Technology can be amazing and can change the world in positive ways – take breakthroughs that have been made in medicine that save lives, for example or new developments in industrial automation that save us from having to risk our lives doing dangerous jobs or just waste them on routine and mundane activities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This is perhaps the number one most commonly misunderstood technology and also one which causes a fair amount of anxiety! I’m certainly not saying that it isn’t a cause for concern and that anyone seeking to use it shouldn’t be cautious. But it isn’t about building robots that will one day take our jobs or our planet.

Until a decade or so ago, most people’s understanding of AI came from science fiction, and specifically robots as seen in TV shows and movies like 2001, The Matrix, or Star Trek. The fictional robots and smart machines in these shows were generally shown as being capable of what we call "general AI," – meaning they could have pretty much all of the facets of natural (human or animal) intelligence – powers of reasoning, learning, decision-making, and creativity – and carry out any task that they needed to do. Today’s real-world AI (or ML) is almost always what is known as “specialized” (or weak/narrow) AI – only capable of carrying out the specific jobs it has been created for. Some common examples of this are matching customers with items they might want to buy (recommendation engines), understanding human speech (natural language processing), or recognizing objects and items when they are spotted by cameras.

Quantum computing

However, at a higher level, there are also a lot of common misconceptions. Quantum computers aren’t simply computers that are much quicker than regular “classical” computers. In other words, quantum computers won't replace classical computers because they are only better at a narrow range of very specialized jobs. This generally involves solving very specialized mathematical problems which don’t usually come up as day-to-day business computing requirements. These problems include simulating quantum (sub-atomic) systems and optimization problems (finding the best route from A to B, for example, when there are a lot of variables that can change). One area of day-to-day computing where quantum computing might supersede classical computing is encryption – for example, securing communications so they can’t be hacked. Researchers are already working on developing quantum-safe cryptography because there are fears that some of the most advanced cryptographic protection used for security at government level could be trivially defeated by quantum computers in the future. But it won't let you run Windows faster or play Fortnite with better graphics.

Metaverse

The first place many people would have heard the term “metaverse” would have been the 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. And when the concept went mainstream in 2021 following Facebook’s change of name to Meta, numerous articles linked it to ideas found in the virtual reality (VR)-focused novel-turned-movie Ready Player One. But in fact, the concept as it relates to technology today isn’t necessarily exclusively about VR. And hopefully doesn’t have to be dystopian.

Web3

Web3, as it is most widely used today, refers to another idea for the "next level" evolution of the internet, but one which is tied to concepts involving decentralization, blockchain technology, and cryptocurrencies. This is confusing because another group of ideas exists, which is labeled "web 3.0", proposed by Tim Berners-Lee – the man often referred to as the father of the World Wide Web. As with the term "metaverse," both web3 and web 3.0 refer to what the internet may evolve into. And although the ideas are somewhat related and not necessarily mutually exclusive, they each describe different things. Confused? Don’t worry, so is everyone else.

5g

The arrival of a new generation of mobile internet technology has brought with it its own fair share of misunderstanding. This includes concerns about its possible impact on health. Many people were worried that high-power radio waves emitted by phones or transmitter masts could lead to health problems, including cancer. However, hundreds of studies carried out around the world by governments and independent research organizations have failed to turn up any evidence that this is true.

Signing off

@Nasim_446 

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