Our Year Ahead series examines the most important trends, people and companies that will impact science and technology in 2024.
Think 2023 was wild? 2024 promises to be just as topsy-turvy — both on planet Earth, where artificial intelligence and politics will likely dominate discussion, and in the sky above us, where the sun is behaving strangely and moon bases increasingly appear a real possibility. Here are 12 predictions about what will happen within science and technology over the next 12 months.
1. Someone finds water on the moon
2023 was one of the busiest years for the moon since the heyday of the Apollo missions — a period marked most significantly by India setting down its Chandrayaan-3 lander near the moon’s south pole in August. Now, at this very moment, a Japanese spacecraft is orbiting the moon, hoping to land sometime in January. And that’s just the start of a very busy 2024 — a moment that could culminate in America’s Artemis II mission, the first manned lunar orbit in over 50 years.
With so many resources deployed, a long-sought goal is more in reach than ever: finding water on the moon, a key to establishing permanent lunar bases and further exploration of the solar system. Yet it’s anyone’s guess which country will actually make that discovery. The moon is getting downright crowded.
2. Apple’s Vision Pro flops
Fresh off the middling iPhone 15 launch, Apple is close to shipping its next big bet: the Vision Pro, a $3,500 mixed reality headset. It’s the company’s first foray into virtual reality and might pave the way for a bigger line of more affordable devices in the future.
Unfortunately for Apple, it’s another disappointment waiting to happen. Sure, the Vision Pro looks impressive, with high-fidelity screens and state-of-the-art hand tracking. But Apple’s polish means it tends to get to trends late, and the buzz around virtual reality has really died out in the last couple of years.
The Vision Pro could hold high niche appeal, but its first run will have a limited number of headsets, reportedly only available to buy through appointment only. As the possibly discontinued Meta Quest Pro line demonstrates, consumers aren’t quite sold on luxury headsets yet — and the more barriers to getting one, the worse the problem gets. Throw in the Vision Pro’s lack of gaming support, the area where VR is thriving most, and it’s likely the exclusive headset will never win over a broad audience.
3. Custom-bred mosquitos show a new defense against invasive species
Hawaii’s honeycreepers are in serious trouble, but hear that buzz-buzz-buzzing? That’s hope just around the corner in the form of specially bred mosquitos.
Once, there were over 50 species of honeycreepers — dazzling, finch-size birds — but only 17 species remain, with many on the brink of disappearing. Why? Invasive mosquitos carrying avian influenza pose the gravest threat to many honeycreepers: The birds have no defenses against the devastating pathogen. But, in 2024, plans to release what amounts to mosquito birth control will finally take effect as scientists release scores of male mosquitos that contain a naturally occurring Wolbachia bacteria that render eggs non-viable after mating — giving the birds a fighting chance.
“It’s a way that we can just dramatically crash mosquito populations to protect forest birds from avian malaria,” said Lindsey Nietmann, a wildlife biologist for Hawaii’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife. “It’s really exciting.” Especially when you consider that honeycreepers aren’t the only ones imperiled by mosquito-borne diseases. Should such mosquito birth control work, it could be used on other islands threatened by these invasive species.
4. Elon Musk votes for Donald Trump
In November, Elon Musk publicly vowed he wouldn’t vote for President Joe Biden next year. At the same time, he wouldn’t say that he planned to vote for Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent. That’ll change in 2024, and Musk will publicly endorse Trump. Musk, who has donated to both parties in the past but has taken a dramatic shift to the right in recent years, has already complained that X takes an unfair amount of criticism from the left. That will only intensify next year as the election amplifies the social network’s misinformation woes — also then worsening X’s problems with the few advertisers it hasn’t already alienated.
Musk will blame Democrats for making X’s financial situation worse — watch for the banks holding X debt to mark it down for less than 50% on the dollar — and Musk will then use that to justify throwing his support behind Trump.
5. Everyone — well, almost everyone — stops building coal power plants
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has urged rich countries to “end the deadly addiction to coal” by 2030, with all countries to follow by 2040. That timeline is the only way to keep global warming targets in reach.
This is the year that all countries except two extremely important exceptions, China and India, will get the memo. China already accounted for two-thirds of the world’s planned coal plants at the end of 2022, with India following in second place. Tracking all planned, announced or under-construction coal plants shows a smattering in other countries, including some in several countries in southern Africa and a handful in Eastern Europe. But there are thousands of planned plants that have been canceled in recent years across the globe, thanks not just to the climate imperative but to an increasingly dire economic outlook for the dirtiest fuel.
6. Congress passes a meaningful AI bill
In Washington, 2023 brought some headline-making testimony from AI moguls like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, followed by Sen. Chuck Schumer’s AI summits and President Biden’s executive order that established some guardrails over the technology. But in a historically unproductive year, Congress passed no AI legislation despite lawmakers introducing more than 50 bills. That will change next year. The topic has rare bipartisan support, and Congress will want to show at least some progress on something in an election year. Plus, Democrats will be motivated by the fact that Biden’s executive order could be swiftly tossed out if he loses reelection.
