MIT selected 10 breakthrough technologies in the world!

As one of the most famous technology lists in the world, the top ten breakthrough technologies of MIT Science and Technology Review have great global influence and authority, and it has been held for 18 years. Some of the technological breakthroughs on the list every year have been applied in reality, and some are still taking time, but they are destined to have a significant impact on human production and life in the future, and even completely change the face of society as a whole.

The following is the list and interpretation of the top ten breakthrough technologies in the world released by MIT in 2018, for your reference:

01

3D metal printing

Reason for selection: New equipment makes 3D printing metal parts a practical technology for the first time

Technological breakthrough: 3D metal printer realizes low-cost and fast metal object printing

Significant significance: The ability to print large and complex metal objects on demand will revolutionize the manufacturing industry

Main researchers: Markforged, Desktop Metal, GE, etc.

Maturity: now

The development of 3D printing has been around for decades. But so far, 3D printing is still mainly used to manufacture disposable prototype products. If you want to use materials other than plastic, such as metal, to print, it is not only expensive, but also very slow.

However, at present, the cost of 3D metal printing is getting lower and lower, and it is gradually becoming a method of manufacturing actual parts. If it is widely popularized, it will change the way of mass production.

In the short term, manufacturers will no longer need to maintain large inventories. For products such as auto parts, just print it out when needed.

In the long run, large factories that produce a few parts in large quantities may be replaced by smaller factories that are more adaptable to changes in customer needs.

3D metal printing can produce parts with lighter weight and higher strength, obtain complex shapes that are difficult to achieve by traditional methods, and perform more precise control of metal microstructures. In 2017, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they have developed a 3D printing method that can produce stainless steel that is twice as strong as the traditional process.

Also in 2017, Markforged, a 3D printing company from Boston, released the first 3D metal printer with a price of less than $100,000.

Desktop Metal, another Boston startup, launched a metal printing prototype device in 2017. The company plans to sell large machines for actual product production, whose production speed is 100 times faster than traditional metal printing methods.

The printing of metal parts is becoming easier. Desktop Metal currently provides software that can generate designs suitable for 3D printing. The user only needs to inform the software of the object parameters that the software wants to print, and the software can generate a computer model suitable for printing.

General Electric has long used 3D printing technology in its aerospace products. The company is testing new metal printers that are fast enough to print large parts. The company plans to sell this printer in 2018.

02

Artificial embryo

Reason for selection: Scientists have begun to make embryos through stem cells

Technological breakthrough: Without using egg cells or sperm cells, researchers can grow embryo-like structures from stem cells alone, providing a new way to create artificial life

Significance: Artificial embryos will provide researchers with a more convenient tool to study the mysterious origins of human life, but the technology is triggering new bioethical controversies

Main researchers: Cambridge University, University of Michigan, Rockefeller University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc.

Maturity: now

Embryologists at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom redefine how to create life in a groundbreaking study. They used a single stem cell to create a realistic mouse embryo. No eggs or sperm are used, just cells extracted from another embryo.

The researchers carefully placed these cells on the three-dimensional scaffold and observed them. These cells communicate with each other and arrange in the shape of a mouse embryo that is a few days old.

Team leader Magdelena Zernicka-Goetz said: “We know that the powerful potential of stem cells is like magic. But we didn’t realize that they can perform so beautifully and perfectly. Self-organizing."

Zelnika-Gertz said that this "synthetic" embryo may not develop into a mouse. But despite this, this still shows that we can breed mammals without egg cells.

This is not yet Zernika Goetz's goal. She wants to study how early embryonic cells play a special role. She said that the next step is to use human stem cells to cultivate artificial embryos. The University of Michigan and Rockefeller University are also engaged in research in this area.

Human embryos synthesized by artificial intelligence will bring good news to scientists and help them understand every process of human early development. And because these embryos come from stem cells that are easy to manipulate, various tools, such as gene editing tools, can be used in the laboratory to conduct research during their growth.

However, artificial embryos pose ethical issues. If such embryos are indistinguishable from real embryos, what will happen? How long can embryos grow in the laboratory before they feel pain? Bioethicists believe that we need to solve these problems first before the scientific competition begins.

