We live in an incredible exciting time where technology is enabling new business models and new ways of making life better. This report captures some of the advances in 2022. We focused on topics that seem to hold great potential for improving business and government operations in the near term, meaning the next 12 months.
We capture overviews of key breakthroughs in the following domains:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Nuclear Technologies
- Space Technologies
- Robotics
- Biotech
- Quantum Computing/Quantum Security
Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence
The serious pursuit of AI as a computer science discipline began in the summer of 1956 at a workshop on the campus of Dartmouth College. Since then many breakthroughs in sub disciplines of AI have delivered benefits including advancements in computer vision, analytics, machine learning and natural language processing. OODA Loop has reported on advancements of AI since our beginning, and our principals have worked in fields requiring us to closely track developments for decades. In all this time we have seen many areas of dramatic improvements and mission supporting breakthroughs in AI, but nothing like the developments of 2022. The developments of 2022 were primarily in the domain of large language models like those pioneered by Google. One in particular, the GPT-3 model of OpenAI, was leveraged in a solution called ChatGPT. Chat GPT grabbed the attention of the Internet because of its ability to take inputs from humans and deliver results that seemed conversational. ChatGPT has huge flaws, it can hallucinate and make things up. But it has amazing potential. It can create poetry, short stories, research reports and provide insights in seconds in ways that can help inform and educate humans. We have indications that the next version of GPT from OpenAI, GPT-4, will be up to 100 times as powerful and have far fewer flaws. The use cases for ChatGPT and other GPT-3 solutions are wide and may impact every industry and government function (we built a demo at UnrestrictedIntelligence.com). Other solutions in this space are more tailored to enterprises, like those being brought to market by Vectara and Deepmind. Generative AI is another field seeing breakthroughs in 2022 as evidenced by the capabilities of DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Another exemplar of an AI breakthrough in this space is Deepmind’s AlphaFold, which produced results in the domain of protein folding in 2022 that will have dramatic positive benefits for healthcare and synthetic biology applications. Many more technical breakthroughs have been noted in AI and ML, including new ways for faster matrix multiplication relevant to reinforcement learning. For more on these topics see:
- The Executive’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence: what you need to know about what really works and what comes next.
- The Great GPT Leap is Disruption in Plain Sight
- We Are Witnessing Another Inflection Point in How Computers Support Humanity
Breakthrough Nuclear Tech
One of the companies we track closely is NuScale technology, a builder of small modular reactors. In our opinion these smaller, easier to run/maintain, more economical reactors should be accelerated into deployment in all open societies. But for years the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not grant this capability a license to deploy, meaning the only NuScale markets were overseas. In 2022 the NRC granted approval for NuScale to deploy in the US, meaning this breakthrough tech will soon be contributing to the US energy ecosystem. The US already gets about 20% of its electricity from nuclear power. We look forward to this percentage increasing and are hopeful that this will also help lower our already reasonably priced cost of electric power. Power cost is one of the greatest pacing factors of many other innovative capabilities so reducing costs here can help in other ways. For example, a major factor in vertical farming is the cost of energy. If energy costs can be driven down further we can expect more vertical farming which means more healthy food being grown close to where it is needed with less need for pesticides and fertilizer and long haul transportation. We were also excited about the news of the first ever nuclear fusion ignition. The immediate impact of this demonstration is just bragging rights because it proves open societies are best at innovating. But long term (decades) fusion will provide sustainable energy. We also expect an immediate increase in the amount of R&D funding for fusion research. Many commercial firms are pursuing their own approaches here and we expect VC funding in the space to increase as well. For more see:
Breakthroughs in Space Tech
We try to focus on tech that will have impact on business and government decision making and help inform strategies. At this point it is hard to say how the James Webb Space Telescope will cause a shift to business strategies, but clearly it was one of the most amazing stories of space technology in 2022. Perhaps the impact on business strategy is to remind all that breakthroughs in space can take years of planning and action. The incredible results of JWST are based on decades of work, with the concept starting in 1996 and the award for work being provided to TRW in September 2003. There were many other breakthroughs in space in 2022 including a successful test of an asteroid redirect capability called DART. In November 2022 NASA launched Artemis 1, which put an Orion capsule into orbit around the moon then brought it back demonstrating clearly that Artemis will one day become a reality. NASA also successfully demonstrated a Terabyte Infrared Delivery (TBIRD) satellite communications capability, bandwidth that till 2022 was just a wild dream. We have also sensed a bit of a sea change in regards to understanding threats to space missions, including the threat of a future Kessler Effect situation with space debris if this issue is not addressed, as well as a need for cyber threat mitigation in regards to space missions. For more see:
Breakthroughs in Robotics
Sales of industrial robotics have been up due to the demands of continued automation associated with manufacturing modernization and reshoring. Industrial robots themselves are widely varied and we don’t have a single breakthrough technology to point out for 2022, rather a blanket statement that robotics are becoming easier to use, more functional and more economical. We can call out the breakthroughs in Tesla’s automation software. The Beta version of Tesla FSD can use the car’s 9 cameras to comprehend roads, signs, vehicles and people and control the car, including controlling it to automatically drive from a starting point to a destination. The software is still in beta and requires a human ready to take over quickly, but the progress in 2022 has been amazing. Tesla also announced their humanoid robot, known as Optimus. The Optimus demos looked interesting but we have to note we saw no breakthrough there. We did, however, see continued breakthroughs and development by the robot Digit from Agility Robotics. This humanoid can work now in factories and warehouses and soon may be seen in local stores. For more see:
- The Future of Enterprise Robotics
- The Future of 3D Printing Technology, Additive and Advanced Manufacturing
Breakthroughs in Biotech
There are so many developments in human understanding of biological science it is hard to pick a top list. But some breakthroughs definately rise to the top. Like the incredibly successful trials of the immunotherapy cancer treatment called Dostarlimab. An article published in NIH’s PubMed in August 2022 captures the hope of this approach right in its title “Dostarlimab as a Miracle Drug.” Trials have shown 100% cure of patients with colorectal cancer. This is one of many other anti cancer approaches, signaling a bright future of more hope for all. In a totally different approach, Moderna has been testing a cancer vaccine showing results that indicate it can prevent recurrences of melanoma. For more see:
Breakthroughs in Quantum Tech
For decades researchers have attempted to use quantum effects to improve our ability to compute. We track the variety of ways this is being done in our Quantum Sensemaking page and track specific companies bringing developments to market in our Quantum List. Several things happened in 2022 that cause us to consider quantum tech overall as having a breakthrough year. IBM announced their approach to quantum computing has successfully demonstrated new capabilities including a 433 qubit processor, as well as plans to continue to grow scale. NIST announced something the community had long been waiting for, a downselect in their efforts to identify the best quantum safe algorithms. The US government issued directives requiring agencies become quantum safe. The pioneering community of security researchers who pull together the annual Defcon conference held their first ever Quantum Village, which focused on both the coming functionality of quantum computing approaches and security issues and the need for protecting data in an age of Shors’ algorithm. These and many other advancements point to 2023 being a year of mainstreaming of quantum concepts. For more see:
- The Quantum List Updated: Companies leveraging quantum effects for real world functionality and security
- Quantum Sensemaking: What executives need to know
Concluding Comments
As you consider the impact of the above on your strategic planning remember it is best to look for convergencies of trends, convergence is always where things get exciting.
