Wars, elections and the economy are topics that are generally, and often rightly, considered key determinants of the future of humanity. However, we should not forget that history has shown that the greatest transformation of the human species is actually brought about by scientific or technological progress that only a handful of people know about in real time.
The word transistor appeared in print for the first time in a 1948 New York Times article on page 46, following a report on two new radio broadcasts. Seventy-five years later, the shows and their content have fallen into oblivion, and the transistor has greatly influenced our everyday life.
In the past year, artificial intelligence and weight loss drugs have taken the world by storm, temperature records have been broken, India has landed on the moon, and scientists agree that 2023 has brought dramatic insights and discoveries.
Artificial intelligence finally seems smart
It's hard to recognize technological milestones until a certain amount of time has passed, but 2023 is one of those rare years when we can safely say that the world has changed. It was the year artificial intelligence (AI) finally entered the mainstream.
In November 2022, California-based OPEN AI set the tone for 2023 by introducing ChatGPT, a versatile chatbot that thrust AI into the spotlight and sparked a global race to develop more powerful models.
ChatGPT has delighted users with its adaptability and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge. The technology industry - led by billion-dollar companies - was caught off guard by the success of a company's products with only a few hundred employees. Decision makers around the world are also caught off guard. Governments in the United States, Europe and China immediately began working on regulatory measures for artificial intelligence.
Why ChatGPT's success has been so spectacular. First, it is very affordable. Anyone with an Internet browser can access the most sophisticated AI on the planet. And secondly, it finally looks like the AI we were promised - like the ones from the movies, and even more natural than the computers from Star Trek.
The company OPEN AI abruptly dismissed its director before the end of the year Sam Altman, only to bring it back five days later with a new board of directors and apparently consolidated power.
The biggest questions about AI in 2024 are whether regulatory measures can be effective and flexible enough to keep pace with rapidly growing capabilities — and ultimately whether countries around the world can even agree on those guidelines.
We've been using AI for a long time without even knowing it, but we finally have something that works. This is not the end of the road for AI, far from it - it's actually just the beginning of something big.
India on the dark side of the moon
While Western billionaires were sending rockets into space that failed many, scientists in India were quietly working on something that no one had managed before. Their Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is the first mission to reach the south pole of the Moon - an unexplored area where reservoirs of frozen water are believed to still exist.
The success of Chandrayaan-3, launched in July 2023, showed the world that India is not only a major player in space, but also that a spacecraft can be successfully launched for $75 million. That's not a small sum, but it's much smaller than the budgets most other countries have for lunar missions.
By the way, July 2023 was very fruitful for the first endeavors in space. It began with the launch of the Euclid satellite designed to explore dark matter and dark energy with unprecedented precision. Just two weeks later, China successfully launched the world's first rocket using liquid methane-based rocket propulsion, demonstrating a potentially greener way of space travel at a significantly lower cost.
Two weeks after landing, Chandrayaan-3 was sent to sleep in the cold lunar night, never to wake up. But he achieved his goal. He detected sulfur on the surface of the Moon and showed that the surface of the Moon is a good insulator. With more versatility, lower costs, and greener rockets, it seems humanity may be on the verge of a new, more affordable era of space exploration.
The hottest year
A frog thrown into hot water will survive, while one that is slowly cooked will not notice until the temperature reaches a lethal level. The year 2023 was the warmest so far. The previous record was set seven years ago, in 2016.
The effects of the heat are piling up. Warmer oceans and atmospheres contributed to events that brought death and destruction at an alarming rate. In Libya, more than 10.000 people died when a flood swept a city into the sea. Fires ravaged the Greek islands and Canadian forests. Tropical Cyclone Fredi ravaged communities in East Africa that were already poverty-stricken. Drought and heat have made some areas uninhabitable.
The good news is that the answers already exist. Last year, the UK produced more green energy than ever before. Artificial intelligence has begun to do work that a million human forecasters could not achieve, analyzing weather and climate data at incredible speed. NASA's SWOT satellite has begun measuring where all the water on Earth is, helping to prevent future disasters.
People think they are smarter than frogs, but we will only save ourselves if we realize that we are frogs, heat sources, and mad scientists.