03

Perceive the city

Reason for selection: Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs plans to create a high-tech community to rethink how to build and operate a city

Technological breakthrough: A neighborhood in Toronto is expected to be the first place in the world to successfully integrate cutting-edge urban design with cutting-edge technology

Significant significance: Smart cities will make urban areas more affordable, livable and environmentally friendly

Main researchers: Sidewalk Labs under Alphabet, Toronto Waterfront, Alibaba, etc.

Maturity: The project was announced in October 2017, and construction is expected to start in 2019

Many smart city projects are being postponed and their targets are shrinking, or they can only cover the rich. Quayside, a new project in Toronto, hopes to reverse this pattern of failure. The project plans to think about the urban community from the ground up and rebuild the community around the latest digital technology.

This project was announced in October 2017, and the concrete construction will begin in 2019. Sidewalk Labs from New York and Alphabet's is cooperating with the Canadian government on this project, which is planned to be carried out in Toronto's waterfront industrial area.

One of the goals of the project is to use a huge sensor network to collect various data such as air quality, noise level, population activity, etc., and then guide design, policy and technical decisions.

Such a plan requires all vehicles to achieve autonomous driving and enter the shared travel platform. The robot will perform trivial chores, such as delivering mail. Sidewalk Labs said it will open up access to the company's software and systems so that other companies can develop services on this basis, just like third parties develop applications for smartphones.

The company plans to closely monitor public infrastructure, which has raised concerns about data management and privacy protection. However, Sidewalk Labs said it can resolve these concerns through cooperation with the community and local government.

Rit Aggarwala, head of urban system planning at Sidewalk Labs, said: “The difference we did for Quayside is that this project is not only ambitious, but also has a certain degree of human care.” This may help. Quayside avoids repeating the mistakes of previous smart city plans.

Waterfront Toronto, the government agency responsible for the development of Quayside, said that other North American cities are also in contact with Sidewalk Labs, hoping to become the next city to cooperate. The agency’s CEO Will Fleissig said: “San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and Boston have all called for an introduction.”

04

Artificial intelligence for everyone

Reason for selection: Moving machine learning tools to the cloud will help the wider spread of artificial intelligence

Technological breakthrough: Cloud-based artificial intelligence is reducing the difficulty and price of this technology

Significant significance: At present, the application of artificial intelligence is dominated by a few companies. But once it is combined with cloud technology, it will become within reach of many people, thereby achieving explosive economic growth.

Main researchers include: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, iFlytek, Fourth Paradigm, etc.

Maturity: now

So far, artificial intelligence is mainly the toys of big companies such as Amazon, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, as well as some start-up companies. For many other companies, the cost of artificial intelligence is too high and full deployment is very difficult.

So what is the solution? Cloud-based machine learning tools are bringing artificial intelligence to a wider audience. So far, Amazon AWS is the leader in cloud artificial intelligence. Google is challenging Amazon with the open source artificial intelligence library TensorFlow. Recently, Google also announced Cloud AutoML. This is a pre-trained system that makes artificial intelligence easier to use.

Microsoft also has Azure, a cloud computing platform that integrates artificial intelligence. In addition, Microsoft is also cooperating with Amazon to provide Gluon, an open source deep learning library. Gluon is mainly used to develop neural networks, making neural networks as easy to develop as mobile phone applications.

It is not clear which company will become the leader in cloud artificial intelligence. But for the winner, this means a huge business opportunity.

If the artificial intelligence revolution permeates all walks of life, these products will become an essential element.

Currently, artificial intelligence is mainly used in the technology industry. In this industry, artificial intelligence has created efficiency and brought new products and services. However, many other companies and industries are also trying to use artificial intelligence. If industries such as medicine, manufacturing, and energy can also fully deploy this technology, productivity will be greatly improved, and the entire industry will be revolutionized as a result.

However, most companies still lack enough talents to figure out how to use cloud artificial intelligence. Therefore, Amazon and Google are also providing consulting services. Once cloud computing spreads the technology to everyone, then the real artificial intelligence revolution will start.

