Amidst the gloom, good news. Scientists in California have achieved something spectacular: a net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction. We may still be years from fleets of fusion power stations, but it is no longer a fantasy to imagine an abundant source of zero-carbon energy powering the world economy.
Fusion is not the only scientific breakthrough to celebrate. This summer, DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence company, announced that it had deciphered the structure of almost all the proteins – more than 200 million – known to science. Understanding the structures of proteins means we can learn how they work and how to change what they do, meaning we can develop new medicines and technologies to confront not only human disease but famine and pollution.
Earlier this year, the James Webb Telescope sent its first images from across the universe, capturing pictures of places not only unimaginable distances away, but billions of years ago. The NASA telescope is in effect a time machine, allowing scientists to work out exactly how the universe began, and what happened during and just after the Big Bang.
We all know the incredible story of how Western (and yes, it was Western) science responded to the Covid pandemic by producing successful vaccines and discovering treatments in record time. But such progress is not limited to Covid. The Jenner Institute at Oxford University has developed an effective malaria vaccine. Scientists in America have a vaccine they believe will offer successful protection against all types of influenza.
This year there have been breakthroughs in our understanding of multiple sclerosis, and the treatment of dementia and various forms of cancer. Scientists have created a mouse embryo with a beating heart from nothing but stem cells, and successfully implanted a human ear constructed from stem cells. Researchers at Yale succeeded in restarting the hearts of pigs that had died an hour earlier, giving rise to the possibility that we might one day be able to reverse sudden deaths or, in the shorter-term, better preserve the organs of people who have recently died for transplants.
Many of these discoveries naturally prompt anxiety and pose deeply important ethical questions. Is it right, for example, that we should allow humans to play God? If we can create embryos from stem cells, we are creating life itself. Many will argue that it is right to eliminate diseases before we are born, if we have the power to do so. But if it is, where should we stop? Might we screen out physical attributes we find unattractive, or characteristics we deem undesirable?
Of course we are not at all close to reproducing humanity in laboratories, but we are getting closer to the development of synthetic organs and understanding the relationships between embryonic mutations and disease. We will need to debate and agree legal frameworks based on clear moral principles and an understanding of the potential for scientific knowledge to be used in unethical and destructive ways.
One fear that is almost certainly misplaced is that technology will supplant the need for human labor and endeavour. The recent release of chatGPT, an artificial intelligence text generator, has prompted excited debate among academics, journalists and other professionals thanks to its ability to write essays, creative stories and more. But whatever artificial intelligence can learn and produce it will never recreate the emotions and creativity of humanity itself. Some professional jobs will be lost to artificial intelligence, but most will be changed by it, not replaced.
Indeed, in Britain the problem is not that we have too many robots and too much technology, but too little. Ours is the only G7 economy with a robot density – the ratio of robots per employees – lower than the world average. We have far less manufacturing automation than countries like Spain and Italy, never mind Germany and Japan. Certainly when we consider the fall in automated car washes, and rise in manual car washes performed by poor migrant workers, we should be worried about humans taking robots’ jobs, rather than robots taking ours.
Of course new technologies throw up new social problems and public policy challenges. The dominance of the big tech companies puts huge political, social and economic power into the hands of an untouchable few. Social media – the public square of our time – is primed by its algorithms for conflict not debate, manipulated by its owners and executives to skew what we see, and left wide open for exploitation by bullies, abusers and criminals.
All technology can be used for good or ill, but we have it in our means to maximize the benefits and cut down the costs. Nationally and internationally, the internet and social media can be regulated. Tech solutions can give us more privacy and greater control of our personal data. The authorities must have the powers and tools they need to investigate criminals and protect our children online.
And there are huge potential economic and social benefits as we push the frontiers of human knowledge forward. It will be technology – nuclear fusion perhaps, or hydrogen, battery technology, or other green innovations – that cut carbon emissions, not unilateral policies that destroy industry and jobs. It will be abundant, affordable energy that powers future economic growth. And it will be technology as much as trade policies that reshores manufacturing and brings jobs home.
But to push this progress faster, and to make sure we capture the benefits here in Britain, we have to get the policy right. The scientists working on fusion technology in California work at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, first established to test nuclear weapons but later used to explore fusion research. Most scientific discovery – in America, here and elsewhere – is the result of public investment in public institutions.
The challenge for Britain is how we set up our institutions to succeed, to make sure we harness the knowledge and discoveries achieved by our scientists and researchers – and apply them intelligently for social, economic and medical gain. It is easy to be negative sometimes, but this year shows we have incredible possibilities before us.
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