Ten trends of cutting-edge technology in 2023, AIGC will be more disruptive than the metaverse｜ifanRank
Standing in 2023, which was born in chaos 2022, we eagerly want to "make up" for the lost years, and look forward to reuniting with the world.
The world is changing drastically, and it is necessary to find the right direction as soon as possible to get life back on track.
The consumer electronics market ushered in a boom in terminal connectivity, data transmission and sharing.
AIGC is moving towards the "big application era" of instrumentality, universalization and industrialization.
The field of life is continuously subdivided, and the carnival of consumerism is ebbing. "Rational consumption" has become a new standard for "intelligence" judgment.
This year's ifanRank, we hope to find ideas and actions for you to make 2023 more stable, warmer and better.
2023, how to get better | ifanRank ①
In the post-epidemic era, 15 new life trends that deserve the most attention｜ifanRank②
In 2022, science and technology will continue to develop: machine learning models will continue to improve, the new energy landscape is being rewritten, the ups and downs cycle of chip manufacturing is still in progress, the knowledge of the universe will increase rapidly, and public health attention will increase significantly.
It is the responsibility of science and technology to seek and enhance human well-being.
Tools and people co-evolve.
We have captured ten trends that are expected to "change reality", indicating the direction of the wave of technology in 2023. Many breakthrough technologies contain long-term persistence and wise insight behind them, and stand out at the "right" opportunity, inspiring people to maintain the power to "change the world".
It is impossible not to say if to the history and not to say to the future.
Generative AI urgently needs "AI economy"
——ChatGPT has been online for five days, with more than one million registered people.
In August 2022, the artificial intelligence company Stability AI launched the Vincent graph model Stable Diffusion, through the "denoising mode", which improves the efficiency and accuracy of AI image generation to a new level. In December, Open AI's "chat" software ChatGPT "understands" the semantics of the interlocutor, and provides effective and continuous feedback with humans, almost reaching the point of "disgusting the real".
Since the beginning of this year, a series of AI tools, including Disco Diffusion, Dall-E 2, MidJourney and other "learning ability" explosive progress, and a lower threshold for use – home PC, simple interaction, all make consumers feel the generation The charm and challenges of AI.
It is the product of the double "evolution" of technology accumulation and development strategy, and it urgently needs to enter the commercialization track to achieve a virtuous circle.
The scenario of conversational AI is more basic and extensive, and it is expected to be applied to the marketing and service links of the B-side as soon as possible. The G end is expected to use generative AI in public services such as smart cities, digital government affairs, and big data platforms. The commercialization action for C-end consumers has already started.
Recently, Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. Once the deal is concluded, OpenAI's valuation will reach $29 billion. It is reported that Microsoft may integrate ChatGPT into Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and other applications so that customers can automatically generate text with simple prompts.
This move will change the way 1 billion people write documents, slideshows and emails.
Webb Telescope, Leading the Era of "Big Science" – Its Observation of the Big Bang 13.8 Billion Years Ago, the Childhood of the Universe
Launched at the end of 2021, the Webb Telescope will release the first batch of observation images in July 2022, including: long-time exposure photos of the sky area where the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3-7327 is located, the parent star WASP-96b of the exoplanet 96's light curve and transmission spectrum, an image of the Southern Ring Nebula, an image of "Stephan's Quintet" consisting of five galaxies, and an image of a region of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3324).
The above-mentioned images can be obtained, and the Webb telescope mainly depends on the "geographical advantage" – it is located on the line between the sun and the earth, and the Lagrange L2 point about 1.5 million kilometers outside the earth is hidden in a sunshade the size of a tennis court. The radiation of the sun, the earth, and the moon collects distant twilight and heat sources in the extreme cold.
It took 20 years and cost 10 billion U.S. dollars. The "debut" of the Webb telescope was delayed 14 years from the original plan, and the budget exceeded 20 times. Because Webb's orbital altitude is thousands of times higher than that of "Hubble". From lift-off to work, it must perform 344 key steps under the remote control of ground engineers, and if any step goes wrong, it will be "forbidden".