Almost everywhere, it just doesn’t make sense to build a coal plant anymore, and nearly every nation will issue its final permits to build one in 2024. By year’s end, China and India will be the true outliers on the coal frontier.
7. The sun knocks out GPS communications
The sun reaches the top of a bell curve in an 11-year cycle of activity later this year, hitting a period called the solar maximum. That means an increased likelihood of a solar storm powerful enough to disable some of our space-based tech. “With solar activity on the rise as we approach solar maximum, we can say with high confidence that strong solar flares … are likely in the future,” said Bryan Basher, a space weather expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The flares and other strong bursts of solar energy can “potentially impact systems like the power grid, satellites in orbit, and radio communications like GPS,” he said.
8. We actually grow to love Starfield
Expectations for Bethesda Game Studios Starfield could’ve stretched across a universe or two. Indeed, its release in September was an important moment for Bethesda, the vaunted creator of role-playing gems like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, and for Bethesda’s new corporate parent, Microsoft. The company had positioned Starfield as the biggest exclusive for its Xbox console in several years.
So far, Starfield has experienced a bumpy landing. It debuted to strong reviews and sales, but the reception to the game has dimmed since. Players have criticized its technical shortcomings, including those tiresome load screens, and voiced disappointment that Bethesda didn’t come up with something a little more innovative. Adding to their consternation: a seeming lack of urgency from Bethesda to roll out updates to assuage complaints.
Is Bethesda abandoning Starfield? Hardly. By this time next year, we’ll be talking about Starfield much in the same way that we’re now talking about Cyberpunk 2077, another title that players hated at first but has steadily improved with updates. More to the point, games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim didn’t see their first substantial expansions until three to six months after their release. And consider that official mod support, which allows ordinary players to release their own tweaks, items and missions, for Fallout 4 didn’t drop until six months after its launch, and that’s a feature Starfield is already planning to add.
9. Wireless headphones sound better, fit more comfortably and last longer
Although a relatively recent innovation, wireless earbuds still rely on decades-old technology: Wires and magnets move a diaphragm back and forth to generate sound waves.
A company called xMEMS has developed a radically different approach that it promises will improve wireless earbuds in many ways. Its micro-speaker technology uses tiny flaps mounted to silicon chips to generate sound through microscopic movements. These speakers are smaller, lighter and more accurately reproduce sound using less power.
The technology has already been in use in mobile phone microphones for over a decade, and while xMEMS’ speakers are currently only being used in a handful of wireless earbuds, more headphones makers will start adopting it next year. The result: wireless audio products with designs and features we haven’t seen before — smaller and lighter earbuds with better battery life.
10. Biden gives a major interview to a Twitch streamer
It’s no secret that Biden is struggling with younger voters. Case in point: an NBC News poll in November found that 70% of voters ages 18 to 34 disapproved of how Biden was handling the Israel-Hamas War.
As the presidential election heats up, Biden’s team will move aggressively to appeal to young people — and reenergize young Democrats. After deciding in 2023 that the president’s campaign wouldn’t be on Chinese-owned TikTok, Biden really has only one other good option to reach young voters: Twitch. The Amazon-owned platform, where more than 70% of viewers are between 18 and 34, became a go-to for political discussion in 2020. Memorably, that was the year Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) played Among Us alongside streamers Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker and Imane “Pokimane” Anys as a live audience of 438,000 peak viewers watched.
In 2024, Biden will take a page from AOC’s playbook and organize an interview or activity with Twitch streamers. Pokimane seems like an obvious choice. She’s voiced public support for Biden in the past.
11. Foreign government hackers disrupt the Republican primaries
We’ve already seen how innocent digital snafus can upend a primary and lead to internecine finger-pointing on the Democratic side, and U.S. adversaries like Russia will be tempted to try to recreate that chaos among Republicans, given the potential for further undermining Americans’ already weak trust in democratic institutions.
Election interference has lurked in the background of every major election since 2016 when Russia stole and leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails, weaponizing them against her. In 2018, fears of Russian interference prompted the U.S. government to knock out the internet at Moscow’s favorite troll farm. In 2020, Iranian hackers left their mark with a voter-intimidation campaign and an intrusion into a state election system.
Given the feverish climate of the Republican Party, technological failures during the 2024 primary could spark fresh conspiracy theories about what caused those problems. And if foreign actors succeed in wreaking chaos during the primary, it could provide a blueprint for even more dangerous interference during the general election.
12. The Bubble Wars between Apple and Android finally end
For years, the incompatibility between Apple’s iMessages and Android phones have been both an internet meme — green bubbles, blue bubbles! — and a headache for users.
Several small companies not named Apple or Google tried to solve the problem this year with apps that would make messages between the company’s phones compatible. This included Nothing Chats and Beeper Mini, an Android app based on the work of a teenager who reverse engineered iMessage. Beeper Mini especially was a hit.
The popularity of these apps should tell Apple that there’s an obvious market for better cross-platform messaging. CEO Tim Cook is no dummy, and Apple could obviously benefit from releasing a paid iMessage app for Android that would preserve security and usability for all smartphone users.
