On December 28, 2021, Alibaba DAMO Academy, a global research institute of the Alibaba Group, announced the “DAMO Academy Technology Trend Forecast 2022”, which predicts changes that will be brought about in the technology industry in the future.
Alibaba DAMO Academy’s technology trends for 2022 cover a wide range of fields, from networks to devices. In addition, the fusion of AI and other fields is becoming a trend, and it is expected that applications will increase not only in the information field but also in other fields.
In the field of AI, co-evolution of large-scale and small-scale models via cloud, edge, and devices is predicted to move and become practical.
Jeff Zhang, Head of Alibaba DAMO Academy, said:
Jeff Zhang: Over the past century, the evolution of digital science has pushed the boundaries of technological advancement and industrial development, bringing enormous benefits to society. Today, we are in the midst of a rapidly evolving digital environment. The physical world we live in is becoming more digital, networked and increasingly integrated with the intelligent online world. We are transitioning to a world where virtual reality technology ( VR ) is reshaping human-machine interaction, and cutting-edge technologies such as AI are driving industrial transformation such as medical research, weather forecasting, and manufacturing. is. We are also actively working to introduce digital technologies to promote a low-carbon economy. Alibaba DAMO Academy believes that good technology should be developed for a better future, and we will continue to do so.
Details of Alibaba DAMO Academy’s technology trend predictions for 2022 are below.
| Trend 1: Convergence of Clouds, Networks, and Devices In the future, the division of roles among clouds, networks, and devices will become clearer, and demands for high-precision industrial simulations, real-time quality inspections, and mixed reality (MR) will increase. Driven by the emergence of new task-fulfilling applications, the next two years will see an explosion of applications running on new computing systems. |
| Trend 2: AI for Scientific Research Today, advances in AI technology are enabling new scientific paradigms. AI technology not only accelerates the speed of scientific research, but also contributes to the discovery of new scientific laws. In the next three years, we expect AI to be widely applied in applied science research processes and even used as a production tool in some basic sciences. |
| Trend 3: Silicon Photonic Chips Silicon photonic chips, unlike electronic chips, use photons instead of electrons to transfer data. Silicon photonics technology is developing rapidly. Over the next three years, silicon photonics chips are expected to become popular for high-speed data transmission in large-scale data centers. |
| Trend 4: AI for Renewable Energy The application of AI in the energy industry is critical to advancing efficiency and automation of power systems, maximizing resource utilization and stability, and will continue to grow in the next three years. , expects AI technology to pave the way for the integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid and contribute to the safe, efficient and reliable operation of the power grid. |
| Trend 5: The convergence of precision medicine AI technology and precision medicine will drive the integration of expertise and new auxiliary diagnostic technologies, and is expected to become a trusted guide in clinical medicine. High-precision medical technology centered on is expected to become a major trend that spans multiple fields of healthcare, such as disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. |
| Trend 6: Privacy-preserving Computation Moving from processing small amounts of data and private areas of data to processing large amounts of data and integrating data from all areas. , privacy-preserving computing technology will be adopted. In the next three years, the performance of privacy-preserving computing will dramatically improve, and companies are expected to emerge that provide highly reliable services in data distribution. |
| Trend 7: Extended Reality (XR) XR will become a technology that will take root in new industrial ecosystems including electronic components, devices, operating systems and applications. We anticipate that in the next three years, a new generation of XR glasses products that are indistinguishable from ordinary glasses will enter the market and are expected to be a key gateway to the next generation Internet. |
| Trend 8: Perceptive Soft Robotics Perceptive soft robotics refers to robots that, unlike conventional robots, have physically flexible bodies and enhanced perceptions of pressure, sight, and sound. The emergence of sentient soft robotics has moved from mass production of standardized products to specialized low-volume production, and in the next five years, perceptive soft robotics will replace traditional robots in manufacturing. It is also expected to pave the way for the spread of service robots in daily life. |
| Trend 9: Satellite -terrestrial integrated computing technology connects satellites and terrestrial mobile communication networks, and integrates satellite networks, terrestrial communication systems, and cloud computing technologies. Build an integrated system. In the next five years, it is expected that satellites and ground systems will act as computing nodes and provide integrated network systems that provide high connectivity. |
| Trend 10: Co-evolution of large-scale and small-scale AI models Future AI technologies are expected to move toward the co-evolution of large-scale and small-scale models via the cloud, edges, and devices. From the race on scalability to the co-evolution of large and small models across cloud, edge and devices, we expect to find more practical use. |
