5 breakthroughs that improved our lives this year — and 1 that didn’t

As 2024 comes to a close, it’s tempting to think that nothing happened this year except for a history-shaking presidential election. But it’s also been a transformational year on the tech front — and in unexpected ways.

The technological innovations that changed our lives this year, for the most part, were not gadgets. Revolutionary software updates, including better AI assistants, dominated the list of the most exciting announcements from major tech companies. On the policy front, we saw new incentives to invest in renewable energy products, like heat pumps and EVs, start to take effect, while nuclear energy returned to the spotlight. In space, thousands of new satellites started beaming cheaper internet connectivity down to remote areas. 

Taken as a whole, the year in tech progress ended up being more practical than fantastical. 

You could call the rise of AI pretty fantastical, but at least for now, the products that everyday Americans are using amount to very handy chatbots rather than paradigm-shifting superintelligences. What’s making our lives better are inventions that improve efficiency and productivity. It only sounds boring if you overlook the fact that these improvements add up to saving the planet.

Meanwhile, the most futuristic things that came out this year didn’t deliver. There was the Rabbit R1, a device that was supposed to put the mighty power of AI at your fingertips but just didn’t work. There was the Human Ai Pin that was supposed to replace your phone but it didn’t. Then there was the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. More on that in a minute.

Before we get too bogged down trashtalking the bad gadgets, let’s highlight the big breakthroughs. Here are five things that change our lives this year. And one that didn’t.

5 things that improved our lives

AI started doing everything, everywhere, all at once.

It’s only been two years since ChatGPT’s historic launch, but generative AI still seems like the only thing tech companies want to talk about. OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, now offers a search engine, a photorealistic video generator called Sora, and a new model codenamed Strawberry that can reason. Google, arguably the original generative AI superpower, launched Gemini 2.0, promising AI agents will soon do your bidding. Apple also rolled out Apple Intelligence, a pared down but more approachable set of AI tools, to its millions of users. 

All that happened in the past six weeks, by the way. Suffice it to say AI is here to stay, and it’s getting better at a remarkable rate. There’s also evidence that the number of people using AI is growing fast — so fast that AI is outpacing the adoption rates of personal computers and the internet. At the same time, AI currently requires enough electricity to power a small country and will only need more as it becomes more advanced. Which brings us to number two on our list.

Nuclear power made a comeback.

The upside to AI’s insatiable appetite for electricity is that it’s actually driving innovation in the clean energy sector. And while it may make you think of the 1950s, nuclear energy is the hot technology everybody wants more of. Microsoft led the way in September, when it helped reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant by agreeing to buy all of its electricity as it planned for an AI-powered future. Google followed suit in October when it signed an agreement to buy electricity from small modular reactors developed by Kairos Power. The same week, Amazon announced plans to invest in X Power, another company working on small modular reactors.

Small modular reactors are exciting for several reasons, including how quick and easy it is to build them — at least theoretically. No company has successfully commercialized the technology yet, but the renewed interest in nuclear energy is throwing a lot of money at the problem. The Department of Defense even announced a mobile nuclear reactor project of its own in September at the Idaho National Laboratory. So we don’t quite know what the new nuclear age will look like, but it will almost certainly be smaller, cheaper, and safer.

Satellite internet got better and cheaper.

Speaking of Space Age inventions, satellites had quite the year. More specifically, constellations of satellites that beam internet connectivity down to the Earth went mainstream. Thanks in part to the pandemic, the technology took off this year, and you can get satellite internet in all 50 states, even if you live in the middle of nowhere. SpaceX’s Starlink, which started providing connectivity to soldiers in Ukraine last year, is probably the satellite internet company you’ve heard of. It uses constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites to deliver fast, low-latency internet connections starting at $120 a month. HughesNet and ViaSat, known for its airplane Wifi programs, have slower service, but their plans start at about $50 a month. 

The big news this year is that Amazon is getting into the space internet race with its Project Kuiper satellites. The company announced in November that it would start deploying low-Earth orbit satellite constellations in early 2025, competing directly with Starlink. Some analysts think this boost of competition could push Starlink’s prices down, and even boost the development of its new cellular service. All of these new satellites, by the way, open up a future in which you’ll never need to worry about reception again, even in a disaster.

Gadgets are becoming medical devices. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Wired this year that he wants to democratize health. This year, Apple got clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for two breakthroughs: Watches that can detect sleep apnea and AirPods Pro earbuds that can double as hearing aids. That hearing aid feature didn’t even necessarily require you to buy new AirPods, since it arrived in a software update.

Apple isn’t the only tech company blurring the line between gadgets and health devices, either. The Oura Ring exploded in popularity this year thanks in part to its innovative sleep tracking and cycle tracking features. Google released its Pixel Watch 3, which comes with a pulse detection feature it says can save lives. Withings even brought us one step closer to a Star Trek-inspired Tricorder with a device called the BeamO that works as a thermometer, stethoscope, pulse oximeter, and EKG all in one device. 

Instagram Teens accounts tried to fix a youth mental health crisis.

While it’s been growing for years, the panic over youth mental health and social media reached new heights in 2024. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for putting warning labels on social media. The Anxious Generation, a book about how smartphones were ruining childhood and especially teens, spent weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. And the biggest piece of legislation to protect kids online, now known as KOSPA, passed the Senate and is very close to passing in the House.

Meta introduced a solve of sorts for the youth mental health crisis. In September, it introduced Instagram Teen accounts, which makes accounts for users under 16 private by default, limits who can contact young people, and introduces some anti-bullying features, among other things. While this is not the solution to the dangers of social media or to the youth mental health crisis, it is action. You could also argue that this is how Instagram should have worked all along, but hey, it’s nice that Meta finally did something to try and quell the panic.

1 thing that wanted to improve our lives but, sadly, did not

The Apple Vision Pro was not the future we were promised.

Before its release in February, you could say that people were excited about the Apple Vision Pro. The long-rumored mixed reality headset was Apple’s first completely new product in over a decade, and it was supposed to change computing as we knew it. The Vision Pro also cost $3,500, required you to carry a battery pack around in your pocket, and gave people black eyes. By the end of the year, it had become clear the Vision Pro was possibly most useful as a giant display for your Mac.

The future is hard. It’s hard to predict, and as our warming planet continues to remind us, it’s hard to live in. The Apple Vision Pro certainly seems like an impressive device, one that will get better and cheaper over time. 

But for a year like 2024, the technologies that truly improved our lives are the ones that made us healthier, more connected, and less reliant on fossil fuels. On its face, these improvements don’t sound as exciting as glasses that turn the world into a digital cinemascape. But they definitely point to a future we’d all want to live in.

A version of this story was also published in the Vox Technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!