MIT Technology Review

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Meet tomorrow's rising stars of computing Each year, MIT Technology Review honors 35 outstanding people under the age of 35 who are driving scientific progress and solving tough problems in their fields. Today...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. We can't make American children healthy again" without tackling the gun crisis This week, the Trump administration released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled-you...

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what's coming next. You can read more from the series here. It's been a big year for video generation. In the last nine months OpenAI made Sora public, Google DeepMind launched Veo 3, the video startup Runway...

Note for readers: This newsletter discusses gun violence, a raw and tragic issue in America. It was already in progress on Wednesday when a school shooting occurred at Evergreen High School in Colorado and Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University. Earlier this week, the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again movement...

Generative AI has the potential to transform the finance function. By taking on some of the more mundane tasks that can occupy a lot of time, generative AI tools can help free up capacity for more high-value strategic work. For chief financial officers, this could mean spending more time and energy on proactively advising the...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. How Trump's policies are affecting early-career scientists-in their own words Every year MIT Technology Review celebrates accomplished young scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors from around the world in our Innovators Under 35 list. We've...

Last week, a legal battle over lab-grown meat kicked off in Texas. On September 1, a two-year ban on the technology went into effect across the state; the following day, two companies filed a lawsuit against state officials. The two companies, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods, are part of a growing industry that aims to...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Video: AI and our energy future In May, MIT Technology Review published an unprecedented and comprehensive look at how much energy the AI industry uses-down to a single query. Our reporters and editors...

In July 2024, a botched update to the software defenses managed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused more than 8 million Windows systems to fail. From hospitals to manufacturers, stock markets to retail stores, the outage caused parts of the global economy to grind to a halt. Payment systems were disrupted, broadcasters went off the air,...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Meet the AI honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2025 Each year, we select 35 outstanding individuals under the age of 35 who are using technology to tackle tough problems...

In Silicon Valley's imagined future, AI models are so empathetic that we'll use them as therapists. They'll provide mental-health care for millions, unimpeded by the pesky requirements for human counselors, like the need for graduate degrees, malpractice insurance, and sleep. Down here on Earth, something very different has been happening. Last week, we published a...

The rising popularity of AI is driving an increase in electricity demand so significant it has the potential to reshape our grid. Energy consumption by data centers has gone up by 80% from 2020 to 2025 and is likely to keep growing. Electricity prices are already rising, especially in places where data centers are most...

Earlier this year, when my colleague Casey Crownhart and I spent six months researching the climate and energy burden of AI, we came to see one number in particular as our white whale: how much energy the leading AI models, like ChatGPT or Gemini, use up when generating a single response. This fundamental number remained...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Introducing: our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2025 The world is full of extraordinary young people brimming with ideas for how to crack tough problems. Every year, we recognize 35 such individuals...

This story is part of MIT Technology Review's America Undone" series, examining how the foundations of US success in science and innovation are currently under threat.You can read the rest here. Every year MIT Technology Review celebrates accomplished young scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors from around the world in our Innovators Under 35 list. We've just...

In December 1947, three physicists at Bell Telephone Laboratories-John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain-built a compact electronic device using thin gold wires and a piece of germanium, a material known as a semiconductor. Their invention, later named the transistor (for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1956), could amplify and switch electrical...

Sneha Goenka is one of MIT Technology Review's 2025 Innovators Under 35.Meet the rest of this year's honorees. Up to a quarter of children entering intensive care have undiagnosed genetic conditions. To be treated properly, they must first get diagnoses-which means having their genomes sequenced. This process typically takes up to seven weeks. Sadly, that's...

Iwnetim Abate is one of MIT Technology Review's 2025 Innovators Under 35.Meet the rest of this year's honorees. I'm the only one who wears glasses and has eye problems in the family," Iwnetim Abate says with a smile as sun streams in through the windows of his MIT office. I think it's because of the...

Yichao Peak" Ji is one of MIT Technology Review's 2025 Innovators Under 35.Meet the rest of this year's honorees. When Yichao Ji-also known as Peak"-appeared in a launch video for Manus in March, he didn't expect it to go viral. Speaking in fluent English, the 32-year-old introduced the AI agent built by Chinese startup Butterfly...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Putin says organ transplants could grant immortality. Not quite. -Jessica Hamzelou Earlier this week, my editor forwarded me a video of the leaders of Russia and China talking about immortality. These days at...

This week I'm writing from Manchester, where I've been attendinga conference on aging. Wednesday was full of talks and presentations by scientists who are trying to understand the nitty-gritty of aging-all the way down to the molecular level. Once we can understand the complex biology of aging, we should be able to slow or prevent...

Agentic AI is coming of age. And with it comes new opportunities in the financial services sector. Banks are increasingly employing agentic AI to optimize processes, navigate complex systems, and sift through vast quantities of unstructured data to make decisions and take actions-with or without human involvement. With the maturing of agentic AI, it is...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Synthesia's AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they'll be able to talk back. -Rhiannon Williams Earlier this summer, I visited the AI company Synthesia to give it what it needed to...

During Black Friday in 2024, Stripe processed more than $31 billion in transactions, with processing rates peaking at 137,000 transactions per minute, the highest in the company's history. The financial-services firmhad to analyze every transaction in real time to prevent nearly 21 million fraud attempts that could have siphoned more than $910 million from its...

Earlier this summer, I walked through the glassy lobby of a fancy office in London, into an elevator, and then along a corridor into a clean, carpeted room. Natural light flooded in through its windows, and a large pair of umbrella-like lighting rigs made the room even brighter. I tried not to squint as I...

