By 2028, genetic engineering and advanced gene therapy will become commonplace tools used to treat a wide array of complex diseases, catalyzed by unprecedented leaps in artificial intelligence. This major projection is just one of many highlights from the newly released 2030 Technology Megatrends Report published by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
Dejan Milojicic, an IEEE Fellow and chair of the IEEE Future Directions Committee’s Industry Advisory Board—the group responsible for spearheading the comprehensive report—notes that a fundamental transformation is currently underway regarding how modern technology evolves. Milojicic, who also serves as a vice president at HPE Labs in Milpitas, California, and is a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Fellow, emphasizes that artificial intelligence is no longer operating in an isolated digital vacuum. Instead, AI has become deeply and inextricably connected to global energy supplies, physical infrastructure, and core mechanical systems.
Artificial intelligence serves as the foundational undercurrent binding together the report’s 30 distinct breakthrough technologies and five overarching "megatrends." These megatrends represent major technological shifts carrying the profound potential to reshape global industries and everyday human life for decades to come. Experts clarify that a megatrend is never defined by a single isolated breakthrough; rather, it represents a rich, interconnected collection of related advancements.
To compile the comprehensive 2030 report, an international coalition of 166 leading experts representing 38 countries across six distinct continents collaborated extensively. Drawn from diverse sectors including private industry, prominent academic institutions, and government agencies, these specialists identified 30 breakthrough technologies distributed across five core megatrends: artificial intelligence, energy, health, space, and physical AI. To ensure rigorous analysis, the expert panel graded each trend against five strict criteria: the statistical likelihood of success, the magnitude of impact on humanity, technological maturity, market adoption rates, and the estimated horizon to widespread adoption.
AI as a Common Thread
Interconnected systems drive the sweeping megatrends outlined in the report, and the central connective tissue linking them all together is artificial intelligence. The report highlights that AI technology is currently advancing at a pace far faster than any previous historical revolution, outstripping the speeds of the industrial, electrical, and digital revolutions. This blistering velocity has successfully transformed artificial intelligence from a specialized software tool into fundamental, general-purpose infrastructure, according to Milojicic.
However, this rapid evolution carries substantial risks and systemic challenges, the report’s authors caution. The analysis explicitly cites severe shortages in computing infrastructure and adequate energy sources as critical constraints throttling the ability to scale up AI globally. Furthermore, the technology’s exponential growth will inevitably require a massive reshaping and retraining of the worldwide workforce.
Workers across nearly every industry have historically needed to adapt to changing economic landscapes to stay competitive, Milojicic observes, adding that corporate AI adoption should never be viewed as an all-or-nothing proposition. Instead, modern businesses must strategically evaluate when, where, and how to apply these tools to maximize value while mitigating disruption. The experts emphasize that long-term success will ultimately demand both advanced technical capabilities and careful, deliberate attention to the nuanced relationship between humans and machines. Essential conditions such as established trust, robust security, system explainability, and forward-thinking policymaking will ultimately determine which AI-supported technologies successfully scale in the real world.
Mary Ellen Randall, the 2026 IEEE president and CEO, stated in an official news release that the new report shifts the public conversation toward something far more vital: examining precisely how these varied technological advances will intersect with one another to profoundly shape human lives. Randall stressed that the compiled data makes it unequivocally clear that trust, safety, and human connection must serve as the guiding principles for every major breakthrough achieved in the decade ahead.
Health Care is a High-Impact Bet
Among all the evaluated categories, the panel of experts scored personalized medicine as the study’s highest-impact technology, assigning it an impressive score of 4.93 out of a possible 5 points due to its immense potential to dramatically improve human life and longevity.
The report credits rapid, AI-driven breakthroughs in personalized diagnostics and therapeutic treatments, which are largely propelled by innovative biotechnology startups. Within the next two years, the experts predict that genetic engineering and targeted gene therapy will transition into routine therapeutic applications. Within a five-year window, advanced, earlier disease diagnoses are expected to move out of specialized research laboratories and firmly into day-to-day clinical medical practice. Meanwhile, researchers will likely achieve the capability to manufacture simple synthetic proteins—molecules engineered entirely from scratch rather than sourced from nature—designed to perform highly specific jobs within the human body, such as actively targeting a tumor or supplying a missing vital enzyme.
Energy Wakes Up for AI
The staggering surge in power demand driven by artificial intelligence is rapidly outpacing the global energy sector’s ability to keep pace. Modern tech infrastructure—spanning sprawling data centers, complex telecommunications networks, and heavy computing hardware—already consumes an estimated 10 percent of all electricity globally, according to the IEEE news release.
Despite this immense and growing burden, the expert panel predicts that within two to three years, energy storage capacities will double across developed nations. Milojicic notes that the traditional energy industry has remained relatively dormant for decades, seeing very little breakthrough innovation since the foundational eras of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.
