In a year marked by the pandemic, the role of technologies is increasingly crucial. And to list the most interesting ones, and to keep an eye on in this 2021, the MIT Technology Review of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most famous US universities in the world, thought about it. A ranking, that of the 10 most interesting technologies of the year, which has been going on for twenty years now (it was 2001, the first time). And that this year could not fail to start with messenger RNA vaccines.
MRNA vaccines
With those of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, a new era has opened on the vaccine front. These are vaccines based on a new technology called mRNA, the fastest to arrive on the market and also the most effective against coronavirus. This is a technology that has been in the works for 20 years. When the covid-19 pandemic began last January, scientists from several biotech companies were quick to turn to mRNA as a way to create potential vaccines. They are based on a technology never used before in the therapeutic field and could transform medicine, leading to vaccines against various infectious diseases, including malaria. And if this coronavirus continues to mutate, mRNA vaccines can be modified easily and quickly. Messenger RNA also holds great promise as a basis for low-cost genetic corrections for sickle cell anemia and HIV. And pharmaceutical companies are studying mRNA as a weapon to fight cancer.
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GPT-3
It’s called GPT-3, and it’s a language model that uses machine learning techniques (deep learning) to generate text. Texts that, potentially, could be indistinguishable from those written by a human being. GPT-3 is by far the largest and most educated model of its kind, based on artificial intelligence, seen to date. Trained on the texts of thousands of books and on millions of Internet sites, GPT-3 can mimic text written by people with disturbing and sometimes bizarre realism, making it the most impressive language model ever produced using machine learning. But GPT-3 doesn’t understand what he’s writing, so sometimes the results are incomprehensible and meaningless. And because he’s also trained on internet-derived text – which is rife with misinformation and prejudice – he often produces equally distorted passages.
TikTok algorithms
Since its launch in China in 2016, TikTok has become one of the fastest growing social networks in the world. It has been downloaded billions of times and has attracted hundreds of millions of users. Because? Because the algorithms that power TikTok’s “For You” feed have changed the way people become famous online. While other platforms are more geared towards highlighting content with mass appeal, TikTok’s algorithms seem likely to give fair exposure to new creators and stars. And they are particularly adept at delivering relevant content to communities of users who share a particular interest or identity. The ability of new creators to get many views very quickly and the ease with which users can discover so many types of content have contributed to the tremendous growth of the app.
Lithium-metal batteries
Electric cars are rapidly evolving, but they still struggle with some setbacks – they cost relatively much and you can only drive them a few hundred miles before they need to recharge, which takes a lot longer than stopping for fuel. All of these drawbacks have to do with the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. A well-funded Silicon Valley startup is working on a battery that will make electric vehicles much more palatable to the mass consumer. It is called a lithium-metal battery and was developed by QuantumScape. According to initial test results, the battery could increase the range of an electric vehicle by 80% and can be recharged quickly. The startup has a deal with VW, which says it will sell electric vehicles with the new battery type by 2025.