05

Adversarial neural network

Reasons for selection: Two AI systems gain imagination by playing the "cat and mouse" game

Technological breakthrough: Two AI systems can create super-real original images or sounds by confronting each other, and machines have never had this ability before

Significant significance: This gives machines an ability similar to imagination, so it may make them less dependent on humans, but it also turns them into an amazing tool for digital fraud

Main researchers: Google Brain, DeepMind, Nvidia, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Shangtang Technology, Yitu Technology, Yuncong Technology, Megvii Technology, etc.

Maturity: now

Artificial intelligence is very good at recognizing objects. In 1 million photos, it can accurately point out which photos have pedestrians crossing the road. However, artificial intelligence is not suitable for drawing a picture that shows a pedestrian is crossing the road. If this can be done, artificial intelligence can create a very realistic simulation environment for driverless cars to train in such a simulation environment.

The problem is that creating new things requires imagination, and imagination is what artificial intelligence is not good at.

In 2014, Ian Goodfellow, a PhD student at the University of Montreal, first thought of this solution during an academic debate in a bar, which is called the "Generated Adversarial Network" (GAN). GAN allows two neural networks to fight each other in the digital version of the "cat and mouse game".

Both networks use the same data set for training. One of them is called a "generator", and the task is to use the seen images to create different versions, such as a person with 3 hands. And the other is called "identifier", the task is to identify whether the image you see is a fake image made by the generator.

Through such a process, the generator will be very good at generating images, causing the discriminator to be unable to determine which are real images and which are fake. Essentially, the generator is trained to recognize and produce images that look real.

In the past 10 years, GAN has become one of the most promising areas of artificial intelligence, helping machines generate results that can confuse the human eye.

GAN has been put into use to produce realistic-sounding voices and images. For example, Nvidia researchers provided GAN with a large number of celebrity photos, and subsequently created hundreds of avatars that did not exist. Another research team generated fake paintings similar to Van Gogh's works. Furthermore, GAN can reimagine the picture in different ways, such as turning a sunny road into a snowy road, or turning a horse into a zebra.

The results are not always perfect: GAN might put two handlebars on the bike, or put the eyebrows in the wrong place on the portrait. However, because the generated images and sounds are often very real, experts believe that, in a sense, GAN has begun to understand the underlying structure of the world seen and heard. This means that in addition to imagination, artificial intelligence can gain a more independent ability to understand the world it sees.

06

Babel fish earplugs

Reason for selection: Although the existing hardware is not so easy to use, Google Pixel Buds shows the prospect of real-time translation

Technological breakthrough: Near real-time translation is suitable for multiple languages, and it is very convenient to use

Significant significance: In today's increasingly globalized world, language is still a major obstacle to communication

Main researchers: Google, iFLYTEK, Baidu, Tencent, Sogou, Tsinghua University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Soochow University, etc.

Maturity: now

In the popular science fiction classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), you can slide the yellow Babel into your ears and hear the simultaneous translation. In the real world, Google has come up with a temporary solution: a pair of headsets priced at $159, called Pixel Buds (Chinese translation for "Pixel Buds"), can be used with Pixel smartphones and Google Translate App. Get real-time translation.

One person is wearing headphones and the other is holding a mobile phone. The earplug wearer speaks in his or her language-the default language is English-the app translates the sentence, transmits it to the phone, and plays it out loud. The person with the mobile phone responds; the answer is translated and transmitted to the headset for playback.

Google Translate already has a conversation function. Its iOS and Android applications allow two users to talk, and the conversation will be automatically recognized and translated. However, background noise can make it difficult for apps to understand people’s conversations, and they don’t know when people stop talking and when they start translating.

Pixel Buds circumvents these problems by allowing the user to hold the right earbud while speaking. Separate the interaction between the mobile phone and the headset, and the microphone can be controlled artificially, which is helpful for the caller to maintain eye contact without having to take the mobile phone around.

The poor design of Pixel Buds has been widely criticized. They look silly, they may not fit your ears, and they are also difficult to use with mobile phones.

