AI, RIS, HAPS, 6G, AR/VR – five future techs to change the world

The World Economic Forum has listed 10 emerging technologies with the “greatest potential to make a positive impact in the world in the next three-to-five years”. Which is a curious kind of exercise, as it turns out, because five years is not long in tech, and because its candidate technologies are part of an annual investigation, which is now in its twelfth edition. As such, most of them sound either dressed-up old familiars or far-out new trends. 

For example, it talks about ‘AI for scientific discovery’, which is the original application of AI anyway, and ‘immersive technology for the built world’, which is actually just about how industrial ‘metaverse’ technologies apply to the construction industry. It also talks about high-altitude platform stations (HAPS), which have been floated forever, and ‘integrated sensing and communication”, which is just another way of saying 6G, and which is described in functional terms like a new IoT infrastructure, and is six years off its first commercial deployment, at least. 

So yeah, it is a slightly weird mix. But the more general point is that – with a three-speed gear-change in the underlying computing, networking, and analytics infrastructure – these technologies (or ‘vertical’ applications of them) will be contenders in the next three-to-five years to drive “economic and societal change”. It writes: “In addition to promising major benefits to societies and economies, these emerging technologies must also be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers, and expected to achieve considerable scale within five years.”

The World Economic Forum polled 300-odd “world-leading academics and experts” about them, apparently. The full report is available here; it includes interesting figures about the size of national R&D budgets going on the technologies. Jeremy Jurgens, managing director at the World Economic Forum, said: “Organisations make better choices when they understand the factors shaping the future. The report identifies technologies poised to significantly influence societies and economies. It also spotlights technologies with immense potential for revolutionising connectivity, addressing the urgent challenges of climate change and driving innovation across various fields.”

Below, RCR Wireless has summarised (only) five from the full list of 10 – which seem most tangible, or else most relevant to readers. The other entries from the list are: privacy-enhancing technologies (about ‘synthetic data’), elastocalorics (“for cooling solutions”), carbon-capturing microbes (to “convert emissions into valuable products like biofuels”), alternative livestock feeds (“from single-cell proteins, algae, and food waste”), and genomics for transplants (using “genetically engineered organs”). 

1 | AI (for scientific discovery) 

“The world is on the cusp of an AI-driven revolution in how new knowledge is discovered and used,” says the report. But the world-changing application of AI is not chatbots in call centres, enterprise administration, or industrial plants – of course – but in the pursuit of scientific discovery. Advances in deep learning, generative AI, and foundation models are as relevant here, and more impactful in terms of “global challenges”, as per the focus of the study. 

The same ethical and technical issues – around theft and plagiarism, hallucination and bias, and privacy and regulation – have to be solved. But the collaboration is the same. “Scientists are building and using large language models to mine scientific literature, working with AI chatbots to brainstorm new hypotheses, creating AI models capable of analysing vast amounts of scientific data, and using deep learning to make discoveries.”

But the stakes are also different, here. It is not about imitating Van Gogh or The Beatles, or summarising notes and cheating in exams, or memorialising entrenched industrial knowhow; this is about treatment and prevention of disease, discovery of sustainable technologies and techniques, deeper understanding of biology and psychology. “AI allows connections and inferences that lie beyond the capacity of human minds alone,” write the authors.

2 | RIS (for efficient networks)

“Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) [technology]… uses metamaterials, smart algorithms, and advanced signal processing to turn ordinary walls and surfaces into intelligent components for wireless comms,” explains the report. They are like ‘smart mirrors’, it says, where electromagnetic waves are reflected and refracted with total precision, and in response to “real-time” demands – something like a dynamic laser warning system in a high-security cell. 

“RIS turns ordinary walls and surfaces into intelligent components for wireless communication while enhancing energy efficiency in wireless networks,” it continues. The point is to improve capacity and throughput, and also to reduce interference and the burden on original cellular access infrastructure. The launch of 6G (“by 2030”) will “intensify pressure to manage traffic more efficiently”, it says. 

It holds promise for “numerous applications, from smart factories to vehicular networks​​”. RIS technology has already been integrated into wireless networks; RIS hardware has already exhibited “impressive capabilities”; RIS projects by the likes of Rhode & Schwarz, Huawei, ZTE, Intel, and Samsung send a “strong signal”, the report says. Lower-power IoT and higher-reliability V2X applications are on the cards, apparently. 

