Use The Future to Build the Present
These advances will potentially have a significant impact on who we are as humans, how we are going to live together and how we can ensure the sustainability of our planet:
I. Quantum Revolution & Advanced AI
Artificial intelligence (AI), already a world-changing technology, is set to grow in power and influence. Quantum technologies are already having an impact on sensing, imaging and metrology, and quantum computing and communications are also drawing close to meaningful real-world applications
Emerging Topics:
1. Advanced AI
2. Quantum Technologies
3. Brain-inspired Computing
4. Biological Computing
5. Augmented Reality
6. Collective Intelligence
II. Human Augmentation
Recent advances in neuroscience and machine learning have ushered in innovations for cognitive enhancement, improving human memory, cognition, and other aspects of consciousness
Emerging Topics:
1. Cognitive Enhancement
2. Human Applications of Genetic Engineering
3. Radical Health Extension
4. Consciousness Augmentation
5. Organoids
6. Future Therapeutics
III. Eco-Regeneration & Geoengineering
From the development of negative emission technologies that extract CO2 from the atmosphere, to the rapid development and scaling up of renewable energy sources — including the development of advanced materials and energy storage capacity — the decarbonisation of the planet has a ready roadmap
Emerging Topics:
1. Decarburization
2. World Simulation
3. Future Food Systems
4. Space Resources
5. Ocean Stewardship
6. Solar Radiation Modification
7. Infectious Diseases
IV. Science & Diplomacy
Advances in science diplomacy seek to create an evidence-based foundation for this endeavor, and the increasingly diverse set of actors who practice it. One issue is how to train, incorporate and empower these actors at state level and at non-state levels, from global companies, from grass roots organizations and from non-governmental organizations
Emerging Topics:
1. Science-based Diplomacy
2. Advances in Science Diplomacy
3. Digital Technologies and Conflict
4. Democracy-Affirming Technologies
V. Knowledge Foundations
Knowledge Foundations draw on research from multiple disciplines and have effects that span numerous human, social and environmental spheres
Emerging Topics:
1. Complex Systems Science
2. Future of Education
3. Future Economics
4. The Science of the Origins of Life
5. Synthetic Biology