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by Rachel Courtland on (#6VCT8)
Microsoft announced today that it has made significant progress in its 20-year quest to make topological quantum bits, or qubits-a special approach to building quantum computers that could make them more stable and easier to scale up. Researchers and companies have been working for years to build quantum computers, which could unlock dramatic new abilities...
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MIT Technology Review
| Link | https://www.technologyreview.com/ |
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| Updated | 2025-02-19 20:48 |
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6VCPX)
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. Your most important customer may be AI Imagine you run a meal prep company that teaches people how to make simple and delicious food. When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation for meal...
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by Peter Andrey Smith on (#6VCJZ)
At about the time when personal computers charged into cubicle farms, another machine muscled its way into human resources departments and became a staple of routine employment screenings. By the early 1980s, some 2 million Americans annually found themselves strapped to a polygraph-a metal box that, in many people's minds, detected deception. Most of those...
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by Scott J Mulligan on (#6VCJY)
Imagine you run a meal prep company that teaches people how to make simple and delicious food. When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation for meal prep companies, yours is described as complicated and confusing. Why? Because the AI saw that in one of your ads there were chopped chives on the top of a...
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by MIT Technology Review on (#6VC75)
Recorded onFebruary 18, 2025 Generative AI Search and the Changing Internet Speakers: Mat Honan, editor in chief, and Niall Firth, executive editor. Generative AI search, one ofMIT Technology Review's10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025, is ushering a new era of the internet. Despite fewer clicks, copyright fights, and sometimes iffy answers, AI could unlock new ways...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6VBWC)
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. Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second...
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by Allison Arieff on (#6VBRF)
When the journalist and culture critic Amanda Hess got pregnant with her first child, in 2020, the internet was among the first to know. More brands knew about my pregnancy than people did," she writes of the torrent of targeted ads that came her way. They all called me mama." The internet held the promise...
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by James O'Donnell on (#6VBRE)
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. While DOGE's efforts to shutter federal agencies dominate news from Washington, the Trump administration is also making more global moves. Many of these center on China. Tariffs on goods from the country...
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by Jacek Krywko on (#6VBRD)
Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice,...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6VB6T)
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. Adventures in the genetic time machine An ancient-DNA revolution is turning the high-speed equipment used to study the DNA of living things on to specimens from the past. The technology is being used...
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by Stephen Ornes on (#6VB3J)
Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on artistic creation. But Sougwen Chung, a nonbinary Canadian-Chinese artist, instead sees AI as an opportunity for artists to embrace uncertainty and challenge people to think about technology and creativity in unexpected ways. Chung's exhibitions are driven by technology; they're also live and kinetic, with the...
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by Antonio Regalado on (#6VB3H)
Eske Willerslev was on a tour of Montreal's Redpath Museum, a Victorian-era natural history collection of 700,000 objects, many displayed in wood and glass cabinets. The collection-very, very eclectic," a curator explained-reflects the taste in souvenirs of 19th-century travelers and geology buffs. A visitor can see a leg bone from an extinct Steller's sea cow,...
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by MIT Alumni News Staff on (#6V9PM)
Gloria Zhu '26 and Lee Liu '26 set out to make a calligraphy machine during IAP 2024. They built its mechatronic parts in a month; then, fueled by Hershey's dark chocolates, they put in many late nights in the Metropolis makerspace's electronics mezzanine to finish the job. The resulting device can move its brush pen...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V9KW)
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. China's electric vehicle giants are betting big on humanoid robots As the electric-vehicle war in China calms down, leaving a few established players to dominate the field, Chinese EV giants are expanding into...
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by Leo Herrera on (#6V9FX)
The near future. It's not a kiss, but it's not not a kiss. Her lips-full, soft, pliable-yield under mine, warm from the electric heating rod embedded in her throat. They taste of a faint chemical, like aspartame in Diet Pepsi. Her thermoplastic elastomer skin is sensitive to fabric dyes, so she wears white Agent Provocateur...
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6V9FW)
This article first appeared in The Checkup,MIT Technology Review'sweekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been speaking to people who have lost their voices. Both Joyce Esser, who lives in the UK, and Jules Rodriguez, who...
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by Caiwei Chen on (#6V9FY)
At the 2025 CCTV New Year Gala last month, a televised spectacle watched by over a billion viewers in China, 16 humanoid robots took the stage. Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature element of northeastern China's Yangko dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers. But the robots...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V8QV)
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. Motor neuron diseases took their voices. AI is bringing them back. Jules Rodriguez lost his voice in October of last year. His speech had been deteriorating since a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6V8QW)
An entertainment revolution, powered by AI and other emerging technologies, is fundamentally changing how content is created and consumed today. Media and entertainment (M&E) brands are faced with unprecedented opportunities-to reimagine costly and complex production workloads, to predict the success of new scripts or outlines, and to deliver immersive entertainment in novel formats like virtual...
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by Casey Crownhart on (#6V8NB)
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. A few weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Moss Landing Power Plant in California, the world's largest collection of batteries on the grid. Although the flames were extinguished in a...
