MIT Technology Review

In 2015, JPMorgan Chase embarked on a journey to build a more secure and open wholesale banking. For chief technology officer at Onyx by J.P.Morgan, Suresh Shetty, investing in blockchain, a distributed ledger technology in its early days, was about ubiquity. We actually weighted ubiquity in terms of who can use the technology, who was...

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. A chatbot helped more people access mental-health services The news: An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Human babies are fascinating creatures. Despite being completely dependent on their parents for a long time, they can do some amazing stuff. Babies have an innate understanding of the physics of...

Late last month, the Biden administration announced it's suspending permit applications for exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) as it reevaluates the economic, environmental, and climate impacts of the fuel. LNG is produced by cooling natural gas into a liquid state, making it easier to store and ship to overseas markets. Natural gas itself has been...

An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups who are less likely to seek help, new research has found. Demand for mental-health services in England is on the rise, particularly since the covid-19 pandemic. Mental-health services received 4.6 million patient...

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. Solar geoengineering could start soon if it starts small -David W. Keith, founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago, and Wake Smith, a lecturer at the...

For half a century, climate researchers have considered the possibility of injecting small particles into the stratosphere to counteract some aspects of climate change. The idea is that by reflecting a small fraction of sunlight back to space, these particles could partially offset the energy imbalance caused by accumulating carbon dioxide, thereby reducing warming 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. This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language Human babies are far better at learning than even the very best large language models. To be able to...

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. Welcome back to The Checkup! Today I want to talk about ... mRNA vaccines. I can hear the collective groan from here, but wait-hear me out!...

Human babies are far better at learning than even the very best large language models. To be able to write in passable English, ChatGPT had to be trained on massive data sets that contain millions or even a trillion words. Children, on the other hand, have access to only a tiny fraction of that 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. Why recycling alone can't power climate tech The potential to use old, discarded products to make something new sounds a little bit like magic. This is why, in some cases at least, recycling...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The potential to use old, discarded products to make something new sounds a little bit like magic. I absolutely understand the draw, and in some cases, recycling is going to be a...

Robots are good at certain tasks. They're great at picking up and moving objects, for example, and they're even getting better at cooking. But while robots may easily complete tasks like these in a laboratory, getting them to work in an unfamiliar environment where there's little data available is a real challenge. Now, a new...

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 world's biggest EV maker is getting into shipping Earlier this month, a massive ship picked up over 5,000 electric cars from two ports in northern and southern China. Five days later,...

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. For people who have been watching BYD for a long time, it won't be surprising that the company has just ventured into a new field. The Chinese electric-vehicle maker has been particularly...

The motor in your vacuum cleaner and the one in your electric vehicle likely have at least one thing in common: they both rely on powerful permanent magnets to function. And the materials for those magnets could soon be in short supply. Permanent magnets can maintain a magnetic field on their own without an electric...

Earlier this month, a massive ship picked up over 5,000 electric cars from two ports in northern and southern China. Five days later, it passed through Singapore, and it is now headed for India. However, its final destination is in Europe, where most of the cars will be sold. The ship's name is BYD Explorer...

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. Three ways we can fight deepfake porn Last week, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift, one of the world's biggest pop stars, went viral online. Millions of people viewed nonconsensual deepfake porn of...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Hi, Taylor. I can only imagine how you must be feeling after sexually explicit deepfake videos of youwent viral on X. Disgusted. Distressed, perhaps. Humiliated, even. I'm really sorry this is...

Last week, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift, one of the world's biggest pop stars, went viral online. Millions of people viewed nonconsensual deepfake porn of Swift on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. X has since taken the drastic step of blocking all searches for Taylor Swift to try to get...

For decades, procurement was seen as a back-office function focused on cost-cutting and supplier management. But that view is changing as supply chain disruptions and fluctuating consumer behavior ripple across the economy. Savvy leaders now understand procurement's potential to deliver unprecedented levels of efficiency, insights, and strategic capability across the business. However, tapping into procurement's...

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. People are worried that AI will take everyone's jobs. We've been here before. It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around...

MIT Technology Review is celebrating our 125th anniversary with an online series that draws lessons for the future from our past coverage of technology. It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. Everyone was worried about jobs. In 1930, the prominent British...

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 wastewater could offer an early warning system for measles Measles is back with a vengeance. In the UK, where only 85% of school-age children have received two doses of the MMR vaccine,...

Measles is back with a vengeance. In the UK, where only 85% of school-age children have received two doses of the MMR vaccine, as many as 300 people have contracted the disease since October. And in the US, an outbreak has infected nine people in Philadelphia since last month. One case has been reported in...