Webb's success demonstrates the value of Big Science. Different countries are thinking about the choice between big projects and small projects. Webb's success has made the government more confident in big scientific projects with high risks and high returns. In the next ten years, the data obtained by Webb can reshape human understanding of celestial bodies in the solar system and the formation mechanism of the solar system, and deepen human understanding of exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, the formation of various celestial bodies, and the universe itself.
Controllable nuclear fusion, dual-use for military and civilian use – In the past ten years, the efficiency of laser fusion energy has increased by 6 to 12 times
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) of the Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory in the United States achieved the energy gain of controllable nuclear fusion for the first time on December 5, that is, the ratio of output energy to input energy (Q value) is greater than 1.
Just after China signed more than 30 agreements with Saudi Arabia, covering fields such as information technology, genetics, mining, hydrogen energy, and manufacturing, the United States exposed the "explosive news" that nuclear fusion energy has achieved a net gain. The Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 will greatly increase the importance of traditional oil and gas. The global carbon reduction goal is imminent, and the competition among countries for clean energy technology paths is becoming more and more fierce.
Whether controllable nuclear fusion achieves energy gain has a large room for interpretation.
Judging from the Q value, the "energy gain" has been achieved in 2013, but there was no publicity at that time. There is still a long way to go to use controllable nuclear fusion to generate clean energy. Clean energy depends on the output/input energy ratio, that is, the ratio of the output electric energy to the total input energy in the whole process, and achieves a gain in the conversion of electric energy to electric energy, rather than looking at the Q value. The difficulty of nuclear fusion is that atoms under high temperature and pressure will turn into high-speed plasma. There are two ways to control plasma, one is inertial confinement fusion, and the other is magnetic confinement fusion. NIF's approach belongs to the inertial confinement fusion route, which is more suitable for military use.
Magnetic confinement fusion has the potential to produce clean energy. The mainstream device is the "Tokamak" proposed by the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in the Soviet Union in 1954, which relies on electric current and a ring coil to generate a strong magnetic field to confine atoms in a "doughnut"-style container. Its overall energy conversion efficiency is higher.
Chip manufacturing, from prosperity to decline – in 2022, the total market value of listed chip companies in the United States will evaporate about 1.5 trillion US dollars
After experiencing the "chip shortage" in 2021, the chip industry in 2022 will "hidden murderous intentions".
On the one hand, the market value of chips has fallen by two-fifths. In the environment of inflation, economic slowdown, partial blockade and cryptocurrency bear market, companies have to lower their revenue forecasts and lay off employees. On the other hand, the United States, the European Union, South Korea, and Japan have built "chip fences" one after another, and all plan to subsidize their "own" chip manufacturing industry by at least tens of billions of dollars in the next three years. From the market point of view, the oversupply is inevitable.
In August 2022, the United States promulgated the "Chip and Science Act" to restrict the export of chips and artificially suppress the income "prospects" of American chip companies. After all, in 2021, China, which imports more than 400 billion US dollars, will be the largest market for chip consumption. Chipmakers are pinning their hopes on new markets. Qualcomm sells chips to car companies. AMD, Intel and Nvidia are vying for cloud computing data centers. Intel is also getting into the "Internet of Things."
With the "help" of U.S. subsidies, fab factories of TSMC, South Korea's Samsung, and other "allies" are starting construction in the U.S. mainland. While openly supporting the US "chip fence", Asian chipmakers try to limit their support. In the long run, chip manufacturing, once the most closely globalized business, will eventually split apart.
In addition, RISC-V will break the "monopoly" of large companies. It is a design specification that stipulates the instruction set of computer chips and is open to the public. Anyone can use it to design chips for free. The previous ownership of chip design was monopolized by companies such as Intel and Arm, and the cost of customization was even higher. It is conceivable that, like open standards such as Ethernet, WiFI, and Bluetooth, RISC-V will soon be "ubiquitous."
