World Solve

Companion drones assigned at birth that cannot be permanently powered down raise questions of autonomy, surveillance, and liability. The challenge is giving individuals genuine authority over devices that have been present since infancy without creating safety gaps.

Fabricated reviewer identities, complete with fake credentials, have occasionally been used to manipulate the peer review process in favor of certain papers. Verifying reviewer authenticity more rigorously remains an unresolved challenge for academic publishing.

Digital contracts can potentially be modified after signing in ways that aren't always immediately detectable without specialized forensic review. Building this verification directly into standard contract systems remains incompletely adopted.

Old photographs and videos can be digitally altered using AI in ways that are difficult to distinguish from genuine historical restoration, risking the distortion of the historical record. Forensic tools for detecting this kind of manipulation remain underdeveloped.

AI language models have been shown to generate plausible-sounding but entirely fictional legal citations, and this has already caused real problems in actual court filings. Building reliable safeguards against this in legal workflows remains an unresolved and urgent challenge.

Verifying that voting machine software hasn't been secretly altered requires specialized technical audits that aren't consistently performed everywhere elections take place. Making this verification standard and accessible remains an unresolved election security challenge.

Data can sometimes leave an organization through informal channels or unauthorized access long before any official breach is detected. Faster, more reliable internal leak detection remains an unresolved cybersecurity challenge.

Blockchain can record ownership transactions, but it doesn't inherently verify that the underlying digital artwork itself is original or hasn't been duplicated elsewhere. Solving this deeper authenticity verification remains an unresolved technical gap.

Some of the internet's most widely used open-source components are maintained by very few volunteers, and serious vulnerabilities have been found lurking undetected for years in code millions of systems depend on. Better resourcing and review processes for open-source security remain inconsistently funded.

Specialized AI hardware is improving, but there's still a significant tradeoff between processing power and energy efficiency that hasn't been fully solved. Breaking this tradeoff could dramatically reduce AI's growing environmental footprint.

Advanced spyware can be installed on phones without any visible sign, and even security experts sometimes struggle to detect its presence through standard tools. Better, more accessible detection methods remain an urgent unmet need.

Many users experience nausea, eye strain, or disorientation after even moderate use of virtual reality headsets, a problem that hasn't been fully solved despite years of hardware improvements. This limits how widely VR can be adopted for work or daily use.

Objects in the distant solar system could reveal formation history and the presence of rogue planets, but only a few have been discovered. Wide-field deep surveys and improved orbit determination are needed.

Theory predicts metal-free stars that reionized the Universe, but no such stars have been observed. JWST-class telescopes and 21cm cosmology experiments could provide indirect signatures.

This relic of the Big Bang has not been directly detected. Novel detectors and cosmological analysis methods are needed.

Economic growth has not been inclusive enough, leaving large groups in informal, low-paying work without safety nets. Targeted cash transfers and universal basic social protection floors could reduce extreme poverty.

Many staple crops have not been bred for the increasing heat and erratic rainfall smallholders now face. Localized breeding programs and seed-distribution networks need faster scaling.

The Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra deltas are experiencing severe saltwater intrusion, rendering traditional rice paddies unproductive. Alternative crop strains and soil remediation techniques have not been deployed at the scale needed to sustain millions of farming households.

Rates of myopia in children have been rising alongside increased screen time, and current prevention strategies remain limited and inconsistently applied. A clearer, more effective prevention approach remains an open need.

Food allergies have been rising for reasons researchers still can't fully explain, and existing treatments mostly manage symptoms after exposure rather than removing the risk entirely. A true prevention or cure remains elusive.