The appliance of science: hope and fear in tomorrow’s world

Meteorologists can now reliably tell us if it is going to rain tomorrow, but wouldn’t dream of forecasting rain a year from now. Similarly, scientists find it much easier to predict what the world will look like in the next decade rather than in a century. This is because the technology of tomorrow relies on the science of today – it is only after we have understood a certain concept that we can think about how to put it to use. A famous example is Michael Faraday’s research into electricity and magnetism in the 1830s. It was only decades later that others saw how to use this new knowledge to build electric motors and power generators, inventions that transformed our world. Sometimes, of course, scientific discoveries lead to completely unforeseen applications – the internet is one such example.

But what about 2018? Surely the world won’t look too different? All I can say for certain is there are three technologies we’re going hear much more about next year, even more than we have done this year. The first is the incredible opportunities opening up in medicine thanks to advances in gene editing. Just this year, we saw the development of techniques that allow for single molecules on DNA to be tweaked or replaced, with the potential to reverse genetic mutations responsible for a whole host of terrible conditions. Soon we will be able to remove, very precisely, a faulty gene responsible for diseased cells, and replace it with the “healthy”, correctly functioning version, thus treating genetic disorders, such as sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. The flip side is that this advance opens up the insidious possibility of modifying the genome in an embryo (so-called germline editing) leading, potentially, to designer babies and genetically modified superhumans. Debate about the ethics of such techniques needs to be had, and quickly.

We are also going to be hearing more about advances in AI and robotics. One recent development is “machine learning”. By making use of Big Data – huge caches of information that can be analysed for patterns and trends in human behaviour – this AI technology, known as “deep learning”, is really taking off. AI can now look for and find patterns in huge collections of data. These include, for example, the current speed and location of every vehicle on a city’s roads, with the current state of every traffic light; or the medical records from every regional or national hospital, detailing every patient’s symptoms, drug dosages and results. While regulations need to be put in place for this, try not to worry too much – Skynet will not be taking over the world just yet.

We’ll also hear more about advances in energy, thanks to continuing plummeting costs of renewables such as solar and wind, and because of advances in energy-storage technologies – basically super-batteries that will be used in everything from our smart phones to our electric cars. Looking further ahead, you can be sure that within a decade or two we will have fridges that will tell the supermarket you’re out of milk, AI-controlled smart cities, fully immersive virtual-reality, augmented reality superimposed directly on to our retinas, even invisibility cloaks. But we cannot allow ourselves to be propelled headlong into an unknown future without carefully exploring the implications, both ethical and practical, of our discoveries and their applications. Scientific knowledge in itself is neither good nor evil – it’s the way we use it that matters.

What’s Next? Even Scientists Can’t Predict the Future – or Can They? edited by Jim Al-Khalili is published by Profile Books at £8.99. To order a copy for £6.99, go to guardianbookshop.com