20/20 Foresight — The Texas Scientist

By Marc Airhart. Collages and Illustrations by David Steadman.

In the last half-century, science has served up a bonanza of advances. The periodic table gained 13 more elements – practically a new row. There’s one more state of matter, and one less planet (sorry, Pluto). Even the tree of life received a facelift (hello, Archaea). We crafted the technologies to effectively house the world’s knowledge on a single network, sequence the human genome, clone a sheep and detect gravitational waves. And we are computing now at a rate about a billion times faster than 50 years ago (at least if you’re using UT Austin’s Frontera, the world’s most powerful university supercomputer).

So what will the next 50 years bring? Absent a crystal ball, your best bet would be to ask a scientist. Many faculty across Natural Sciences have ideas about the future that fuel their research. From promising predictions to big ideas, here are six guesses about what comes next.

Our companion digital series, The Next 50 Years, includes audio stories, messages from scientists and more from UT Austin experts: txsci.net/next50

Managing A.I. will take a village

The expert: Computer science professor Peter Stone chaired the first report of the 100-Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, a multi-institution initiative, and he runs the U.S. division of Sony A.I. He also leads Good Systems, a UT Austin grand challenge initiative seeking to develop best practices for designing and using artificial intelligence, while predicting and mitigating its risks.

The idea: A.I.’s future is up to us. Researchers can use A.I. to bring about highly targeted treatments for diseases; safer, more efficient transportation; and improvements in care for the elderly – while avoiding the doomsday scenarios from film and many futurists’ predictions.

How it would work: The best computer scientists will team up with experts in law, public policy, philosophy, design and communications now so that A.I. technology development happens with their input.

In his words: “We need to identify the principles of a system that’s more likely to be used for good than for harm. These aren’t questions that can be answered just by A.I. researchers.”

Diet will get a precision tuning

The expert: Molly Bray, a geneticist and chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, is working towards a future where each person gets a personalized diet and exercise plan tailored to the individual’s specific genetics, history and lifestyle.

The idea: We’ll prevent or reduce obesity, metabolic disorders and diabetes; lower health care costs; and see people live healthier, more productive lives by finding the preventive approach that works for each individual.

How it would work: Tools that collect a person’s health data, from wearable devices to at-home blood tests, would allow for real-time physiological data-monitoring. Using tools to mine data from your dietary intake, physical activity, mood, blood sugar and biological metabolites, medical professionals would know which one of any of a plethora of effective diets is best matched to you.

In her words: “All diets can work, but the hard part is getting people to stick to them. A plan optimized for you would make you feel great, address your specific disease risks and also help you stick with the program.”

We’ll all be discovering species

The expert: Integrative biology professor David Hillis directs UT’s Biodiversity Center, where scientists are mindful that the planet is losing species quickly even while much work remains to learn about the species with us today. In fact, scientists believe only about 20% of Earth’s current species have been identified.

The idea: We will unmask the missing biodiversity – call it the dark biome – and rapidly identify currently unknown bacteria, insects, plants and more that can generate improvements in agriculture, thanks to better managing of soil microbes and pollinators, and new methods for storing climate-warming carbon in plants and the ground.

How it would work: Hillis envisions crowds of citizen scientists armed with inexpensive, portable genetic sequencers, sampling water and soil to help map the diversity of life around them by sharing that information through online databases. Scientists would gain critical information, while the public would more clearly see the value of biodiversity – and that all life, even human life, depends on it.

In his words: “There are undescribed species literally in almost anyone’s backyard, so if the technology were available, a lot of people would want to see how many species they can discover that scientists don’t know about yet.”

Circuits will drive addiction care

The expert: Lauren Dobbs is a neuroscientist and assistant professor conducting research in the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research.

The idea: To treat conditions like alcoholism and drug addiction, doctors will prescribe a medication precisely targeted to the specific circuits and molecules in the brain involved with addiction, with some treatments even tailored to an individual’s genetics to reduce side effects and help people with addiction experience effective recovery.

How it would work: Already Dobbs and other neuroscientists are mapping the addicted brain – for example, by studying how the use of combinations of drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, alter the brain, or which genes in brain cells become more active or less active when a drug is abused. Using this information to discover novel medical therapies, or even repurpose existing medicines that work on the same brain circuits and molecules, may be the key to stopping addiction.

In her words: “Addiction takes over a person’s life, all of their reason, their logic and their personality. I want to understand how drugs affect brain circuits to make them completely change, and then, hopefully, by reversing that, give them their lives back.”

Cells will give up their mysteries

The expert: Chemist Carlos Baiz works to fill in the unknowns of what goes on inside any given cell. To help uncover the intricate, riotous dance of billions of molecules snugly packed and performing all the functions of life, his team researches how different kinds of molecules interact in the crowded, messy environment of a cell.

The idea: The cell’s inner secrets will be revealed thanks to a highly advanced simulation that allows scientists to see in exquisite detail how cancer or other disorders work, how drugs designed for treatment affect a cell’s functioning and how life unfolds at its most basic level.

How it would work: An “atomistic computer model” that accurately simulates a cell’s workings over time, atom by atom, would take information like what Baiz is collecting today and match it to the power of truly advanced supercomputers, allowing the entire life of a cell to be simulated in minutes.

In his words: “Imagine a 3D movie so to speak of how each atom is interacting with each other atom as the cell grows and reproduces. If there’s a certain life process that you don’t understand, you can rewind, play it again, and then see how the molecules interact together and piece together all the different parts.”

We’ll find life in the universe

The experts: Assistant professor of astronomy Caroline Morley, senior research scientist Michael Endl and others seek to learn about planets outside our solar system. They are able to use technology found only at UT’s McDonald Observatory, a Habitable Zone Planet Finder made to find and study Earth-sized planets orbiting red dwarf stars far away.

The idea: Since our galaxy alone hosts an estimated 5 billion stars with planets in the so-called “habitable zone,” and since more of these planets are being discovered all the time, the tally of known living worlds will jump from one (Earth) to double that…or more.

How it would work: Researchers will soon use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and enormous ground-based telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope that UT Austin is helping to build, to measure chemicals in the atmospheres of exoplanets to detect the presence of life.

In their words: “I’d be surprised if we weren’t reading headlines, even in the next 20–30 years, that people have found compelling evidence that there’s life on planets around nearby stars, 50 to 100 light-years away,” Morley said.

“Even if it’s just microbes,” Endl added, “that would be the most spectacular discovery made in human history.”