Behind Closed Doors – 2020 Tech Advances that Emerged During a Global Pandemic

Featured article by Zachary Hadlle – Technology Journalist

Like the march of time, the advancement of technology is unstoppable – even during a pandemic.  Throughout this remarkable year, we’ve had more than our fair share of doom and gloom but, also, news of some incredible advances in technology.  While most of us have heard about highly publicised tech advances such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, behind the scenes, some amazing work has been going on for technology which has largely gone unnoticed and, in this article, we’ll take a look at some of these huge leaps forward for the tech world.

Quantum Computing

Last month, it was announced the United States has plans to invest a cool $1 billion dollars in quantum computing and AI in order to take the lead with this next generation technology.  Quantum Computing radically changes the fundamental paradigm with respect to delivery of computing and, in 2020, things got a little more exciting.  This year, clever tech bods have been expanding the reach of quantum computing into the arenas of imaging, sensing and measuring.  Quantum image processing (QIMP) is a game changer in that it uses quantum information processing in order to work with quantum images which has a huge effect on computing speed, security and storage. 

Qentinel Pace Automated Software Testing

Although Qentinel has been around for some time (since 2002), in 2020, it has been working on some serious advancements in its automated software testing product.  Qentinel Pace uses AI and machine learning in order to provide a holistic view of DevOps and offers superior analytic predictions.

“Hugely scalable, Qentinel Pace is about to become a really big deal in the DevOps sphere and beyond as it begins to revolutionise the landscape of automated software testing” – says one of the senior associates at startnearshoring.

AutoAI

OK, so we all know what artificial intelligence is and, many of us also have a pretty good idea of what it can do.  Less known, however, is AutoAI.  If you had happened to wander into the hallowed offices of IBM Research this year, you would have found a dream team whose purpose is to combine AI, machine learning and data management with a view to creating AutoAI.

“This is, essentially, an extension of model building automation which works on the full life cycle of the model.  It uses intelligent automation to prepare data, identifying the best type model for the given data and then selects the features and columns of ta which best support the problem that the model is being designed to solve.  There’s absolutely no doubt that this is going to be the next important step for AI as it aims to accelerate and optimise the creation of machine learning with data science workflows” – says Jack Zmudzinski, a senior associate at future-processing.com

Telegram Splitting

Developed by the Fraunhofer Institute, telegram splitting is the latest radio approach to long-range wireless communication.  This technology allows wider area, low power networks to improve robustness and scalability with a view to the enablement of huge scale IoT deployment.  A standardised LPWAN technology within the license free spectrum, the aim of telegram splitting is to improve coverage, provide interference resilience and reduce power consumption and, it does this by splitting messages into a number of sub-packets to be sent at different times and sequences.

Colour Changing Medical Tattoos

Unsurprisingly, 2020 has been significant year for advances in medical and healthcare technology – but it’s not just all above COVID-19.  While the world was in the grip of the virus, other diseases and conditions may have taken a back seat but, that doesn’t mean that they were forgotten.  German scientists have been busy working on a hugely important advance which is set to transform the lives of diabetes sufferers.  These revolutionary tattoos react to changes in the body – such as a rise or drop in glucose levels and then change colour to alert the sufferer.  This will mean that diabetes patients can check their current status with just a quick glimpse of their tattoo and, therefore, seek treatment or advice before the condition reaches a critical stage.

Omniscience / Next Best Action Prediction

The direct translation of omniscience is the ability to know everything, and, while we’ll admit that we’re not quite there just yet,  the term, in this case, is used to describe the use of machine learning to compile and synthesise massive amounts of heterogenous data from a number of different sources of customer demographics and quickly identify patterns.  As UX continues to become all important, this huge advance in technology will raise the bar for marketers and business owners looking to get further inside their customer’s heads.

Transformer Neural Network Architecture

“A bit of a tongue twister, we’ll refer to this one as TNNA for short.   TNNA is all about taking natural language processing to the next level by tackling everything from speech recognition to providing intelligent answers to questions.  As we become increasingly attached to our phones – and voice search and commands continue to dominate, this latest innovation means that our voice searches will become more intuitive, more accurate and will provide faster, more relevant results” – says one of the senior specialists at Totality Services based in London.

Today, scientists and tech gurus work around the clock to find new technology to enhance and streamline every area of our personal and professional lives.  While some choose to shout about it (we’re looking at you, Elon Musk), others choose to simply quietly and modestly go about the business of raising our tech game every day of every month of every year.  These are just a few of the innovations that have emerged in 2020 – and there are still a few months to go so, I’ll do my best to keep you posted on new stuff!

About the Author

Zachary Hadlle – Technology Journalist from London, currently based in Malaga. For 2 years now, I’ve been writing stories about how our internet works – and how it is changing. From artificial intelligence to UX things are happening today at a pace that can seem bewildering.