MIT Technology Review

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), often dubbed the Climate Bill," was signed into law more than a year ago in the US and catalyzed more than $390 billion of investment in the clean energy sector. But what specific changes has it brought about, and what obstacles remain? Leah Stokes, an environmental policy professor at UC...

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. Why the first-ever space junk fine is such a big deal We've just taken a major step toward cleaning up space junk. Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US...

Hello again from The Checkup! This week the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine honored two scientists whose research into messenger RNA (mRNA) technology paved the way for much-lauded covid-19 vaccines. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman figured out how to tweak mRNA to prevent it from setting off an inflammatory reaction. Their discovery, first published...

We've just taken a major step toward cleaning up space junk. On Monday, October 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US issued its first fine for space debris, ordering the US TV provider Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to move one of its satellites into a safe orbit. It is definitely a...

Autonomous shopping carts that follow grocery store customers and robots that pick ripe cucumbers faster than humans may grab headlines, but the most compelling applications of AI and ML technology are behind the scenes. Increasingly, organizations are finding substantial efficiency gains by applying AI- and ML-powered tools to back-office procedures such as document processing, data...

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 15 ClimateTech Companies to Watch It's easy to feel overwhelmed and terrified in the face of an ever-worsening climate crisis. But the glimmer of good news is that, for the most part,...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Awards season is due for a refresh. While you wait to hear who got the nod for the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Emmys, check out MIT Technology Review's 15 Climate Tech Companies...

Business data provides an often untapped well of organizational value. Customer interaction data, supply chain data, operational data, human resource data, financial data, market research data, back-office data-these oft-hidden data sources hold immense potential for operational insights and value creation," says Sidharth Mukherjee, chief digital officer of Teleperformance, a global digital business services company. Making...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Form Energy is building iron-based batteries that could store renewable energy on the grid for long stretches, saving up for times when electricity sources such as wind and solar aren't available. Using iron, one of the most common metals on the planet, could help the...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Sublime Systems has invented a new way to make cement. The startup's approach employs electrochemistry to dramatically cut emissions, both by tweaking the chemical reactions involved and by eliminating the need for high temperatures. Intro Sublime Systems is reinventing how we make cement-a material that's...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. By designing a better battery, BYD has pulled ahead in the global electric vehicle race. Its affordable and versatile cars are making EVs far more accessible, and could ultimately help countries including China to dramatically reduce emissions from transportation. Intro BYD has come a long...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Fervo Energy is commercializing a geothermal technology that could significantly expand the regions that could tap into the steady, carbon-free energy source, by creating or widening cracks under the surface to allow water to more easily circulate underground. These enhanced geothermal plants could become an...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Offshore wind power has tremendous potential to help the world meet its climate goals. Former fossil-fuel company Orsted is leading the charge to unlock that potential by building massive offshore wind farms in Europe and installing some of the first turbines in US waters. Intro...

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. Underground thermal energy networks are becoming crucial to the US's energy future The news: Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. It was probably the highest-stakes mobile game match that's ever been played. On the evening of September 26, 10 men from China and Malaysia sat on a stage in Hangzhou, China, each...

Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources. Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it...

Artificial intelligence has turbocharged state efforts to crack down on internet freedoms over the past year. Governments and political actors around the world, in both democracies and autocracies, are using AI to generate texts, images, and video to manipulate public opinion in their favor and to automatically censor critical online content. In a new report...

Advances in imaging technologies are giving physicians unprecedented insights into disease states, but fragmented and siloed information technology systems make it difficult to provide the personalized, coordinated care that patients expect. In the field of medical imaging, health care providers began replacing radiographic films with digital images stored in a picture and archiving communication system...

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. Why Big Tech's bet on AI assistants is so risky Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, tech companies have been feverishly trying to come up with the killer app for the...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, tech companies have been feverishly trying to come up withthe killer app for the technology. First it was online search, withmixed results. Now...

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. Child online safety laws will actually hurt kids, critics say This summer, the Senate moved two bills dealing with online privacy for children and teens out of committee. We've also seen many states...

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This summer, the Senate movedtwo billsdealing with online privacy for children and teens out of committee. Both have been floating around Congress in various forms...

Technology Radar is a snapshot of the current technology landscape produced by Thoughtworks twice a year; it's based on technologies we've been using as an organization and communicates our perspective on them. There is always a long list of candidates to be featured for us to work through and discuss, but with each edition that...

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. Elon Musk wants more bandwidth between people and machines. Do we need it? Last week, Elon Musk made the bold assertion that sticking electrodes in people's heads is going to lead to a...

