AI fueling biggest industrial revolution

Daily Tribune has been at the forefront of innovation and has been for the past few months bringing to communities the benefit of making technology work for the improvement of lives of ordinary Filipinos through the Asian Innovation Forum.

Technology has become indispensable and it provides the impetus for small businesses to make the leap and make them competitive in the fast-evolving economic battleground.

For its 24th anniversary, the newspaper has adopted as its theme “Technology powered by people: Embracing disruptors” to underline support for businesses to enhance their efficiency through emerging know-how.

The Money section pages, thus, are giving space for ways to benefit from fast-evolving technologies that can help catapult businesses towards realizing stable revenue growth.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has identified technologies that it believes will make a positive impact on the world in the next three to five years.

In its annual Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report, it featured technologies with the greatest potential to strengthen businesses in the new highly-competitive world.

“Organizations make better choices when they understand the factors shaping the future. The report identifies technologies poised to significantly influence societies and economies,” Jeremy Jurgens, managing director, the World Economic Forum and head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, said.

“It also spotlights technologies with immense potential for revolutionizing connectivity, addressing the urgent challenges of climate change and driving innovation across various fields.”

WEF’s top 10 emerging technologies of 2024 are:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for scientific discovery: While AI has been used in research for many years, advances in deep learning, generative AI and foundation models are revolutionizing the scientific discovery process. 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​​;

2. Privacy-enhancing technologies: Protecting personal privacy while providing new opportunities for global data sharing and collaboration, “synthetic data” is expected to transform how information is handled with powerful applications in health-related research;

3. 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​​;

4. 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​​;

5. 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;

6. Immersive technology for the built world: Combining computing power with virtual and augmented reality, these technologies promise rapid improvements in infrastructure and daily systems. This technology allows designers and construction professionals to check for correspondence between physical and digital models, ensuring accuracy and safety and advancing sustainability;

7. Elastocalorics: As global temperatures rise, the need for cooling solutions is set to soar. Offering higher efficiency and lower energy use, elastocalorics release and absorb heat under mechanical stress, presenting a sustainable alternative to current technologies;

8. Carbon-capturing microbes: Engineered organisms convert emissions into valuable products like biofuels, providing a promising approach to mitigating climate change;

9. 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; and

10. Genomics for transplants: The successful implantation of genetically engineered organs into a human marks a significant advancement in healthcare, offering hope to millions awaiting transplants​​.

Game changers

The breakthrough technologies cited can change societies, economies, and lives for the better.

The list was drawn from insights of scientists, researchers and futurists.

The WEF report said in addition to promising major benefits to societies and economies, the emerging technologies must also be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers, and expected to achieve considerable scale within five years.

Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), such as deep learning, generative AI and other foundation models, enable scientists to make discoveries that would have been near-impossible otherwise and accelerate the rate of scientific discovery more broadly.

Over the past few years, WEF said there has been a transformation in how AI is used in scientific discoveries. “From Deep Mind’s AlphaFold — an AI system that accurately predicts the 3D models of protein structures — to discovering a new family of antibiotics and materials for more efficient batteries, the world is on the cusp of an AI-driven revolution in how new knowledge is discovered and used.

A separate report from the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said “AI has the potential to transform every scientific discipline and many aspects of the way we conduct science.”

Scientists are building and using large language models to mine scientific literature, working with AI chatbots to brainstorm new hypotheses, creating AI models capable of analyzing vast amounts of scientific data, and using deep learning to make discoveries.

They are also exploring how AI and robotics can be integrated with lab-based methods to accelerate research in innovative ways.

As a result, AI is emerging as a transformative general-purpose technology in scientific research that can unearth discoveries that would have otherwise remained hidden.

Data, bigger, better

Access to increasingly large datasets — especially when using AI — transforms research, discovery and innovation.

Concerns around privacy, security and data sovereignty, however, limit the degree to which high-value data can be shared and used nationally and globally.

