I would say “High Temperatur Superconductor”. If they can be made cheaply, they solve our Energy Problems in almost every way. Turbines will become more effective, Transport of Energy cheap and lossless and storage crazy effective. They will also revolitionize meassurement of magnetic fields witch will have a huge impact on medicin and other fields.
Wow, that must be the best answer yet, at least from my ignorant point of view about the feasibility. I am extremely fascinated by material science. Are there any promising lines of research for this?
Yes. Every now and then we get a paper claiming that they found a HTSC. It always is a big deal because they are considered the holy grail of solid state physics. Later we find that it’s a mistake.
We are pretty good though. Records are in the area of −135 °C (138K, -211°F) but the phenomenon was thought to be at a few Kelvin max in the last century.
The big BUT is that it’s science. Meaning that it is not granted that such a material (superconducting at ambient temperature and pressure) even exists
Finding new and unique ways to make parabolic mirrors more efficiently and inexpensively
Imagine being into generative AI when the moon is literally red as I type this. You could be looking at the Orion Nebula right now instead of staring at a screen playing charades with a soulless marionette dancing under the hands of billionaires who you’re giving a direct line straight into your brain, bypassing all critical thought
In everything that has a realistic chance to stop or reverse climate change
how about pocket computers with the power of a smartphone but the common sense usability of a goddamn graphing calculator? i’m sitting on a magic rectangle with more computing power than the apollo mission and it doesn’t even let me blink the LED without installing an app?? these things should legally have to come with a scripting environment.
As someone who never managed to work with a graphing calculator, you made me want this.
Steam Deck is a step in the right direction but a bit too big
cure for tinnitus
Software that is both ridiculously easy to use and able to bypass any and all DRM schemes past, present, and future. As a firm believer that any form of computer (not including game consoles because I don’t care about them) software that severely limits when, where, and how you can use your legally purchased games, movies, e-books, etcetera, should be outright illegal, this is my answer.
Photonics.
We are so close it’s killing me.
Can you expand on the technology and use cases?
Healthcare, food, and housing for the poor.
Climate change
Kind of a two-fer right there. Without “AI” sucking up so much power, we’d already be better off climate-wise.
True, but still only marginally.
I think concrete is still king.
I would specifically pick Fusion research.
That’s not a single endeavor, like, at all.
Neither is ‘AI’
I wrote Generative AI. Do you want to put the two on the same scale of complexity?
generative ai is not one thing.
I agree. Still it is a set with way fewer elements than action against climate change. Also, the nature of operations in the latter case is way more diversified than in the development of the former.
It is only my opinion though, you may find Generative AI a hydra compared to the other.
By the way, the money would be well spent indeed but not even close to enough for a sustainable change.
idk about that last part actually. some of the stuff we can do for the climate we just aren’t doing.
also we could just hire a few hitmen
Buying companies that create a lot of pollution and closing them down. (Coal mines/plants, oil firms, single use plastic suppliers, etc)
Another big one would be buying up pharma companies an their patents and releasing everything under creative commons license.
It is a singular endeavor with tons of moving parts, like pretty much every modern endeavor.
My problem with counting all climate change is that the goal itself is not unique: there are atmospheric greenhouse gasses to lower, which are something completely different than the acidification of the oceans, which are completely different from deforestation.
And the effects themselves are, it’s true, all originated from an imbalance in a system, but exactly because climate is a complex system, they differ wildly.
Cryptocurrency.
Kidding! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I’m sure that will ruffle someone’s feathers for a fraction of a second.
Does vegan based meat/milk alternatives count as a technology sector? The moment we figure out a way to actually seriously imitate high quality steaks and 2% cow milk with it being indistinguishable and half the price I think that will hurt factory farming which is a bit of a domino effect that would lead to less co2 and methane produced, less agricultural effort wasted on feeding animals, that kind of thing.
Liberate Ukraine 🇺🇦
Torn between up voting the sentiment and down voting politics - I really don’t think this counts as a tech endeavor.
You are right actually. I didn’t read well 🙃
Cultured Meat. Without relying on any major breakthroughs, a price competitive with “traditional” meat is feasible with a few rather reasonable and conservative assumptions and developments. Dropping cows as meat source globally alone might be sufficient to slow down further climate change significantly.
The problem is that we can’t make an immune system and don’t even know where to begin on that problem
Why would I need an immune system in CM? This is food. It’s cells, generally on a scaffold, that look like either ground meat or a steak or whatever you want. If you mean vasculature: That is an issue if you want to print organs or large, intact tissue, less so for foodstuffs.
Lack of immune system means everything has to be perfectly sterile, it has been the entire problem with scaling up. Entire batches regularly rot.
there is currently no viable solution to this, that’s why investors are backing out.
I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of respectable answers, but keep in mind that secretly, everyone is actually thinking sex robots.
And if they were not, they should have been.
Really? Cause I was thinking climate solving, fusion powered sex robots.
The smart phone doesn’t do one thing, why shouldn’t my robot?
Who said anything about one thing? My robot is capable of performing 370 different sex acts! And before you ask, yes, even THAT one.
Which is an application that generative AI is important for, ironically.
Who wants an intelligent sex bot? You could as well do regular dating.
Speak for yourself, I want a hug bot.
That costs extra.
I’m fairly certain that we could actually fully automate food production, and might even be able to automate each step from farm to distribution with a little additional effort. The major obstacle that I can tell seems to be the upfront cost of the precision machines necessary to handle harvesting, automating the planting and care has already been accomplished.
Public education.
