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The reign of the chatbots could be over, and while the various tech doomsayers warn us that the likes of ChatGPT are going to rise up and wipe us flesh-and-blood humans from the face of the Earth, they could soon be replaced by even more futuristic technology.
There's been a boom in chatbots since ChatGPT arrived on the market in November 2022, and although the honor of the world's first chatbot technically goes to MIT's ELIZA all the way back in 1966, OpenAI is largely credited with powering the modern age.
Still, with mounting lawsuits against OpenAI and continued concerns about how chatbots might face hallucinations or fail to intervene to help vulnerable people, many will be pleased to know their rule is apparently over.
Frontiers reports how the tech race is moving on from traditional AI and into the physical realm of factories, hospitals, and power grids. Working with the World Economic Forum, the publisher of peer-reviewed scientific articles revealed 10 emerging technologies that will take over where chatbots left off in 2026.
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This is a notable shift from software-first AI to physical systems, with Frontiers explaining: "After years of software-first AI development, the technologies with the greatest impact are moving off screens and into the physical systems that underpin modern economies – energy, medicine, food, and materials."
Which emerging #technologies could shape the next decade?
— World Economic Forum (@wef) June 23, 2026
The latest @wef Top 10 Emerging Technologies report, produced with @Frontiers, highlights 10 scientific advances set to influence energy, health, materials, food systems, #AI and cybersecurity.
Read it here:… pic.twitter.com/so6M5B0KgY
Frontiers echoes much of what the WEF said at the start of June, and in a recent release, it referred to how AI is moving from 'pilot to production' via its MINDS program. Here, the WEF attempts to close the gap between AI being adopted and it outrunning evidence of what it can deliver. The MINDS program exists to spotlight these measurable results, which we could soon see deployed in a whole host of emerging technologies.
Frontiers highlights 10 new technologies making headlines this year, with the likes of everything-to-grid energy, where electric vehicles and buildings return excess energy to the grid on demand.
We've previously covered a lot about the lithium race and how it could reshape the EV industry, which direct lithium extraction can accelerate by replacing slow evaporation ponds with engineered systems capable of pulling battery-grade lithium from salt flats in a matter of hours.
Passive radiative cooling materials aim to keep buildings cool by reflecting sunlight back into space, PFAS destruction breaks down 'forever chemicals' into harmless substances that are safe to drink, and precision fermentation can brew ingredients for food and medicines thanks to genetically programmed microbes, electricity, and sugar.
Another supposed technological miracle is using the human body's natural cellular package to deliver targeted medicine via exosome drug delivery, whereas personalized mRNA cancer vaccines are said to train an individual patient's immune system to destroy cancer cells.
Rounding out the pack, quantum simulation for drug discovery can cut the time and cost of research, world models help AI systems learn about the physical world and predict the likes of superstorms, and finally, lattice-based cryptocurrency is billed as the next generation of math codes. The latter can supposedly protect our sensitive digital data from being hacked by future quantum computers.
It's clear that things have come a long way from using LLMs to transform you into your favorite Avenger or asking what the weather is going to be like next week, and as AI continues to evolve, expect more emerging tech to muscle onto the scene.
