Three breakthroughs you may have missed amid the ChatGPT-mania

Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, attends an open dialogue with students at Keio University in Tokyo this month. Reuters

Imagine you've dropped your keys one evening, walking through a park.

It's dark, and you cast around for the missing keyring under the nearest light, the only illuminated spot in an expanse of black.

This action is known as the streetlight effect: looking for something where we believe it can be found. This is a kind of observational bias that we can witness elsewhere – ChatGPT, for example.

These days, most of us with an internet connection and the wherewithal are well on the generative AI bandwagon, thanks to Sam Altman and his company OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT.

We are seeking to understand how to use this new tool, and whether – and how – it should be regulated. Some people even have put AI in charge of their companies. Others are telling us that the world as we know it will end. While others such as sci-fi writer Ted Chiang inform us that this is nothing more than applied statistics and that the current product is “filler” content that nobody wants to read and even fewer people want to write.

In short, generative AI has become all-consuming, you probably have formed an opinion on it and are in some way immersed in the mania. Like looking for your lost keys under a streetlamp, we are looking at where the light is brightest.

But what have we missed, amid the streetlight effect?

There are at least three important developments that are of future consequence, though currently in the shadow of generative AI.

First on the list is energy beamed from a satellite in space down to Earth – much like the technology that is on display on the “space floor” at the Museum of the Future in Dubai. This is very experimental and bears the early-stage hallmarks of clunky and high-tech equipment attached together with duct tape to make it happen.

But the team from Caltech has demonstrated the concept that solar energy harvested in space can be transmitted to Earth via microwaves. While the energy sent to Earth was just enough to power up one small LED light, the prospects are enormous: panels in space that are always exposed to the Sun could provide a continuous source of energy. Clearly all the efforts of space travel, engineering, communications and more are going to be vital in making this technology a reality of the future.

One small LED now, all of the planet illuminated in the future.

A second important development is the discovery of a third type of superconductor.

Superconductors, as their name implies, are materials that allow the transfer of energy at minimal loss, don’t heat up and can be extremely strong magnets, too. These properties confer them with special importance in the development of new technologies: fusion reactors, which have been under research for decades, are now tantalisingly closer to produce more energy than they require to run. Superconductors are essential to producing the coils in the chambers to ensure the 100-million-degree fusion reaction does not escape. In addition, these magnets are used for MRI medical machines and for magnetic levitation trains. This latest superconductor – the first new discovery in the field since the 1950s – offers the plausibility of working at room temperature, which would mean far more widespread use in everyday applications.

Third, and this has made some headlines around the world, is the generation of energy from air humidity.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts have developed a micro-generator which is thinner than one hair and the size of a fingernail that can generate a small amount of energy, enough to power a pixel on a screen.

Like the energy beamed from a satellite in space, these experiments are proof of concept that will be scaled up somewhat in the near future, with current science and materials. But in decades to come, they hold great promise because research and development ecosystems around the world will continue to deliver advances that meet our latest demands.

I am convinced that it’s important to understand the intricacies of the future of AI and of today’s generative AI. I also think that there is an entire universe of emerging science and technology out there, much of which is not yet nearly ready for mass-adoption, but in time will be central to our lives. Therefore, it’s incumbent on us to look for these, understand them and promote them where appropriate.

If you are suddenly aware that you may be suffering from observational bias, look beyond the streetlight. You might find much more than your lost set of keys.