However, the bulky hardware is not difficult to handle. Pixel Buds shows the great prospect of real-time understanding and communication between languages, and there is no need for fish anymore.

07

Zero carbon emission natural gas

Reason for selection: A new engineering method for natural gas power plants, recycling carbon dioxide for reuse

Technological breakthrough: A power plant can capture the carbon elements released by natural gas combustion in a cheap and efficient way, avoiding greenhouse gas emissions

Significant significance: Natural gas power generation provides nearly 32% of the electricity in the United States, and its carbon emissions have reached 30% of the total carbon emissions of the power sector

Main researchers: 8 RiversCapital, Exelon Power Company, CB&I, etc.

Maturity: 3-5 years

In the foreseeable future, natural gas may become one of the world's main sources of energy because of its low cost and easy availability. Now, more than 30% of the electricity in the United States and more than 22% of the world's electricity are derived from natural gas. However, although natural gas is cheaper than coal, it is still a major source of carbon emissions.

In the U.S. Natural Gas and Refining Industry Center outside Houston, a pilot power plant is testing a technology that promises to make the dream of turning natural gas into clean energy a reality. The 50-megawatt project is called "Net Power". The organizer believes that it can generate electricity at a lower cost, at least comparable to the cost of a standard natural gas power plant, and all the carbon dioxide emitted during the operation can be recovered. .

If this is the case, it means that the world has found a way to extract carbon-free energy from fossil fuels at a reasonable price. Natural gas power plants can increase or decrease production according to demand, avoid the high capital cost of nuclear power, and avoid the problem of unstable supply of renewable energy.

Partners in the "Net Power" project include technology development companies 8 Rivers Capital and Exelon Generation, and energy construction company CB&I. At present, the company is in the factory construction stage, has begun preliminary testing, and intends to announce the early evaluation results in the next few months.

The plant puts the carbon dioxide emitted by burning natural gas in a high-pressure and high-temperature environment, and uses the supercritical carbon dioxide produced by it as a "working fluid" to drive a special turbine. Most of the carbon dioxide can be recycled continuously, and the rest can be recovered cheaply.

The key part of reducing costs is the sale of carbon dioxide. Today, the main use of carbon dioxide is to help extract oil from oil wells. This is a limited market, and it is not a particularly environmentally friendly market. However, the "net power" project ultimately hopes to see increasing demand for carbon dioxide in cement manufacturing and the manufacture of plastics and other carbon-based materials.

"Net power" technology cannot solve all the problems of natural gas, especially in terms of mining. However, as long as we are using natural gas, we should use it as cleanly as possible. Among all the clean energy technologies being developed, "net power" is the most promising one to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

08

Perfect online privacy

Reason for selection: A tool originally developed for the trading process of cryptocurrency, now allows you to avoid revealing any unnecessary information when you are online.

Technological breakthrough: Computer scientists are perfecting an encryption tool that can complete verification without revealing unnecessary information.

Significant significance: If you need to disclose personal information in order to complete something online, this method allows you to easily achieve it while avoiding the risk of privacy leakage or identity theft.

Main researchers: Zcash, JP Morgan Chase, International Group, etc.

Maturity: now

Real Internet privacy will finally be possible, thanks to a new tool. It has many functions, including judging that you are over 18 years old without revealing your date of birth, or proving that you have enough money in the bank for financial transactions without revealing your balance or other details. This limits the risk of privacy leakage or identity theft.

This tool is an emerging encryption protocol called zero-knowledge proof. Although researchers have been studying this for decades, people's interest has only begun to surge in the past year, thanks in part to the public's obsession with cryptocurrencies, most of which have nothing to do with private ownership.

Most of the zero-knowledge proof technology benefits from Zcash, a digital currency launched at the end of 2016. The developers of Zcash used a cutting-edge encryption technology called zk-SNARK, which allows users to conduct transactions anonymously.

In Bitcoin and most other public blockchain systems, this is usually impossible, where everyone can see the transaction. Although transactions are theoretically anonymous, they can be combined with other data to achieve the purpose of tracking and even identifying users. As the creator of Ethereum, the world's second most popular blockchain network, Vitalik Buterin described zk-SNARKs as an "absolutely game-changing technology."