An emerging and powerful suite of technologies makes it possible to share and use sensitive data in ways that address privacy concerns.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in “synthetic data” that replicate the patterns and trends in sensitive datasets but do not contain specific information that could be linked to individuals or compromise organizations or governments.

Powered by advances in AI, synthetic data removes many of the restrictions to working with sensitive data and opens new possibilities in global data sharing and collaborative research on biological phenomena, health-related studies, and training AI models.

However, even with the advent of synthetic data at a national level, health trends in a source nation will be exposed, and such concerns need to be overcome.

There has also been renewed interest in homomorphic encryption, a technology from the 1970s.

Rather than recreate datasets with the same characteristics as the raw data, homomorphic encryption allows encoded data to be analyzed without the raw data being directly accessible.

While promising, such encryption requires significantly more energy and time to achieve a secure result.

As advances in AI transform the value of data, techniques like synthetic data generation and homomorphic encryption are predicted to enable sharing and access to data while ensuring privacy, security and data sovereignty.

Fast connectivity makes things happen

To make way for AI-based technologies, efficient connectivity is essential. Global demand for higher data rates, lower latency and energy-efficient connectivity is skyrocketing.

The highly anticipated launch of 6G by 2030 is expected to intensify this pressure even further.

To meet these challenges, future networks will need to be engineered for enhanced capacity and connectivity and with a strong focus on environmental sustainability.

Enter reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), platforms that use metamaterials, smart algorithms and advanced signal processing to turn ordinary walls and surfaces into intelligent components for wireless communication.

Imagine what once was the dull wall of a house being converted into a device that can be used as a smart television or a device for video calls.

Akin to the idea of “smart mirrors,” RIS enables the precision focusing control of electromagnetic waves, reducing interference and the need for high transmission power.

Equally, RIS is highly adaptive and can dynamically adjust configurations according to real-time demands. This adaptability enables the efficient use of resources and enhances energy efficiency in wireless networks.

The development of hardware platforms and a surge in experimental initiatives in the field of RIS have drawn considerable interest from telecommunication stakeholders keen on exploring its potential for next-generation wireless networks.

A significant milestone was the effective integration of RIS into existing wireless networks.

Several RIS platforms, indeed, have showcased the technology’s impressive capabilities from a hardware perspective.

The growth of RIS is likely to impact several industrial sectors broadly.17 For example, tailored radio wave propagation in smart factories can ensure reliable communication in a highly complex environment.

Another wonder of innovation is bringing broadband connection to the remotest parts of the world through the so-called high altitude platform stations (HAPS) operating at stratospheric altitudes, approximately 20 kilometers above Earth.

Typically taking the form of balloons, airships, or fixed-wing aircraft, they offer a stable platform for observation and communication and can operate for months.

Advances in solar panel efficiency, battery energy density, lightweight composite materials, autonomous avionics and antennas, coupled with the expansion of frequency bands and new aviation standards, make HAPS viable in the near term.

HAPS can deliver connectivity, coverage and performance enhancements that neither satellites nor terrestrial towers can match, particularly in areas with difficult terrains such as mountains, jungles or deserts.

Access to the connected world serves as a bridge to the future, creating pathways to prosperity and new educational possibilities as well as strengthening the fabric of social connectivity.

Yet, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), about one-third of people worldwide remain offline.

Women and older adults are disproportionally affected. A key component in addressing this challenge is better infrastructure.

HAPS could improve connectivity for communities underserved by traditional communications infrastructure, particularly in remote areas.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the critical nature of internet access, revealing how disparities in connectivity perpetuate socioeconomic inequalities.

By bridging this digital divide, HAPS technology could enable access to educational, healthcare and economic opportunities.

In addition to providing internet access, these adaptable platforms can play an important role in various critical applications, from supporting disaster management to enhancing broadband coverage and environmental monitoring.

The ability of HAPS to quickly deploy and adapt to changing conditions could make them an invaluable tool in managing emergencies, where timely information and communication can save lives.

Technology will introduce fundamental changes in the human race, particularly with the advent of AI which can make lives different for the better or worse.