Of course, age-old challenges around costs, standards, and regulations; let alone the technical rigmarole of making it work. But the report concludes: “RIS [is] on the cusp of exponential adoption and growth… [It] will be central to the telecommunications landscape in the coming years.”

3 | HAPS (for the digital divide) 

Another networking solution, albeit one that has existed for a while; the idea of high altitude platform stations (HAPS), on blimps and balloons at stratospheric altitudes (20 kilometres up), will extend mobile access to remote regions and solve the digital divide, apparently. The reason for the excitement is multifold: better solar tech, better battery tech, better material tech, better antenna tech, plus advances in avionics, and more spectrum and new aviation standards.

The authors write: “HAPS can deliver connectivity, coverage, and performance enhancements that neither satellites nor terrestrial towers can match, particularly in areas with difficult terrains such as mountains, jungles, or deserts.” Why balloons are better than satellites in such terrains is not clear; maybe just because of signal distances. But the digital-divide story is clear: a third of people worldwide are offline, says the ITU. HAPS will help with disaster management and environmental monitoring, as well, says the report. 

It cites projects by Airbus (Zephyr), Thales (Stratobus), and Boeing (Aurora), and says the HAPS market will grow at a respectable compound annual rate of 10.4 percent over the next decade (starting from $783 million today). It writes: “HAPS [technology is] now economically viable for commercial and real-world deployment.” But it also warns that “current regulatory frameworks are not fit for purpose”, and that the likes of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are pursuing new policies and guidance to make it happen.

4 | 6G (for sensor networks)

Ah, the big one (for an RCR crowd): incoming 6G technology, which is being talked about almost as much as brand-new (unfinished, unproven, unprofitable) 5G technology. The World Economic Forum writes: “The advent of 6G networks facilitates simultaneous data collection (sensing) and transmission (communication). This enables environmental monitoring systems that help in smart agriculture, environmental conservation and urban planning.”

You see the problem, again, right? That global-national first-world cellular networks, built for consumers and prosumers, are being upgraded for enterprises and industries – and made subservient to the monetizable big-tech pyrotechnics they are required to support. The difference with 6G is this integration of “sensing and communication”, which makes it sound like an IoT infrastructure from the get-go.

The story in the report goes like this: “Decades of separate development in sensing and communications technologies have resulted in a surplus of devices with overlapping functions, leading to device congestion, spectrum inefficiency and financial loss. Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) addresses this by bringing sensing and communication capabilities into a single system, facilitating simultaneous data collection and transmission. 

“This integration optimises hardware, energy, and cost efficiency while also enabling novel applications beyond conventional communication paradigms. ISAC makes wireless networks environment-aware, enabling capabilities like localisation, environment mapping, and infrastructure monitoring.” It goes on to list a bunch of IoT apps (air quality, water quality, soil moisture) and a bunch of IoT fields (smart cities, agriculture, utilities, conservation).

But the description also patches in the RIS angle (see above) to discuss optical-wireless ISAC tech (“a particularly exciting advancement”) which also integrates lighting and display systems so that “illuminated surfaces can serve as network nodes, facilitating communication and sensing without electromagnetic interference”. But the applications are the same – as with IoT, as with 5G: “smart healthcare and industrial manufacturing”, it writes.

5 | Metaverse (for construction)

Or how the metaverse finds its metier in the construction industry, specifically. Basically, the World Economic Forum reckons that the construction industry, responsible for 40 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, has been slow to respond to the Industry 4.0 movement, compared to other sectors, but also stands to gain more from it. In particular, it says the combination of digital twins, underpinned by new AI tools, given life in augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) applications, will change the face of construction in the next decade.

It writes: “As major tech platforms search for utility in the metaverse, one industry stands poised for transformation: construction. Immersive and AI-driven immersive reality tools for the built world allow designers and construction professionals to check the congruence between the physical and digital, ensuring accuracy and safety and advancing sustainability.” Its need for digital augmentation is compounded as business booms and labour vanishes. The US construction industry will find itself short by 454,000 workers by next year (2025), it writes. 

“Supply is now critically low… The metaverse has the potential to mitigate skill and labour shortages through the creation of immersive learning and training environments, regardless of location, for professionals in the architecture, engineering and construction industries.” The “next leap forward” is probably the incorporation of generative AI, it argues, citing “text-to-building information modelling” as a way to convert textual prompts into three-dimensional models, covering all “safety information and other metadata”. 

Stringent guardrails and high confidence will be required.