Using aircraft, blimps and balloons, these systems can extend mobile network access to remote regions, helping bridge the digital divide for over 2.6 billion people worldwide.
- Integrated sensing and communication: The advent of 6G networks facilitates simultaneous data collection (sensing) and transmission (communication). This enables environmental monitoring systems that help in smart agriculture, environmental conservation and urban planning. Integrated sensing and communication devices also promise to reduce energy and silicon consumption.
- Immersive technology for the built world: Combining computing power with virtual and augmented reality, these technologies promise rapid infrastructure and daily systemsimprovements. This technology allows designers and construction professionals to check for correspondence between physical and digital models, ensuring accuracy and safety and advancing sustainability.
- Elastocalorics: As global temperatures rise, the need for cooling solutions will soar. Offering higher efficiency and lower energy use, elastocalorics release and absorb heat under mechanical stress, presenting a sustainable alternative to current technologies.
- Carbon-capturing microbes: Engineered organisms convert emissions into valuable products like biofuels, providing a promising approach to mitigating climate change.
- Alternative livestock feeds: Protein feeds for livestock sourced from single-cell proteins, algae, and food waste could offer a sustainable solution for the agricultural industry.
- Genomics for transplants: The successful implantation of genetically engineered organs into a human marks a significant advancement in healthcare, offering hope to millions awaiting organ transplants.
The 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (June 25-27, 2024) is being held in Dalian under the theme ‘Next Frontiers for Growth’. One thousand six hundred high-level leaders from business, government, civil society, and international organisations are attending to generate collective insights and deployable solutions that can spur and maintain positive economic momentum globally.
Featured image: The Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report is a vital source of strategic intelligence for professionals. Credit: Drew Dizzy Graham