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 one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies On a pine farm north of the tiny town of Tamarack, Minnesota, Talon Metals has uncovered one of America's densest nickel deposits-and now it...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The world is building solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other crucial climate technologies faster than ever. As the pace picks up, though, a challenge is looming: we need a whole...

A collection of brown pipes emerge at odd angles from the mud and overgrown grasses on a pine farm north of the tiny town of Tamarack, Minnesota. Beneath these capped drill holes, Talon Metals has uncovered one of America's densest nickel deposits-and now it wants to begin tunneling deep into the rock to extract hundreds...

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 China is regulating robotaxis Not many technologies have had such a roller-coaster ride in the past year as robotaxis. In just a few months they went from San Francisco's new darling to...

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. Not many technologies have had such a roller-coaster ride in the past year as robotaxis. In just a few months they went from San Francisco's new darling to a national scandal after...

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. This town's mining battle reveals the contentious path to a cleaner future In June last year, Talon, an exploratory mining company, submitted a proposal to Minnesota state regulators to begin digging up as...

MIT Technology Review's What's Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of our serieshere. In 2023, it almost felt as if the promise of robotaxis was soon to be fulfilled. Hailing a robotaxi had briefly become the new trendy thing...

Minnesota's Highway 210 threads through the tiny towns of Aitkin County, a poor and sparsely populated stretch of forests, lakes, and wetlands that reaches just into the northeastern corner of the state. A short drive off the highway, due south past the Tamarack Church, delivers you to Jackson's Hole, the last remaining business in 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. Last week the AI world was buzzing over a new paper inNature from Google DeepMind, in which the lab managed to create an AI system that can solve complex geometry problems....

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Reviews weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. The Iowa caucuses on January 15 officially kicked off the 2024 presidential election.I've said it before and I'll say it again-the biggest story of this...

For many people, covid is an illness that blusters in and out of our lives as cases spike and recede. But for tens of millions of others, a case of covid is the beginning of a chronic and sometimes debilitating illness that persists for months or even years. What makes individuals with long covid different...

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. A brain-dead man was attached to a gene-edited pig liver for three days Surgeon Abraham Shaked thinks he has probably carried out more than 2,500 liver transplants. But in December 2023, the team...

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. Hooked up to a ventilation machine, a person can be dead in the eyes of the law, medical professionals, and loved ones, yet still alive enough...

Raesetje Sefala grew up sharing a bedroom with her six siblings in a cramped township in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The township's inhabitants, predominantly Black people, had inadequate access to schools, health care, parks, and hospitals. But just a few miles away in Limpopo, white families lived in big, attractive houses, with easy...

Surgeon Abraham Shaked thinks he has probably carried out more than 2,500 liver transplants. But in December 2023, a team he oversees at the University of Pennsylvania did something he'd never tried before. Working on the body of a brain-dead man, they attached his veins to a refrigerator-size machine with pig liver mounted in 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. Exascale computers: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 In May 2022, the global supercomputer rankings were shaken up by the launch of Frontier. It's the fastest supercomputer in the world, and can perform as many...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. I've got nuclear power on the brain this week. The workings of nuclear power plants have always fascinated me. They're massive, technically complicated, and feel a little bit magic (splitting the atom-what...

For more than a month in total, 12 metric tons of molten salt coursed through pipes at Kairos Power in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company is developing a new type of nuclear reactor that will be cooled using this salt mixture, and its first large-scale test cooling system just completed 1,000 hours of operation in...

In business, the acceleration of change means enterprises have to live in the future, not the present. Having the tools and technologies to enable forward-thinking and underpin digital transformation is key to survival. Supply chain procurement leaders are tasked with improving operational efficiencies and keeping an eye on the bottom line. For Raimundo Martinez, global...

A new AI system could help detect the most common form of pancreatic cancer, new research has found. Pancreatic cancer is a difficult disease to detect. The pancreas itself is hidden by other organs in the abdomen, making it tough to spot tumors during tests. Patients also rarely experience symptoms in the early stages, meaning...

Google DeepMind has created an AI system that can solve complex geometry problems. It's a significant step towards machines with more human-like reasoning skills, experts say. Geometry, and mathematics more broadly, have challenged AI researchers for some time. Compared with text-based AI models, there is significantly less training data for mathematics because it is symbol...

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. Twitter killers: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 For the better part of 17 years, the roiling, rolling, fractious, sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying, never-ever-ending global conversation had a central home: Twitter. If you wanted to...

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. Last year was a banner year for artificial intelligence. Thanks to products like ChatGPT, many millions of people are now directly interacting with AI, talking about it, and grappling with its impact...

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. Apple Vision Pro: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 History is littered with doomed face computers. Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, and even Meta's Quest line all flopped. Now, it's Apple's turn to try. At the...