Autonomous driving, the two worlds of ice and fire – the penetration rate of L2 passenger cars in China exceeds 23%
The "autonomous driving" in 2022 can be applied to the two "relatively simple" scenarios of highways and parking lots. The essence of the technology is high-precision map navigation, plus "visual" or radar perception. From January to September 2022, the assembly rate of L2 and L2+ level ADAS for passenger cars in China will reach 33.5%.
The "autonomous driving" function of all sales models has the characteristics of homogeneity and label expansion. It is not a long-term solution to win users by relying on price wars rather than technological innovation. Including Tesla, the self-driving technology of many car companies is still spinning. Musk has said many times that "self-driving cars are more difficult than imagined."
The difficulty is that an accurate vector space cannot be established. Everything around the car needs to form a digital signal and be mapped into the vector space. Google, Nvidia, and AWS have launched digital twin projects such as "Digital Earth", which will become an important infrastructure for autonomous driving in the future.
Consumers are expected to adopt a "subscription system" to pay for autonomous driving. Autonomous driving needs to play the core "use" – a safe efficiency tool, safety and efficiency are indispensable. Beginning in 2023, companies at the L2 and L2+ levels will enter a full-scale competition stage. Self-developed OEMs, traditional Tier1, market trends, and chip cycles are all unpredictable variables.
The core unit of autonomous driving is the chip, and how much computing power is required for each level of autonomous driving? There may be more rational answers in the new year. Different car companies have different configurations, and there are many elements of "volume" and "high premium". "New car-making forces" believe that L2+ vehicles require at least 200Tops of computing power, and they use 254Tops of NVIDIA Orin chips with a price of more than $500; 50 U.S. dollars.
The market is hot, technology is stagnant, and autonomous driving needs to "clear the roots."
Power batteries, the main battlefield of new energy – in ten years, sales of new energy vehicles in China have increased by 350 times
The competition of new energy vehicles is largely reflected in the competition of power batteries.
Since 2021, the biggest change in the power battery market is that the loading ratio of lithium iron phosphate batteries exceeds that of ternary lithium batteries. Along the lithium iron phosphate technology route, major battery manufacturers will develop new products in 2022, lithium manganese iron phosphate batteries. Ningde Times, Sunwoda, Yiwei Lithium Energy and BYD's Fudi battery have all been put into production.
High energy density and long cruising range. The theoretical energy density extreme value of lithium manganese iron phosphate battery can reach 230Wh/kg, which is 15%~20% higher than that of lithium iron phosphate battery, and there is no difference in material cost. Lithium manganese iron phosphate is not a new technology. BYD had tested it in 2013. At that time, the cycle life of the test product was very low, and the development was terminated in 2016.
The current technology is to mix ternary lithium in lithium manganese iron phosphate to solve the problems of low life and large internal resistance. Musk said he is optimistic about the technical route of adding manganese to batteries. Judging by the power battery industry, lithium manganese iron phosphate batteries are products with the greatest commercial potential under the lithium iron phosphate route.
mRNA vaccine, speed up "cure"
——It took only 2 years to develop a new coronavirus vaccine, and the average time for the development of a vaccine in the past was 48 years
A golden age of vaccine development is beginning. mRNA vaccines have been successfully put into use.
In the past, the process of vaccine development was very slow. According to data from the Global Development Center, the average time span from the discovery of pathogenic microorganisms to vaccine development is about 48 years (excluding smallpox and new coronaviruses), and the success rate does not exceed 39.6%. However, it took only 2 years to develop a new coronavirus vaccine, and put mRNA technology into practice; vaccines against diseases such as malaria, influenza and HIV have also made major breakthroughs.
In the near future, the breakthrough point for many deadly public health challenges will shift from treatment to prevention.
Several mRNA vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and genital herpes, among others, are being developed by Germany's BioNTech and are expected to undergo their first human trials in the coming weeks. The company is also working with Pfizer to test an mRNA vaccine candidate aimed at reducing the incidence of shingles. For genital herpes virus and herpes zoster virus, the US company Moderna has developed a variety of mRNA vaccine candidates.
