blissfulsats on Nostr: Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2024 Courtesy of Peter Diamandis: Let’s take a quick look ...

Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2024
Courtesy of Peter Diamandis:

Let’s take a quick look at some of the most significant technological breakthroughs in 2024—this should give you chills. We are truly living during the MOST EXCITING time to be alive!

1. OpenAI's o1 Measured at 120 IQ – Shatters Record

What It Is: OpenAI's recent breakthrough, its o1 model (codenamed Project Strawberry), employs reinforcement learning and chain-of-thought processing to "think" before responding, mimicking human problem-solving with remarkable accuracy. o1 outperforms expert humans on PhD-level science questions and ranks in the 89th percentile for competitive programming. It solved 83% of International Mathematics Olympiad qualifying exam problems, compared to GPT-4o's mere 13%. The model's most astonishing feat? o1 reportedly scored an IQ of 120 on the Norway Mensa test, potentially marking the first time an AI has surpassed average human intelligence.

Why It Matters / What I Think: OpenAI's o1 isn't just parroting information, it's thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving at a level that outperforms expert humans in PhD-level science questions. Sam Altman says o1 is at Level 2 out of 5 on the path to AGI – and if that’s Level 2, what in the world will Level 5 look like??

2. The Humanoid Robot Revolution: Optimus & Figure

What It Is: Over 50 well-funded humanoid robot companies have been announced over the past 12 to 24 months – chief among them in the US are Tesla’s Optimus and Figure’s 02 robots. Others like Apptronik and Agility, plus a host of Chinese robot companies are rapidly advancing. Goldman Sachs projects a $38 billion market by 2035, while ARK Invest forecasts a staggering $24 trillion opportunity. Visionaries like Elon Musk and Brett Adcock project as many as 10 billion robots walking around (globally) by 2040. The projected cost per robot is only $30,000 – which if leased, could cost $300 per month or $10 per day.

Why It Matters / What I Think: Imagine humanoid helpers available for just $300 per month, working 24/7. These robots are running multi-modal AI able to understand what you ask them, and what they are seeing. They'll address critical labor shortages—there are currently 8 million unfilled jobs in the US alone—while potentially creating an era of unprecedented abundance. The global GDP for 2025 will be approx. $110 trillion, of which 50% is labor, putting the total addressable market for robots at >$50 trillion.

3. Google's Quantum Leap: The Willow Revolution

What It Is: Google's new Willow quantum chip has demonstrated unprecedented error correction capabilities—a holy grail that has eluded researchers for three decades. "The more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors," explains Hartmut Neven, Founder of Google Quantum AI. The chip completed a calculation in under 5 minutes that would take today's second-fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years.

Why It Matters / What I Think: For the past decade, the problem with quantum computers was their error rates, the ability to get useful, error-corrected qubits. By solving the critical challenge of error correction, this represents a crucial milestone toward practical quantum computers that could help us discover new medicines, new materials, help with fusion, and combat climate change at unprecedented speeds.

4. Colossus Unleashed: Musk's xAI Supercharges the AI Race with World's Most Powerful Cluster

What It Is: Elon set a record for building the largest AI clusters ever. Going from a standstill to completing xAI’s “Colossus cluster” in just 122 days after raising his “seed round” of $6 billion. Colossus is a beast of an AI training system boasting 100,000 liquid-cooled Nvidia H100 GPUs on a single network fabric. As Elon posted on X: "Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months." And just this month, xAI announced plans to eventually expand the Colossus cluster to 1 million GPUs.

Why It Matters / What I Think: My first thought is, “never bet against Elon.” His ability to leap into an industry and overtake the front runners has been demonstrated over and over again: from rockets and robots, to social media and now AI compute. This leap in computing power will put immense pressure on tech giants like OpenAI and Google. Expect Elon to use Colossus to drive additional breakthroughs with X, Tesla, and Optimus. I also imagine Grok 3 will become one of the dominant consumer-facing AI systems in 2025, competing head-to-head with OpenAI’s GPT models, Gemini, and Claude.

5. First Complete Map of a Brain that Could Unlock Ours

What It Is: Scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus mapped 140,000 neurons, and 54.5 million synapses in a fruit fly's brain. The FlyWire consortium, led by Princeton's Mala Murthy and Sebastian Seung, have achieved what seemed like a “ridiculous” feat a decade ago, combining AI precision with human expertise to create this neural atlas.

Why It Matters / What I Think: Incredibly, the “insilico brain” of the fly causes behaviors identical to the “in vivo brain”... meaning that the digital version of the fly’s brain appears to be a true “upload.” Next up? Perhaps an organism with 1 million neurons (like a bee), then perhaps a mouse, and perhaps someday a human with 100 billion neurons. These insights will transform our understanding of consciousness, behavior, and neurological disease.
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6. SpaceX's Starship Historic Landing Using “Chopsticks”

What It Is: Spaceflight history was made on October 13, 2024 when SpaceX's Super Heavy booster (part of Starship) returned to be caught by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms in a precise, choreographed landing ballet. This engineering feat of the decade unfolded seven minutes after liftoff. As Elon Musk declared, it was "a big step towards making life multiplanetary." The achievement builds on four previous test flights since April 2023, each pushing boundaries in SpaceX's iterative development approach. Next is the recovery of the Starship upper stage, making the entire system reusable.

