The yr 2022, within the tech world, was one in every of massive leaps and even larger pratfalls.
The falls included a few of the business’s most recognizable names. Sam Bankman-Fried started the yr as the largest movie star in crypto, with a internet price of greater than $20 billion, and ends it as a disgraced pariah who’s facing criminal fraud charges. Elon Musk started 2022 because the world’s richest man, with a thriving electrical automobile firm and a reputation synonymous with success; he ends it greater than $100 billion poorer, because the bitter and beleaguered owner of a social media firm that appears to be ruining his life.
The tech business struggled, too, with harsh macroeconomic conditions, together with excessive inflation and rising rates of interest. Because the sector’s decade of hypergrowth got here to an finish, start-ups died, tech giants minimize perks and laid off staff, and buyers’ goals of a brand new, crypto-fied web often called “web3” light into oblivion.
However focusing solely on what went fallacious dangers lacking the various noble, intelligent and socially priceless tech initiatives that made progress this yr.
For a number of years now, I’ve highlighted these sorts of initiatives in my annual Good Tech Awards column. These aren’t essentially applied sciences that I’m certain will enhance the world, whereas inflicting no issues in any respect. They’re instruments that I imagine may enhance the world, or assist handle thorny societal challenges. A few of them may additionally go fairly badly, in the event that they’re mismanaged or co-opted in dangerous methods.
There have been many to select from this yr. Right here’s what made the ultimate minimize.
To OpenAI and the makers of Midjourney and Secure Diffusion, for proving that A.I. can create
The splashiest tech breakthrough of the yr, by a major margin, was the growth in “generative A.I.” — a time period for the brand new sort of synthetic intelligence apps, skilled on huge quantities of information, that may create new media objects out of skinny air.
This yr, A.I. picture turbines like DALL-E 2, Secure Diffusion and Midjourney dazzled users (including me) with their creations and set off a Cambrian explosion of latest, ultracapable A.I. instruments. In current weeks, ChatGPT, a text-generating A.I. constructed by OpenAI, became a viral sensation (and each instructor’s worst nightmare) when it began cranking out time period papers, unique poetry and dealing snippets of code.
Some credit score for the generative A.I. growth ought to go to Google, which created a lot of the foundational know-how. However this yr, Google (which has stored most of its A.I. experiments personal, to its recent chagrin) obtained one-upped by OpenAI, in addition to the makers of Midjourney and Secure Diffusion, all of which launched public-facing merchandise that allowed tens of millions of individuals to expertise generative A.I. for themselves.
The final word results of generative A.I. are nonetheless unknown. Some individuals argue that these apps will destroy tens of millions of jobs, whereas others argue that they’ll be a boon to human creativity. However whether or not you’re an A.I. optimist or pessimist, this yr’s advances imply that we’re now not debating theoretical prices and advantages — the instruments have arrived, and we now get to resolve tips on how to use them.
To Ethereum builders, for pulling off the merge
I do know, I do know. Placing a crypto undertaking in a “good tech” listing in 2022 looks like placing credit score default swaps in a “cool monetary improvements” listing in 2008.
However whereas the crypto business took a nosedive this yr — wiping out trillions of {dollars} in worth and leaving many buyers empty-handed — there was no less than one brilliant spot. In September, Ethereum, the community behind the second most precious cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, completed what was known as “the merge” — a hulking, years-in-the-making undertaking to modify Ethereum from an energy-guzzling type of blockchain often called “proof of labor” to a a lot greener type of blockchain often called “proof of stake.”
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The swap, which crypto builders in comparison with attempting to swap a aircraft’s engine in midair, was a smashing success, and minimize the vitality required to energy Ethereum by greater than 99 p.c. (It didn’t, nonetheless, enhance the value of the cryptocurrency, Ether, which ended the yr down practically 70 p.c.)