On a spring day in 1954, Bell Labs researchers showed off the first practical solar panels at a press conference in Murray Hill, New Jersey, using sunlight to spin a toy Ferris wheel before a stunned crowd. The solar future looked bright. But in the race to commercialize the technology it invented, the US would...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Material Cultures looks to the past to build the future Despite decades of green certifications, better material sourcing, and the use of more sustainable materials, the built environment is still responsible for a...

As brands compete for increasingly price conscious consumers, customer experience (CX) has become a decisive differentiator. Yet many struggle to deliver, constrained by outdated systems, fragmented data, and organizational silos that limit both agility and consistency. The current wave of artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI that can reason and act across workflows, offers a powerful...

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how the world operates. With its potential to automate repetitive tasks, analyze vast datasets, and augment human capabilities, the use of AI technologies is already driving changes across industries. In health care and pharmaceuticals, machine learning and AI-powered tools are advancing disease diagnosis, reducing drug discovery timelines by as much...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered. Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one...

In a market flooded with AI promises, health care decision-makers are no longer dazzled by flashy demos or abstract potential. Today, they want pragmatic and pressure-tested products.They want solutions that work for their clinicians, staff, patients, and their bottom line. To gain traction in 2025 and beyond, health care providers are looking for real-world solutions...

As healthcare faces mounting pressures, from rising costs and an aging population to widening disparities, forward thinking innovations are more essential than ever. Accelerator programs have proven to be powerful launchpads for health tech companies, often combining resources, mentorship, and technology that startups otherwise would not have access to. By joining these fast-moving platforms, startups...

Everywhere I look, I see AI clones. On X and LinkedIn, thought leaders" and influencers offer their followers a chance to ask questions of their digital replicas. OnlyFans creators are having AI models of themselves chat, for a price, with followers. Virtual human" salespeople in China are reportedly outselling real humans. Digital clones-AI models that...

Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one of their online sessions, so Declan suggested they turn off their video feeds. Instead, his therapist began inadvertently sharing his screen. Suddenly, I was watching him use ChatGPT," says Declan,...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Can an AI doppelganger help me do my job? -James O'Donnell Digital clones-AI models that replicate a specific person-package together a few technologies that have been around for a while now: hyperrealistic video...

Next week, we'll publish our 2025 list of Innovators Under 35, highlighting smart and talented people who are working in many areas of emerging technology. This new class features 35 accomplished founders, hardware engineers, roboticists, materials scientists, and others who are already tackling tough problems and making big moves in their careers. All are under...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The case against humans in space Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is...

For just the second time in nearly two decades, the United States has granted an export license to an American company planning to sell nuclear technology to India, MIT Technology Review has learned. The decision to greenlight Clean Core Thorium Energy's license is a major step toward closer cooperation between the two countries on atomic...

A lot of Americans don't eat well. And they're paying for it with their health. A diet high in sugar, sodium, and saturated fat can increase the risk of problems like diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease, to name a few. And those are amongthe leading causes of death in the US. This is hardly...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Google's still not giving us the full picture on AI energy use -Casey Crownhart Google just announced that a typical query to its Gemini app uses about 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. That's about...

Over the past 20 years building advanced AI systems-from academic labs to enterprise deployments-I've witnessed AI's waves of success rise and fall. My journey began during the AI Winter," when billions were invested in expert systems that ultimately underdelivered. Flash forward to today: large language models (LLMs) represent a quantum leap forward, but their prompt-based...

Google just announced that a typical query to its Gemini app uses about 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. That's about the same as running a microwave for one second-something that, to me, feels virtually insignificant. I run the microwave for so many more seconds than that on most days. I was excited to see this report...

Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn't always easy. That's why we've created the AI Hype Index-a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Using AI to improve our health and well-being is one of the areas scientists and researchers are most excited about. The last month...

Across industries, enterprises are increasingly adopting an on-demand approach to compute, storage, and applications. They are favoring digital services that are faster to deploy, easier to scale, and better integrated with partner ecosystems. Yet, one critical pillar has lagged: the network. While software-defined networking has made inroads, many organizations still operate rigid, pre-provisioned networks. As...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Security issue It would be naive to think we are going back to a world without AI. We're not. But it's only one of many urgent problems we need to address...

When Jitender was a child in New Delhi, both his parents worked as manual scavengers-a job that involved clearing the city's sewers of solid waste by hand. Now, he is among almost 200 contractors involved in the Delhi government's effort to shift from this manual process to safer mechanical methods. Although it has been outlawed...

When I picked up my daughter from summer camp, we settled in for an eight-hour drive through the Appalachian mountains, heading from North Carolina to her grandparents' home in Kentucky. With little to no cell service for much of the drive, we enjoyed the rare opportunity to have a long, thoughtful conversation, uninterrupted by devices....

Earlier this year, the $800 million Vera Rubin Observatory commenced its decade-long quest to create an extremely detailed time-lapse movie of the universe. Rubin is capable of capturing many more stars than any other astronomical observatory ever built; it also sees many more satellites. Up to 40% of images captured by the observatory within its...

Overthink This is a podcast in which two very smart people (who happen to be young and hilarious professors of philosophy) draw unexpected philosophical connections between facets of modern life. Ellie Anderson and David Pena-Guzman have done hour-long episodes on everything from mommy issues to animal justice, with particularly sharp segments on tech-adjacent issues like...