For banks, this may be a way to use blockchain in payment systems without sacrificing customer privacy. Last year, JPMorgan Chase added zk-SNARKs to its blockchain-based payment system.

Although zk-SNARKs have promising prospects, their calculations are cumbersome and slow, and a so-called "trusted setting" is needed to create encryption keys. Once the keys fall into the hands of ill-intentioned people, the entire system may be compromised. However, researchers are looking for an alternative to deploy zero-knowledge proofs more efficiently and without the need for keys.

09

Genetic prediction

Reason for selection: Large-scale genetic research will allow scientists to predict common diseases and personality characteristics

Technological breakthrough: Scientists can now use your genomic data to predict your risk of heart disease or breast cancer, and even your IQ can be predicted

Significant significance: DNA-based predictive technology may be the next major breakthrough in public health, but it will increase the risk of discrimination

Main investigators: Helix, 23andMe, Myriad Genetics, UKBiobank, Broad Institute, BGI, Yizhen Bio, WeGene, etc.

Maturity: now

One day, the baby will get a DNA report card when it is born. These reports will provide their chances of suffering from heart disease or cancer, as well as predictions of whether they are addicted to tobacco and whether they are smarter than the average person.

The sudden appearance of these report cards can be attributed to the great advances in genetic research, some of which involve more than 1 million people.

Facts have proved that the most common diseases and many behaviors and characteristics, including intelligence, are not caused by one or a few genes, but the result of the synergy of many genes. Using the genetic research data obtained, scientists are creating a so-called "polygenic risk score" mechanism.

Although the new DNA test can only provide probability, not diagnosis, it can greatly benefit medicine. For example, if women at high risk of breast cancer increase the number of mammograms, while women at low risk reduce the number of mammograms, these tests may detect more real cancers and reduce false alarms.

Pharmaceutical companies can also apply these scores to clinical trials of preventive drugs for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or heart disease. By selecting volunteers who are more likely to get sick, they can test the effects of drugs more accurately.

The problem is that these predictions are far from perfect. Who wants to know that he might suffer from Alzheimer's? What if people with low cancer risk scores postpone screening and then get cancer again?

Polygenic scores are also facing controversy because they can predict any feature, not just disease. For example, they now have an accuracy rate of about 10% for IQ test results. As the score increases, DNA IQ prediction is likely to become the norm. But how will parents and educators use this information?

For behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer (Eric Turkheimer), genetic data is mixed, making this new technology "both exciting and worrying."

10

Material quantum leap

Reason for selection: Researchers have recently begun to use quantum computers to model simple molecules, and this is just the beginning

Technological breakthrough: IBM uses a 7-qubit quantum computer to successfully simulate the electronic structure of small molecules

Significant significance: With the help of this technology, scientists can understand all aspects of molecular information and use this to develop more effective drugs and new materials that generate or transmit energy more efficiently

Main researchers: IBM, Google, Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik of Harvard University, University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University, Alibaba, etc.

Maturity: 5 to 10 years

The new quantum computer has a bright future, but it also brings a problem. Their computing power far exceeds that of today's machines, and they are unimaginably powerful, but we have not yet figured out how to apply these capabilities.

One possible and attractive possibility is to design molecules precisely.

Chemists are already dreaming of new proteins that can be used for more effective drugs, new electrolytes that can produce better batteries, compounds that can directly convert sunlight into liquid fuel, and more efficient solar cells.

We don't have these things because molecules are difficult to model on traditional computers. Even if you try to simulate the motion of electrons in a relatively simple molecule, the complexity of the calculations far exceeds the capabilities of today's computers.

But for a quantum computer, this is a piece of cake, because it uses not the digital bits representing 1 and 0, but the "qubits" of the quantum system.

Recently, IBM researchers used a quantum computer to simulate a small molecule composed of three atoms with 7 qubits.

When scientists build machines with more qubits, they should be able to accurately simulate larger and more interesting molecules. Just as importantly, quantum algorithms will evolve better.

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