June 2023 Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023 Preface Jeremy Jurgens Managing Director, World Economic Forum For more than a decade, the Forum has been technologies – some of which you might never surveying academics, industry leaders and futurists have heard of – can and will shape our collective on the emerging technologies set to transform future in the years ahead. Also new for the 2023 economies and societies. In doing so, the edition is a collection of transformation maps from Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023 report seeks the Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Platform, which to help professionals across sectors and industries provide deeper insights and context on each anticipate exponential technologies, interpret their technology by showcasing how they connect to implications and champion industry-shaping and other topics on the global agenda and surfacing society-serving applications. the latest trusted publications for further reading. Since the 昀椀rst edition in 2011, the annual report has This year’s report brings together the perspectives identi昀椀ed little-known technologies that have gone of over 90 experts in 20 countries from all world on to have global impact. For example, the precise regions. This report would not be possible without genetic-engineering tool, CRISPR-Cas9, featured their openness to contributing their insights, and we in 2015, went on to become Nobel Prize-winning sincerely thank them all. We greatly appreciate, too, science 昀椀ve years later and is now being used to the leadership of our Top 10 Emerging Technologies create insect and drought-resistant crops in harsh Steering Group Co-Chairs, Mariette DiChristina growing conditions around the world. Messenger and Bernard Meyerson, who, along with many ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines, which earned members, have been loyal collaborators since the their place in the 2017 report, became the inception of the Top 10 Emerging Technologies technology underpinning the majority of COVID-19 report series. We would additionally like to thank vaccines protecting lives worldwide. In the few our knowledge partner for this year’s edition, years since AI-led molecular design made it onto Frontiers, for the deep expertise and scienti昀椀c rigour the 2018 list, Deepmind’s AlphaFold has predicted of their journal editors – across the articles, impact the structure of 200 million proteins, and the 昀椀rst 昀椀ngerprints and transformation maps. Our thanks AI-discovered drugs have entered clinical trials. also to the project team: Greta Keenan, Saemoon Yoon, Minji Sung and Sebastian Buckup, as well Now in its 11th year, the Top 10 Emerging as the wider team at the Centre for the Fourth Technologies of 2023 report outlines the Industrial Revolution for their input. technologies poised to positively impact society in the next three to 昀椀ve years. The report broadens its New technologies have the power to disrupt scope beyond describing the top 10 technologies industries, grow economies, improve lives and and associated risks and opportunities to include safeguard the planet – if designed, scaled and a qualitative assessment of how each technology deployed responsibly. We hope that this year’s is set to impact people, the planet, prosperity, report serves as a powerful tool for business leaders industry and equity. Unique for each technology, and policy-makers to unlock the transformative these “impact 昀椀ngerprints” are meant to stimulate potential of emerging technologies and shape further analysis and debate about how emerging their inclusive adoption. Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023 3