To Residing Carbon, Twelve and BeeHero, for turning tech on the local weather disaster
Whereas 2022 was a horrible yr for start-up fund-raising basically, it was an amazing yr for local weather tech start-ups, which raised billions of {dollars} to deliver climate-friendly applied sciences to market.
There are too many promising local weather tech start-ups to call — and, to be sincere, I don’t know sufficient about local weather science to inform which of them stand one of the best likelihood of succeeding — however a number of that caught my eye this yr have been Residing Carbon, Twelve and BeeHero.
Living Carbon, a three-year-old California start-up, is genetically engineering timber and different vegetation to seize and retailer extra carbon from the environment. These G.M.O. supertrees, the corporate claims, develop bigger and faster than normal trees and may survive in soil with metallic concentrations that might be poisonous to different vegetation.
Twelve, which is predicated in Berkeley, Calif., is utilizing a novel electrochemical course of to show carbon dioxide into industrial merchandise as assorted as sun shades and jet gas. The corporate raised a $130 million funding round this yr and struck offers with firms like Mercedes-Benz and Procter & Gamble.
BeeHero, which was began in Israel in 2017, is utilizing new know-how to deal with issues dealing with one of the necessary elements of our world meals provide: bees. Bees pollinate greater than one-third of all crops, however they’re dying off at alarming charges, setting off fears of a meals scarcity. To deal with this, BeeHero developed a “precision pollination platform” — principally, a bee-tracking sensor system that permits for industrial beekeepers to observe the well being and productiveness of their hives in actual time. The corporate raised a $42 million Series B (Collection Bee?) spherical this yr from buyers together with Normal Mills.
To the Nationwide Ignition Facility, Commonwealth Fusion Programs and Helion, for conserving the fusion dream alive
Nuclear fusion, an emissions-free type of vitality technology that has lengthy been considered because the “holy grail of vitality,” took a number of necessary steps towards actuality this yr.
The most important fusion information of the yr got here only a few weeks in the past when scientists on the Nationwide Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Nationwide Laboratory in California crossed a major threshold often called “ignition,” making a fusion response that generated extra vitality than it took to supply. That breakthrough was hailed by officers together with Jennifer M. Granholm, the secretary of vitality, who referred to as it a “landmark achievement.”
Many start-ups have additionally been plugging away on fusion. One, Helion Vitality, has raised lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} from well-known buyers together with Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz and Peter Thiel to create reasonably priced, mass-market fusion know-how. Helion says it plans to create vitality with its subsequent fusion reactor, Polaris, by 2024. One other firm, Commonwealth Fusion Programs, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how in 2018, is utilizing an array of powerful magnets to energy its prototype fusion machine exterior Boston, and plans to have it up and operating by 2025.
Experts have cautioned that regardless of the newest breakthroughs, reasonably priced fusion energy is probably not broadly accessible for years. However this yr, each the private and non-private sectors supplied a glimpse of a fusion-powered future.
To Locket, for making photo-sharing enjoyable once more
If 2022 was the yr when social media died, it was additionally the yr when start-ups started attempting to recapture what had made social media enjoyable within the first place.
One app I’ve liked utilizing this yr is Locket. It’s a quite simple premise — a widget that’s put in in your smartphone’s house display, making a form of digital picture body that your closest mates and family members can add photographs to.
Locket was created by Matt Moss, a younger developer who needed a method to ship photographs to his long-distance girlfriend; this yr, the app rapidly grew to tens of millions of customers, raised a major funding round and won an Apple cultural impact award. There aren’t any filters, preening influencers, data-harvesting schemes or algorithmic feeds on Locket — it’s simply a straightforward, no-frills method to share photographs together with your family members.
My spouse and I began utilizing Locket this yr to share photographs of our child, in a manner that wouldn’t require us digging by means of textual content chains or enormous picture albums to seek out them afterward. It’s not the tech product I’ve used most frequently, or the one I feel will create essentially the most internet good for society. Nevertheless it’s enjoyable, uncomplicated and respectful of its customers — three qualities to which extra tech merchandise ought to aspire.