Lose weight with cookies
The world has a nutrition problem: 650 million adults are obese, meaning they have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30 kg/m2 and consume more calories than their bodies can use. On the other hand, 735 million people around the world are starving.
However, more people die from obesity than from malnutrition. That is why the discovery of a group of drugs known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor stimulants is welcome. These GLP-1 drugs were originally licensed to control diabetes and were later licensed as weight loss drugs. "Wegovy", the most famous of these drugs, works by reducing the level of glucose in the blood and in a way that makes people feel full more quickly during meals. In a two-year clinical trial with 304 people, subjects who used "Wegovy" lost 15% of body mass, while people from the control group lost only 3%. This year, we learned from a large, three-year study that Wegovy also reduces the risk of strokes, heart attacks and death from heart disease. It may seem like we can now eat as much as we want and get a shot for it, but there are side effects of taking the drug, such as nausea, vomiting, headaches, fatigue, and a possible risk of developing certain thyroid cancers. In addition, we must still find a way to feed the hungry.
Space delivery
On September 1,2th, a chunk of rock and dust taken from an asteroid named Bennu arrived in the Utah desert. This space delivery was the result of a seven-year NASA mission in which the agency's OSIRIS-REx probe traveled 4,5 billion miles to an asteroid to collect a sample. Benu, XNUMX billion years old, existed before Earth, so it could provide clues about how our planet was formed and what ingredients of life meteorites could have brought.
Initial analysis revealed evidence of water and high carbon content on Benue. While the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is already on its way to visit another asteroid, researchers on Earth will study the Bennu sample for two years and save some of the rock for later analysis. And while most of the rock will be analyzed behind closed doors, a small sample is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural Sciences.
Girls and "hard math"
In March, two teenage girls from New Orleans, Calcia Johnson i Some Jackson, presented a new mathematical proof of the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry at a regional meeting of the American Mathematical Society.
Johnson and Jackson were not the first to perform a trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem. However, their “conical waffle” proof using the sine rule and an infinite geometric sequence showed great creativity and mathematical agility. Their approach has some limitations, but it's nothing that can't be fixed.
Last year, Katrin Birbalsingh, a former adviser to the British government, was criticized after she said that girls were less likely to choose advanced level physics because it required knowledge of "hard maths". Kalsija and Nekdija showed how wrong she was.
Bird killer herbicides and pesticides
It's been a record-breaking year - and not in a good way when it comes to the environment. In addition to global warming, another natural disaster is underway: the rapid loss of wildlife.
Although it is urgent, the biodiversity crisis receives eight times less space in the media than the climate crisis. Over the past four decades, bird numbers across Europe have fallen by a staggering 550 million. Until now, the main causes were believed to be environmental loss and pollution. However, a team of researchers headed by Stanislas Rigal studied data on 190 species of birds at 20 locations in 000 states and concluded that the main killer of birds is agriculture. More precisely, the increased use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, which not only deprive birds of food, but directly affect their health.
Such large-scale studies are of crucial importance for decision-making and setting policy priorities. Let's hope that 2024 will bring positive changes in that area.
Embryo models based on stem cells
In June, a large number of papers were published describing how it is possible with cultures of pluripotent stem cells and, completely in a culture dish, to reach structures reminiscent of early human embryos after implantation. This generated significant media coverage, including the front pages of some newspapers. This was certainly worth the publicity - the experiments reveal the remarkable ability of stem cells to differentiate into relevant tissues that self-organize into the appropriate pattern.
It is hoped that stem cell-based embryo models will provide a practical and more “ethically acceptable” alternative to working with normal embryos. Scientists could learn a lot about how we develop and what can go wrong with congenital diseases, miscarriage and assisted reproduction (IVF) - and perhaps find solutions to these problems.
However, what is clear at this point is that even the best models are not equivalent to normal human embryos, and everyone agrees that the most rigorous test - implantation in the uterus - should not even be attempted. Currently, the vast majority, about 99 percent of them, do not even come close to resembling a human embryo. It is necessary to improve this if we want these models to have a purpose.
The artificial intelligence is finally looking like the one we were promised - like the AI from the movies, and even more natural than the computers from Star Trek
History has shown that the greatest transformation of the human species is actually brought about by scientific or technological progress that only a handful of people know about in real time.
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