Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation founder and Co-chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made a list of the top 10 technologies that will make headlines in the year 2019 after being invited by MIT Technology Review to do so.
TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Gates was honoured by MIT Technology Review to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better, thereby becoming the first guest curator of MIT Technology Review 10 Breakthrough Technologies.
He included in the 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 list robot dexterity, new-wave nuclear power, predicting preemies, gut probe in a pill, custom cancer vaccines, cow-free burger, carbon dioxide catcher, ECG on your wrist, sanitation without sewers and smooth-talking AI assistants.
Speaking on why robot dexterity matters, Gates said “If robots could learn to deal with the messiness of the real world, they could do many more tasks” and why predicting preemies matters, he said “15 million babies are born prematurely every year; it’s the leading cause of death for children under age five… a simple blood test can predict if a pregnant woman is at risk of giving birth prematurely”.
Gates said the gut probe in a pill device makes it easier to screen for and study gut diseases, including one that keeps millions of children in poor countries from growing properly, and that for custom cancer vaccines, conventional chemotherapies take a heavy toll on healthy cells and aren’t always effective against tumours.
Why cow-free burger matters, Gates said livestock production causes catastrophic deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse-gas, stressing that “both lab-grown and plant-based alternatives approximate the taste and nutritional value of real meat without the environmental devastation”.
On why carbon dioxide catcher matters the Microsoft founder said while removing CO2 from the atmosphere might be one of the last viable ways to stop catastrophic climate change, to prevent a dangerous rise in temperatures, the world will need to remove as much as 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere this century.
For sanitation without sewers, Gates said “2.3 billion people lack safe sanitation, and many die as a result”; therefore, the world needs “energy-efficient toilets can operate without a sewer system and treat waste on the spot”.
Smooth-talking AI assistants made the list as AI assistants can now perform conversation-based tasks like booking a restaurant reservation or coordinating a package drop-off rather than just obey simple commands.
“Narrowing down the list was difficult. I wanted to choose things that not only will create headlines in 2019 but captured this moment in technological history—which got me thinking about how innovation has evolved over time,” Gates said.