Upcoming and emerging technologies that have the potential to significantly change our lives over the next 5-15 years — what they are, why they matter, and what kinds of challenges they could bring.
Key Technologies to Watch Agentic AI / Autonomous AI Agents AI systems that don’t just respond to prompts but can initiate actions, plan, monitor themselves, adapt, make decisions on their own. Eg: automatically scheduling things, managing workflows, or optimising supply chains. Technology Magazine +2 Forbes +2 Why it matters: boosts productivity, could reduce human oversight in many tasks. Challenges: accountability, alignment (making sure they behave in ways humans want), ethics, safety. Quantum Computing & Quantum-AI Integration Powerful quantum computers could solve classes of problems that are essentially infeasible today (e.g. molecular simulation/drug discovery, optimising large systems, cryptography). Some efforts are underway to combine quantum-generated data with AI models to improve performance. World Economic Forum +3 Quantinuum +3 Analytics Insight +3 Why it matters: could accelerate scientific discovery, lead to new materials, faster optimization, ...