Highlighting a striking operational mismatch, Milojicic points out that modern enterprise data centers can ramp up power loads within milliseconds, whereas the traditional power and energy sector requires months or even years to expand capacity. Consequently, governments around the world will be forced to fundamentally rethink their approaches to power generation if they hope to stay comfortably ahead of surging demand.
The experts also invoke the classic economic principle known as the Jevons paradox—the observation that technological efficiency gains tend to increase, rather than decrease, overall resource consumption. As the energy efficiency of specialized AI microchips improves, organizations will inevitably deploy vastly larger pools of hardware to train increasingly massive frontier models, which are the highly advanced AI systems currently under development. Data centers will ultimately draw as much raw power as regional electrical grids can possibly supply, leaving virtually no surplus for other sectors, the report predicts.
Physical AI Moves the Fastest
Physical AI refers broadly to advanced systems embedded directly within machines that possess the ability to sense and physically interact with the real world, a category that encompasses sophisticated robots and fully autonomous vehicles. In earlier developmental drafts of the report, this category was designated as "hyper-automation and robotics," capturing a wide range of software-driven process automations paired with physical hardware. The Industry Advisory Board later streamlined these concepts into a single, cohesive physical AI megatrend.
The evaluation revealed that human-AI interaction currently boasts the shortest adoption horizon of any of the 30 scored technologies, estimated at just two to three years. Furthermore, the experts concluded that physical AI holds the greatest statistical probability for profound technical advancement of any megatrend over the next four years.
Smarter, significantly more efficient robots are projected to substantially reduce overall industrial energy consumption within the next two years. Furthermore, the modalities of communication between humans and AI systems—whether housed within an android chassis or a stationary smart device—will rapidly shift away from text-based commands toward predominantly audio and video instructions within a two- to three-year timeframe.
Advanced androids utilized in factory and industrial settings will incorporate sensitive tactile and haptic feedback capabilities within the next two to five years. This crucial advancement will allow machines to accurately sense what they are physically touching and dynamically adjust their grip strength or exerted force in response. Parallel developments in bio-inspired artificial skin, flexible tissues, and advanced sensors will progress along a similar timeline, giving robots a level of physical perception that much more closely mirrors human touch.
Space is Just Getting Started
Space technology, as broadly defined by the IEEE report, encompasses far more than planetary exploration and rocket launches. It spans critical infrastructure including satellite communications, in-space manufacturing, and advanced launch systems. Despite its immense long-term promise, space technology currently represents one of the lower-profile megatrends in the report, a positioning driven primarily by its current state of market maturity rather than a lack of potential.
Milojicic explains that the space sector is by no means lagging behind other industries; rather, it reflects a realistic baseline of maturity. While satellite communication receives significant public attention today because it is undeniably cool and highly practical, it remains a relatively small economic segment compared to the massive spotlight currently focused on artificial intelligence.
Nevertheless, Milojicic firmly believes that the space sector will command significantly greater prominence in the coming years as terrestrial communication and transportation networks increasingly push their operational boundaries out into the cosmos. The report highlights two specific technologies sitting on the near horizon: semiconductor manufacturing processes that leverage unique conditions found in space, and more affordable, reusable orbital rockets. Additionally, the report identifies clean energy generation stationed in space and the eventual commercialization of orbital garbage collection as critical milestone technologies to watch over the coming decade.
What’s Next?
To navigate this complex technological landscape successfully, the IEEE report strongly recommends close, proactive collaboration among academia, private industry, governments, and professional engineering associations.
To build a well-trained, adaptable workforce, the report advises industry leaders to partner directly with professional organizations to establish targeted training programs and revive formal apprenticeships in foundational physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. Businesses are also urged to treat essential AI infrastructure—including computing hardware, proprietary data assets, and dedicated energy sources—as long-term strategic assets rather than short-term operational expenses. Additional recommendations include expanding broad access to affordable, high-quality education focused on STEM coursework and foundational AI competence.
Governments, meanwhile, should take a proactive leadership role in drafting sensible policy frameworks and implementing comprehensive reintegration programs designed specifically to support workers displaced by automation and artificial intelligence. Professional organizations, including IEEE, are encouraged to pioneer new products and services powered by AI, strengthen rigorous safety and data governance standards, and serve as neutral collaboration platforms uniting industry, academia, and policymakers.
The report also offers strategic guidance tailored for end users, content creators, institutional investors, and corporate leadership teams on how to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven future.
Running through all of the report’s extensive recommendations is a singular, unwavering thread: humanity must never lose sight of the vital relationship between people and intelligent machines. Sophia A. Muirhead, IEEE executive director and chief operating officer, noted in the organizational release that as a public charity dedicated fundamentally to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity, IEEE believes true technological progress must be measured by far more than mere development speed and implementation scale. Whether focusing on retraining the global workforce or responsibly weaving artificial intelligence into the fabric of daily life, the ultimate success of these sweeping megatrends depends entirely on ensuring that innovation actively strengthens human well-being and public trust.
