10 Big Global Challenges That Technology Can Solve

It seems that along with the progress of human civilization, its problems are progressing. The industrial revolution has led to climate change: the oceans are clogged with plastic, and the planet is gradually turning into Venus. No matter how much we try to improve our lives, there is always opposition and we get new challenges in response. Problem solving turns into a vicious circle, but we do not lose heart — and again find new solutions. Let’s see what ten of the biggest global problems technology could solve.

1. Sequestration

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will not be enough to prevent a sharp rise in global temperature. We also need to remove a huge amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which will not only be incredibly expensive, but will also put us in front of the acute problem of what to do with all this CO2. More and more startups are exploring ways to convert carbon dioxide into products like synthetic fuels, polymers, carbon fiber and concrete. That promises a lot, but we need a cheap way to store the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that we may have to extract from the atmosphere.

2. Storage of electricity in the network

Renewable energy sources like wind and sun are becoming cheaper and more widely used, but they do not generate electricity when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. This limits the amount of energy that these sources can supply, as well as the speed of our abandonment of sustainable sources such as coal and natural gas. The cost of creating enough batteries to back up entire networks at a time when renewable sources are not available will be astronomical. Various scientists and start-UPS are working to create cheaper forms of energy storage in the network, including flowing batteries or molten salt tanks. In any case, we urgently need a cheaper and more efficient way to store huge amounts of electricity.

3. Universal influenza vaccine

The flu pandemic is rare, but it takes many victims. At least 50 million people died in 1918 from the H1N1 influenza pandemic. More recently, about a million people died in the pandemics of 1957-1958 and 1968. In 2009, half a million people died from the return of H1N1. The death toll has been lower recently as the virus has shown a milder strain. Perhaps next time we will not be lucky — and a particularly powerful strain of the virus will begin to multiply too quickly for us to have time to react and create a vaccine to effectively combat it. Universal flu vaccine that protects not only from the relatively less dangerous version of the flu, but also from the devastating outbreak that happens once in a century, is an important task of medicine.

4. The treatment of dementia

At least 1 out of 10 elderly over 65 years suffers from Alzheimer’s; 3 of the 10 were older than 85 years. As people’s life expectancy increases, the number of people living with the disease-worldwide-could rise dramatically. Alzheimer’s disease remains quite misunderstood: final diagnoses are possible only after death, and even then doctors argue about the differences between Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, or senile dementia. However, advances in neuroscience and genetics are beginning to shed more light. This understanding provides the key to slowing or even stopping the destructive effects of this condition.

5. Cleaning up the oceans

Billions of tiny pieces of plastic — microplastics — float all over the ocean, even at the bottom of the Mariana trench. Most of this waste comes from bags or tubes that disintegrate over time. And they poison birds, fish, and people. Scientists fear that the impact on both human health and the environment will be too strong, and it may take centuries to clean hundreds of millions of tons of plastic accumulated over decades. Because pollution is so diffuse, it is difficult to eliminate, and although there are prototypes of methods to deal with massive pollution of ocean areas, there is no solution for coasts, seas and waterways.

6. Energy efficient desalination

There is about 50 times more salt water than fresh water on Earth. As the world population grows and the climate worsens, the need for fresh water becomes more acute. Israel has built the world’s largest reverse osmosis desalination plants and now receives most of the water for its household needs from the sea, but this method is too energy-intensive to be used worldwide. New types of membranes can help; also electrochemical methods can make salt water applicable for irrigation. With regard to technologies for adaptation to climate change, the creation of drinking water from the ocean should be a top priority.

7. Safe self-driving car

Autonomous cars have driven millions of kilometers on public roads. Pilot programs for the delivery and ordering of taxis are gradually being implemented more widely. However, cars without a driver are not yet ready to capture the roads as a whole. They have problems on busy roads and in snowy weather. If they could be made safe and secure, we could rethink transportation forever. Traffic jams would cease to exist as a phenomenon, and cities could be rebuilt because Parking would no longer be necessary. In addition, it is expected that self-driving cars will be able to reduce the number of fatal incidents on the roads.

8. Embodied artificial intelligence

Last fall, a video from Boston Dynamics appeared on the Internet, which captured the Atlas robot in all its glory. There he jumped the steps like a commando. And that was just two years after AlphaGo beat the world’s best go player. Atlas can not play go (he is embodied in the body of a robot, but is not a supercomputer), and AlphaGo can not run (but he is very smart, though disembodied). What happens if you shove AlphaGo’s consciousness into Atlas’s body? Many scientists say that true General artificial intelligence may depend on the ability to link internal computational processes to real things in the physical world, and that AI will acquire this ability by learning to interact with the physical world like humans and animals.

9. Earthquake prediction

More than 100,000 people died as a result of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and the Indian ocean tsunami in 2004, caused by one of the most powerful earthquakes, killed nearly a quarter of a million people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and other countries. We are able to predict hurricanes for days and weeks, but the earthquake still pop up unexpectedly. Forecasting earthquakes with some confidence in the medium term would allow planners to find long-term solutions. Warned even in a few hours, people could leave unsafe areas and save millions of lives.

10. Decoding the brain

Our brain remains a deep mystery to neuroscientists. Everything we think and remember, all our movements, must somehow be encoded in billions of neurons in our heads. But what code? There are many unknowns in understanding how our brain stores and transmits thoughts. Breaking this code could lead to a breakthrough in how we treat mental disorders like schizophrenia and autism. This will allow us to improve the interfaces that directly connect our brain to computers or even other people, and it will change the lives of people who are paralyzed by injuries or degenerative diseases.

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