Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023

The World Economic Forum's 2023 report highlights ten transformative technologies across the digital, physical, and biological realms. Key innovations include generative AI for productivity and research, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to decarbonize flight, and wearable plant sensors to enhance food security. The report also emphasizes healthcare advancements through AI-facilitated systems, flexible neural electronics, and designer phages. To mitigate environmental impacts, it discusses sustainable computing for net-zero data centres. Each technology is evaluated via an 'impact fingerprint' across five metrics: people, planet, prosperity, industry, and equity.

• Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), derived from biological and non-biological sources, is critical for decarbonizing the aviation sector, which contributes 2-3% of annual global CO2 emissions.
• To put the aviation industry on a path to net-zero by 2050, SAF's share of global jet fuel demand must increase from less than 1% today to 13-15% by 2040, requiring 300-400 new production plants.
• Sustainable computing aims for net-zero-energy data centres to address the fact that these facilities consume approximately 1% of global electricity production.
• AI-powered energy management has demonstrated significant efficiency gains in data centres, with DeepMind achieving up to a 40% reduction in energy consumption at Google facilities.
• Wearable plant sensors can improve global food security by providing real-time data on plant health, helping to meet the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's projection that world food production must increase by 70% by 2050.
• Generative AI is expanding beyond text and image creation into drug design, architecture, and engineering, including NASA's work to reduce spaceflight instrument development time by 10-fold.
• Flexible batteries are expected to grow by $240.47 million between 2022 and 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 22.79%, driven by demand for wearable medical devices and e-textiles.
• Spatial omics is enabling the creation of molecular-level 'cell atlases' and is projected to reach an estimated revenue of $587.2 million by 2030.
• Designer phages are being engineered to target specific bacteria in the microbiome to treat diseases like hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and to improve livestock and plant health.
• AI-facilitated healthcare is being used to reduce treatment wait times and improve medical outreach in developing nations, such as India, where it assists in reading radiological data for dispersed populations.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2023.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023 |date=June 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023top, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = jun, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }