Emerging technologies of today have the power to reshape industries, achieve significant scale, and shift the economic landscape.

As Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld details below, from AI-driven advancements in disease detection to carbon-capturing microbes, these technologies stand to improve future society. Meanwhile, greater efficiencies in wireless connectivity allow networks to drive higher data rates and enhance robust communications across 6G networks and the industrial internet-of-things.

The above graphic shows the top 10 emerging technologies for 2024, based on data from the World Economic Forum.

Methodology

Technologies were selected from a survey based on 300 nominations across 29 countries, according to the below criteria:

• Power: The technology could critically transform industries and established behaviors

• Applicability: The technology has the potential for widespread use and benefit to economies

• Novelty: It is in the early stages of development, but yet to be widely used

• Depth: More than one country is developing and investing in the technology

Along with this criteria, technologies were selected based on their potential to make a significant impact on society over the next three to five years.

Leading Emerging Technologies of 2024

Below, we show the most promising emerging technologies of 2024:

Overall, AI-related technologies were driving two of the top 10 technologies across healthcare and data privacy industries.

Although AI for scientific discovery has been developing for some time, the current rate of innovation could accelerate the diagnoses and the treatment of diseases using language modelling. Along with this, deep learning, a subset of AI, can be used to further scientific discoveries.

In the realm of privacy-enhancing technologies, the use of “synthetic data” could play an important role in protecting sensitive data across large datasets. This involves using data that replicates the original data but does not include specific details that may be connected to people.

As a warming planet and extreme weather events increasingly disrupt global society, four of the top 10 technologies were focused on sustainable solutions. One compelling technology is carbon-capturing microbes, which are engineered through synthetic biology to absorb greenhouse gases. Not only that, these organisms can convert CO₂ into fertilizers and fuels through using sunlight to transform gases.

In addition, elastocalorics are a technology that increase the energy efficiency of heating and cooling systems. This is done through elastocaloric material getting hotter or cooler under exposure to mechanical stress. Importantly, this technology doesn’t rely on potentially environmentally harmful refrigerant gases, as global demand for space cooling is projected to triple in the next three decades.