Why It Matters / What I Think: Full reusability is the holy grail of spaceflight. The cost of fuel for each flight is less than $1 million. Enabling the rapid launch, landing, refueling and relaunch dramatically reduces costs, accelerating our path towards human outposts on the Moon and Mars. Elon has discussed building a fleet of about 1,000 Starships over 10 years to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, with the goal of transporting about a million people. He's mentioned needing around 100 Starships per Mars launch window (which occurs every 26 months). One thing is for sure, he doesn’t think small.

7. Neuralink's Blindsight: Curing Blindness & Much More

What It Is: Neuralink’s Blindsight implant received the FDA's "breakthrough device" designation, aiming to restore vision through direct visual cortex stimulation and potentially benefiting those who have lost sight or were born blind. Elon envisions evolving capabilities, from basic visual input to enhanced perception. A planned three-patient trial will evaluate its efficacy and safety.

Why It Matters / What I Think: This is “biblical” in nature—curing blindness. But beyond the obvious uses, I’m excited about where this could go next. Imagine being able to use your Blindsight implant to see through the eyes of an Optimus robot on the other side of the planet. Or being able to enhance your vision, seeing the world in infrared, ultraviolet or in zoom-mode, based on special wearables. Just as interesting will be “picture-in-picture” mode on your visual field... reading your texts and emails, super-imposed on whatever you are watching at the moment. The future is going to be stranger than we can imagine.

8. Starlink: 7,000+ Satellites Enabling Global Connectivity

What It Is: SpaceX launched its 7,000th Starlink satellite aboard Falcon 9 booster B1077 on its 15th flight. Mission Starlink 8-11 added 21 satellites, including 13 with “Direct to Cell” capabilities, bringing the direct-to-consumer fleet to 194 satellites. Starlink, SpaceX's ambitious megaconstellation project, aims to blanket Earth in high-speed internet connectivity through a network of low-Earth orbit satellites. The mission showcased SpaceX's mastery of reusability, with B1077 executing its 91st perfect landing on the droneship "Just Read the Instructions" – at the time, the company's 344th successful booster recovery to date.

Why It Matters / What I Think: The Starlink network now serves 3 million customers across 102 countries. The size of the network in comparison is huge – as Elon points out, "Starlink now constitutes roughly two-thirds of all active Earth satellites". SpaceX isn't just launching satellites—they’re building the infrastructure for humanity's connected future.

9. $101M XPRIZE HEALTHSPAN for 20+ Healthy Years of Life

What It Is: The XPRIZE Foundation has unleashed its most ambitious competition yet: a $101M Healthspan XPRIZE focused on “reversing the ravages of aging by a minimum of 10 years, with a goal of 20 years.” Launched one year ago, the competition now has over 500+ teams from 50+ countries registered to compete. The XPRIZE Healthspan is aiming to develop therapeutics that can restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function in adults aged 50-80. Led by Executive Director Jamie Justice, PhD, the competition includes a groundbreaking requirement: treatments must demonstrate results within just one year.

Why It Matters / What I Think: We are in the midst of a healthspan revolution. The convergence of AI, epigenetics, gene therapy, and cellular medicine have the potential to help us slow, stop, and perhaps even reverse aging. This competition will crowdsource brilliant science and technology from around the world. With the over-60 population set to nearly double by 2050, enabling people to maintain their cognition, strength, and immunity into their 80’s and beyond will be critical.

10. AI-designed Proteins Revolutionize Drug Discovery

What It Is: Google’s DeepMind, the company that brought us the Nobel-Prize winning work of “AlphaFold” (which predicts protein structure from an amino acid sequence) and “AlphaFold3” (which predicts the interaction biological molecules), now brings the world “AlphaProteo,” a tool for designing custom proteins to fight diseases. It does this by creating proteins that bind to specific targets 3 to 300 times better than current methods. This AI successfully designed binders for 7 out of 8 diverse targets, including cancer-related proteins. Some designs even stopped SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells, slashing years of lab work to days.

Why It Matters / What I Think: In the past, finding a “molecule” (i.e., a drug) that binds to a specific biological target to fight disease was based on trial and error, a serious matter of luck. But no longer. Now the AlphaProteo AI algorithm can be used to design the specific protein that is needed for the goal at hand—massively slashing R&D timelines from years to weeks, and dramatically cutting costs and accelerating life-saving treatments. DeepMind has effectively turbocharged our ability to fight diseases, and potentially extend healthspan.