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. On September 19, US Food and Drug Administration advisors met to discuss how to move research on artificial wombs from animals into humans. These medical devices are...

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review's weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Last week, a post by Elon Musk on X (formerly known as Twitter) caught my eye. The entrepreneur claimed that sticking electrodes in people's heads...

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. Why the dream of fusion power isn't going away There's a joke about fusion power that always comes up when people start talking about the technology. It goes like this: Fusion is the...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. There's a joke about fusion power that always comes up when people start talking about the technology. It goes like this: Fusion is the energy of the future ... and it always...

Nations around the globe have begun to put in place the policies, capital and technologies needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but the world still must move far faster to address the rising dangers of climate change. MIT Technology Review's ClimateTech conference will bring together leading scientists, investors, entrepreneurs and officials working to accelerate the...

A wearable exoskeleton can help runners increase their speed by encouraging them to take more steps, allowing them to cover short distances more quickly. While previous studies have focused on how wearable exoskeletons can help people reduce the energy they expend while running, the new study, published today in Science Robotics, examines how wearable robots...

When it comes to banking, whether it's personal, business, or private, customer experience is everything. Building new technologies and platforms, employing them at scale, and optimizing workflows is especially critical for any large bank looking to meet evolving customer and internal stakeholder demands for faster and more personalized ways of doing business. Institutions like JPMorgan...

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 Europe's surprising best-selling Chinese EV maker China's electric vehicle sector has been lavished with fame and attention. But its global ambitions hit a roadblock this month when the European Commission launched an...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. These days, few Chinese tech sectors have received more fame and attention than electric vehicles. With domestic EV adoption rising aggressively every year, Chinese EV companies are the stars of auto shows...

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. Europe is working to slow down the global expansion of Chinese EVs Earlier this month, the European Commission announced it is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China. The move...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last Friday marked six months since the Future of Life Institute (FLI), a nonprofit focusing on existential risks surrounding artificial intelligence, sharedan open lettersigned by famous people such as Elon Musk,...

The boom has finally been lowered on Chinese electric-vehicle companies. On September 13, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the Union speech to announce that the organization is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China." The move-which could have serious ramifications for global automakers-has long been in...

Computer vision systems are everywhere. They help classify and tag images on social media feeds, detect objects and faces in pictures and videos, and highlight relevant elements of an image. However, they are riddled with biases, and they're less accurate when the images show Black or brown people and women. And there's another problem: the...

Getty Images is so confident its new generative AI model is free of copyrighted content that it will cover any potential intellectual-property disputes for its customers. The generative AI system, announced today, was built by Nvidia and is trained solely on images in Getty's image library. It does not include logos or images that have...

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. You can now have a voice conversation with ChatGPT The news: OpenAI has launched two new ways to interact with its flagship large language model in a major update. You can have a...

In one of the biggest updates to ChatGPT yet, OpenAI has launched two new ways to interact with its viral app. First, ChatGPT now has a voice. Choose from one of five lifelike synthetic voices and you can have a conversation with the chatbot as if you were making a call, getting responses to your...

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. Recently, I wrote a quick guide about what we might expect at Congress's first AI Insight Forum. Well, now that meeting has happened, and we...

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. In January 2023, Tara Sweeney's plane landed on Thwaites Glacier, a 74,000-square-mile mass of frozen water in West Antarctica. She arrived with an international research team to study the glacier's geology and ice fabric, and how its ice melt might contribute to sea level...

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 inverse vaccines might tackle diseases like multiple sclerosis On the whole, typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But scientists are also working on inverse vaccines" that teach the immune system...

This article first appeared inTheCheckup, MIT Technology Review's weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. I've written about vaccines for years, but recently I stumbled across a concept I had never heard of before. Typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But...

Consider a supply chain where delivery vehicles, shipping containers, and individual products are sensor-equipped. Real-time insights enable workers to optimize routes, reduce delays, and efficiently manage inventory. This smart orchestration boosts efficiency, minimizes waste, and lowers costs. Many industries are rapidly integrating sensors, creating vast data streams that can be leveraged to open profound business...

Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), will play a crucial role in the future of customer and employee experiences, software development, and more. Building a solid foundation in machine learning operations (MLOps) will be critical for companies to effectively deploy and scale LLMs, and generative AI capabilities broadly. In this uncharted territory, improper management...

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. What's next for the world's fastest supercomputers When the Frontier supercomputer came online last year, it marked the dawn of so-called exascale computing, with machines that can execute an exaflop-or a quintillion (1018)...