In Ben Hirschler’s Reuters Davos report, he identifies several game-changing technologies that World Economic Forum attendees believe will be possible by 2025: implantable mobile phones, 3D-printed organs for transplant, clothes and reading-glasses connected to the Internet. Apart from the bioprinting of organs, the rest seem to be not very risky bets. If human kidneys can be printed by that year (or any near it), we’ll have moved into a very remarkable new age. Of course, all new eras have their challenges as well. 

An excerpt:

One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year is not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean robot called HUBO, which is strutting its stuff amid a crowd of smartphone-clicking delegates.

But there are deep worries, as well as awe, at what technology can do.

A new report from UBS released in Davos predicts that extreme levels of automation and connectivity will worsen already deepening inequalities by widening the wealth gap between developed and developing economies.

“The fourth industrial revolution has potentially inverted the competitive advantage that emerging markets have had in the form of low-cost labor,” said Lutfey Siddiqi, global head of emerging markets for FX, rates and credit at UBS.

“It is likely, I would think, that it will exacerbate inequality if policy measures are not taken.”

An analysis of major economies by the Swiss bank concludes that Switzerland is the country best-placed to adapt to the new robot world, while Argentina ranks bottom.•