Video Editors: Purnendu Pritam & Sandeep Suman
Are you a cricket and football fan, but too lazy to go to the stadium? But what if the stadium comes to your house? What if your customised robot took care of all your daily chores? Here are five technologies that will make your life simpler in 2020.
Mixed Reality
Imagine you want to watch an ongoing match at Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in the comfort of your home but you also want the stadium experience in your living room. In such a situation, you can count on mixed reality technology to come to your rescue. Watching the match on a virtual reality headset will be a simulation of the live experience. The VR headset will stream the match live and also project stats with the help of augmented reality.
These days, AI-powered chatbots can not only conduct a conversation via audio or text but can also be made more powerful through mixed reality.
Robots To Rule The Future
Last May, Fidelity Investments created a prototype VR financial advisor named Cora to answer client queries. Despite the hype around it, the big question that remains is if it is safe to seek financial advice from a VR Advisor?
In August 2018, Ranjit Srivastava, a 38-year-old Ranchi-based software engineer created an indigenously developed humanoid robot named ‘Rashmi'. Rashmi can listen to users’ queries and reply to them. Rashmi is a prototype, but such robots will soon enter our homes and lives for good.
Chinese government-run Xinhua News Agency made headlines last year when it unveiled the world’s first AI-powered news anchor, whose voice has been modelled to resemble that of a human’s.
These AI-powered robots could render you jobless. According to ‘Future of Jobs’ report by World Economic Forum by 2022, automation could render 7.5 crore people jobless. But the silver lining is that the report also says that the same automation would create 13 crore new jobs.
Solar Energy
India and several other countries are working tirelessly to make advancements in the field of solar energy. It is expected that in 2020, these countries will make greater inroads and solar energy would soon emerge as a major source of energy.
In 2015, PM Narendra Modi initiated the International Solar Alliance, and since then, many countries have joined in. India's objective is to generate 175 GW of power from Renewal Sources by 2022, of which 100 GW will be from solar energy. Heliogen, a California-based clean energy company, has devised mechanisms which could eliminate the need for fossil fuels in the coming years.
Digital Banking
Of late, people are increasingly opting for e-wallets Paytm and GPay or digital payment methods for making transactions. With internet connections and online awareness gradually permeating even remote villages, internet banking and online payment is soon expected to become the preferred mode of making payments.
UPI i.e. Unified Payments Interface has made banking easier for people. There were 2.9 billion UPI transactions reported in the third quarter of 2019. This is almost 183 percent more than the previous year.
Will Gene-Editing Cure Diseases?
Every year thousands of people die of malaria worldwide. Currently, work is in progress to modify mosquito genes to annihilate malaria-spreading mosquitoes. Gene-editing has the potential to prevent terminal diseases like thalassemia. Studying certain types of bacteria can help improve digestion. It is further estimated that gene editing can cure almost 90% of diseases.
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