The COVID-19 and influenza dual-combination mRNA vaccine jointly developed by BioNTech and Pfizer began its phase 1 trial in November 2022. The vaccine contains mRNA strains that encode binding proteins for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the BA.4/BA.5 variants of the Omicron virus, and four influenza virus variants.
Blockchain, regulation looming – Venture capitalists invest more than $30 billion in cryptocurrency and blockchain projects in 2022, second only to 2021's $31 billion
In 2022, the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates, global liquidity will tighten, and the encryption industry will enter a deep bearish state.
The total market value of Crypto assets has shrunk by more than 2.2 trillion US dollars, and the business scale of CEFI institutions has dropped by about 71.4%. The industry has been hit hard after the Terra crash, 3AC and FTX bankruptcy incidents, including large institutions such as BlockFi and Genesis that have encountered bankruptcy or liquidation crises.
At the same time, the construction of the industry has not stopped: the total investment and financing in the primary market has exceeded 27.7 billion US dollars; Ethereum has opened a new era of PoS, and Layer 2 has developed rapidly; X2E has awakened GameFi’s new business model, etc.
The Ethereum merger is the second network upgrade in this series. It combines the existing two independent blockchains in the ecology, the Ethereum mainnet and the beacon chain, while retaining the original function of executing smart contracts and complete historical data. and user status at the same time to realize the switching of the consensus mechanism. The Ethereum merger is a milestone event for the cryptocurrency market, and ETH is likely to enter deflation in the future.
For the industry, the merger means the end of the era of large-scale graphics card mining, and miners have to flock to alternative chains or quit. As Ethereum slowly makes up for its performance shortcomings, it will inevitably squeeze other PoS public chain ecosystems in the future. The merger is also an important change for Ethereum in response to the global call to reduce its carbon footprint. After transitioning to Proof of Stake, annual global energy consumption will thus be reduced by approximately 0.4%.
In 2022, the United States and the European Union will successively promulgate measures and bills related to "digital asset management". These encryption regulatory frameworks will have a huge impact on the global encryption market. The regulatory efficiency and law enforcement in the region can also provide a model for other countries' regulation.
Planetary Defense Program, Earth "Shield" Activated – Over the past 20+ years, planetary monitoring has identified more than 98% of asteroids that threaten humanity with extinction
In September 2022, the success of the DART program is a critical first step towards planetary defense for mankind.
NASA successfully used a spacecraft (Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART) to hit Dimorphos, a small celestial body with a diameter of 160 meters, and shortened its orbit by 1%. Hubble, Webb and other space-based telescopes also focused on observing this event.
Over the past 20+ years, planetary monitoring has identified more than 98 percent of asteroids that pose an extinction threat to humanity. DART is the first successful deflection experiment and represents an important advance in the ability of humans to resist existential risks.
According to NASA research, about 40% of large asteroids have a diameter of more than 140 meters, and these planets may pose a threat to the earth. If a potentially hazardous asteroid is discovered five or ten years before the expected impact, the "kinetic impact" approach could be effective in protecting Earth.
Ancient DNA Analysis Unravels Genetic Mysteries — Microscopic Traces of Neanderthal DNA Can Be Analyzed in the Urinated Dirt Without Needing Teeth or Bones
In 2022, Svante Pääbo, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, will be awarded the Nobel Prize for his related fundamental work. Through ancient DNA analysis, we have discovered two extinct human races "Homo luzonensis" and "Denisovans", and also know that modern humans carry a large number of Denisovans and Ni Anderthal DNA.
The number of known ancient human individuals for which full-genome data are available has increased rapidly, from 5 in 2010 to 5,550 in 2020. The "rationality" of the caste system is under attack as new technologies show that Indians have diverse ancestry. DNA from a 2,500-year-old battlefield in Sicily shows that members of the ancient Greek army were more diverse than historians thought.
Ancient samples could also unlock modern health mysteries. In 2021, scientists discovered a single mutation in a gene that made people 40 percent more likely to survive the bubonic plague, but it could also cause autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease.
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