In many ways, 2024 was a pivotal year for many technological upheavals, long coming crashing towards us. From new advances in AI, space travel to automated vehicles and robots, from carbon engineered clouds to carbon sequestration, from astronomical achievements in telescopy tech to decoding DNAs for genetic therapy, this past year has suddenly accumulated a lot of breakthroughs in pivotal technologies humanity has been striving in for decades. It’s a spectacular time to be in. It’s also uncomfortable and downright scary. The world as we know will soon change dramatically.

Quantum computing just became real and this time, the winner is Google

In many ways, 2024 was a pivotal year for many technological upheavals, long coming crashing towards us. From new advances in AI, space travel to automated vehicles and robots, from carbon engineered clouds to carbon sequestration, from astronomical achievements in telescopy tech to decoding DNAs for genetic therapy, this past year has suddenly accumulated a lot of breakthroughs in pivotal technologies humanity has been striving in for decades. It’s a spectacular time to be in. It’s also uncomfortable and downright scary. The world as we know will soon change dramatically.

Quantum computing just became real and this time, the winner is Google

Two weeks ago, Google’s quantum computing lab announced Willow, its new computer chip that takes five minutes to perform a task that’ll take today’s supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years to do. That’s more than the age of the Universe.

If computing becomes that efficient at the cost of a shampoo bottle, we will all be able to mine our own bitcoin with nail-sized computers. Google’s announcement has already shaken up the crypto industry, right after Trump’s second presidential win had made them bullish. At these speeds of computing, not only crypto, but banking and governmental systems and digital security are also predicted to fail.

AI and quantum computing have started a new era of digital tech race between US and China. After banning sales of semiconductors to China, a couple of months ago, the US government has finalised rules that will limit investments in critical technologies like AI and quantum, citing national security as a reason.

We have entered a new singularity

Frankly, we’ve already been grappling with tech singularity ever since ChatGPT was released and we started using AI to compose, summarise, design and create videos and photos for us. As Sergey Brin told me earlier this year in Google I/O, AI has gone way beyond anyone’s expectations.

When the 2024 Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded to computer scientists for their work in AI, it was clear there would be a gold rush to use this new technology in basic science. Potentially, artificial intelligence could be a new tool for the 21st century, as much like microscopes or telescopes were for the 17th century. Though there are challenges to this – science labs need engineers to create their own AI models to run simulations and massive amounts of data in their sub-field – we are already seeing new breakthroughs.

AI is being used with other technologies like CRISPR to create new proteins and improve precision, efficiency and affordability of genome editing. Gene therapy and customised medication for individuals will soon become a reality. Robotics has also been revitalised thanks to new directions in AI. Autonomous vehicles have become the norm on Bay Area roads, security robots and household robots are also making headway into our lives.

With the launch of Meta RayBan Smart Glasses, lens technology has finally caught up with Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams. Augmented reality is being introduced in cheaper, more accessible products. Solos has just launched a camera-equipped smart glass AirGoVision for $299 which has inbuilt AI. In 2025, we will see new, finer versions of AR gadgets that will allow us to scan the room, know names of strangers through face recognition and translate what we’re seeing through our glasses. Apple’s attempt at bulky virtual reality, the Vision Pro, didn’t take off, but it shows that the most style tech product company has committed to the AR/VR space.

There’s also been a quiet revolution in the area of decentralised web

As Big Tech strangles the internet and our communication with walled gardens, tired of monocultures of Internet, and of businessmen and politicians taking over, people online are moving towards decentralised subcultures, subreddits, newsletters, RSS feeds and even blogs. Earlier this year, folks at ActivityPub launched fediverse – a protocol much like phone porting, but for social media. Post anything on Instagram, X, SnapChat, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and all your followers will see it. If you want to move followers and content from one platform to another, you can. It’s still under the radar but has already been gaining ground thanks to walled frustrations. We will see more people choosing social network porting in 2025 and it will yet again change digital communications.

AI needs massive electricity, so fusion is back

As energy drove the industrial age, it’s set to drive these technological advances. Some estimates say that one ChatGPT query requires 10 times the electricity as a Google search. More electricity means more fossil fuels, pushing back any advances we’ve had tackling climate change.

Instead of tempering their pace, power-hungry Big Tech have instead powered up research in alternate fuels and clean energy to try and keep their Net Zero goals commitments. This year saw all Big Tech from Amazon to OpenAI to Google are setting up massive datacentres that’ll need lots of energy and fund carbon capture and fusion startups. Microsoft has already bought fusion power that Helion will begin producing, Alphabet is behind California-based TAE. Two global initiatives will push government-funded fusion energy in 2025 — ITER, a flagship intergovernmental fusion collaboration and SPARC, a reactor sitting in MIT that’ll be tested in the next year.

In November this year, COP29 agreed on international carbon market standards. This allows countries and companies to trade credits to meet their climate targets. Activities include protecting carbon sinks, but also clean-energy alternatives and carbon sequestration. Formalising this means the carbon capture startups and initiatives will get a huge leg-up and new infusion of funding. Already, Heirloom Carbon, a direct air capture company has secured $150 million. Though it’s still in a nascent stage, carbon capture and other technology initiatives have caught on the imagination of tech-optimistic billionaires and we will see more headway in this in the coming years.

Technology is rushing towards us at breakneck speeds and will change our worlds whether we like it or not

For a year now, through this column, I’ve told you about improbable technologies that I’ve witnessed in the Silicon Valley. AI-driven weather balloons that will give us precise weather data, longetivity startups seeing immortality and even security robots that monitor premises, and we’re still to share more with you.

Frankly, this neurotically addictive optimism of the Silicon Valley is slowly turning me into a believer. Join me, sit back and see 2025 play out, for that’s a story you might share with generations to come. Just about right now, we’re standing at cusps of technology breakthroughs that’ll change our lives and societies forever and we will need to make sense of it. And we, the humankind, are going to come at the other side with wins. After all, we’ve always been survivors. Happy New Year, everyone.