Posts Tagged: "emerging technologies"

“Non-fungible tokens (NFTs),” “blockchain,” “metaverse,” “web3,” and “artificial intelligence (AI)” are buzzwords that solicited significant discussion and development in the area of intellectual property (IP) law in 2022. This overview covers five key topics in IP law that affected the growth and mainstream adoption of these emerging technologies last year.

I’m fascinated by emerging technologies. I searched “emerging technologies” on Wikipedia, and found a main article, “List of emerging technologies,” and then a related set of examples. The examples were Artificial Intelligence (“AI”); 3D Printing; Cancer vaccines; Cultured meat; Nanotechnology; Robotics; Stem-cell therapy; Distributed ledge technology (i.e., blockchain); and Medical field advancements. I’ve already written about six categories of emerging technologies: AI in the form of deep learning on September 30, 2021; blockchain on November 9, 2021; quantum computing on November 20, 2021; and then three more categories: stem cells, robot, and edge computing on December 11, 2021…. For this article, I decided to investigate three additional categories: (“3D Printing” or “Additive Manufacturing,”) (“Genetic or “gene therapy” ) and Nanotechnology (“Nano”), and compute a bar chart for all nine categories.

Towards the end of 2019, I was finishing a book, AI Concepts for Business Applications. The last chapter was titled, “The Future.” I wrote about quantum computing and a version of deep learning that was related: a “quantum walk neural network.”In 1980, the idea of a quantum processing unit was proposed. Such a processing unit doesn’t use the 1s and 0s with which we’re familiar. That “classical” way of thinking is the way we think, with a 1 for true and a 0 for false, and combinations—for example, a “false positive.” Quantum computing is based on a “superposition” of states called “quantum bits” or “qubits” for short. But there’s a big difference between the way we think and the way nature behaves. In 1981, the late Caltech professor, Richard Feynman (a Nobel Prize co-winner for his work with “quantum electrodynamics”) summed it up: “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem, because it doesn’t look so easy.” Now, quantum computing is beginning to emerge.

The team devised an equation incorporating a patent set’s average forward citation and average publication date, and calculated the rate of improvement for each technology domain. Their results matched closely with the rates determined through the more labor-intensive approach of finding numerous historical performance data points for each technology. Among the 28 domains analyzed, the researchers found the fastest-developing technologies include optical and wireless communications, 3-D printing, and MRI technology, while domains such as batteries, wind turbines, and combustion engines appear to be improving at slower rates.