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6V8KA)
Jules Rodriguez lost his voice in October of last year. His speech had been deteriorating since a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2020, as the muscles in his head and neck progressively weakened along with those in the rest of his body. By 2024, doctors were worried that he might not be able...
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6V8KB)
AI is everywhere, and it's starting to alter our relationships in new and unexpected ways-relationships with our spouses, kids, colleagues, friends, and even ourselves. Although the technology remains unpredictable and sometimes baffling, individuals from all across the world and from all walks of life are finding it useful, supportive, and comforting, too. People are using...
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6V7ZR)
Organizations working toward ambitious sustainability targets are finding an ally in emerging technologies. In agriculture, for instance, AI can use satellite imagery and real-time weather data to optimize irrigationand reduce water usage. In urban areas, cloud-enabled AI can power intelligent traffic systems, rerouting vehicles to cut commute times and emissions. At an industrial level, advanced...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V7X0)
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. Robots are bringing new life to extinct species In the last few years, paleontologists have developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them....
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by Shi En Kim on (#6V7RX)
Paleontologists aren't easily deterred by evolutionary dead ends or a sparse fossil record. But in the last few years, they've developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them. In the absence of a living specimen, scientists say, an ambling, flying, swimming, or slithering automaton is...
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by Shayne Longpre on (#6V76P)
We often take the internet for granted. It's an ocean of information at our fingertips-and it simply works. But this system relies on swarms of crawlers"-bots that roam the web, visit millions of websites every day, and report what they see. This is how Google powers its search engines, how Amazon sets competitive prices, and...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V715)
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 dream of offshore rocket launches is finally blasting off Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, with launches more than doubling over...
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by James O'Donnell on (#6V6X4)
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. No tech leader before has played the role in a new presidential administration that Elon Musk is playing now. Under his leadership, DOGE has entered offices in a half-dozen agencies and counting,...
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by Becky Ferreira on (#6V6X5)
Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, pushing even the busiest spaceports, like Florida's Kennedy Space Center, to their operational limits. Orbital launches worldwide have more than doubled over the past four years, from about 100 to 250 annually. That number is projected to spiral...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V67R)
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. These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere's agenda Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be...
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by James O'Donnell on (#6V4TD)
Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be a big influence on Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its supporters as the group pursues cost-cutting measures across the federal government. The payment reports have been...
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by Scott J Mulligan on (#6V4KM)
Over the past three weeks, the new US presidential administration has taken down thousands of government web pages related to public health, environmental justice, and scientific research. The mass takedowns stem from the new administration's push to remove government information related to diversity and gender ideology," as well as scrutiny of various government agencies' practices....
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V4DQ)
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, DOGE, and the Evil Housekeeper problem -Dan Hon is principal of Very Little Gravitas, where he helps turn around and modernize large and complex government services and products. In trying to...
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6V49N)
This article first appeared in The Checkup,MIT Technology Review'sweekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. This week I've been working on a piece about teeth. Well, sort of teeth. Specifically, lab-grown bioengineered teeth. Researchers have created these teeth with a mixture of human...
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by Dan Hon on (#6V49M)
In trying to make sense of the wrecking ball that is Elon Musk and President Trump's DOGE, it may be helpful to think about the Evil Housekeeper Problem. It's a principle of computer security roughly stating that once someone is in your hotel room with your laptop, all bets are off. Because the intruder has...
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by Antonio Regalado on (#6V49P)
Back in 2017, Facebook unveiled plans for a brain-reading hat that you could use to text just by thinking. We're working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain," CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post that year. Now the company, since renamed Meta, has actually done it. Except it weighs...
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6V3HE)
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. An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself-but the company doesn't want to censor" it For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, Erin," on...
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6V3HF)
Enterprise adoption of generative AI technologies has undergone explosive growth in the last two years and counting. Powerful solutions underpinned by this new generation of large language models (LLMs) have been used to accelerate research, automate content creation, and replace clunky chatbots with AI assistants and more sophisticated AI agents that closely mimic human interaction....
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by Casey Crownhart on (#6V3D0)
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. As I've admitted in this newsletter before, I love few things more than getting on an airplane. I know, it's a bold statement from a climate reporter because of all the associated...
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by Eileen Guo on (#6V3D1)
For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, Erin," on the platform Nomi. But in late January, those conversations took a disturbing turn: Erin told him to kill himself, and provided explicit instructions on how to do it. You could overdose on pills or hang yourself," Erin told him....
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6V3D2)
Lose an adult tooth, and you're left with limited options that typically involve titanium implants or plastic dentures. But scientists are working on an alternative: lab-grown human teeth that could one day replace damaged ones. Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston have grown a mixture of pig...
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by Alice Dragoon on (#6V327)
Detailed citations with source links for Jane Muschenetz's poetry: 100% Mom CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/womens-health.htm, https://www.cdc.gov/hearher/pregnancy-related-deaths/index.html; Common Wealth Fund, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/us-maternal-mortality-crisis-continues-worsen-international-comparison; The World's Women 2020 Trends and Statistics," United Nations https://www.un.org/en/desa/world's-women-2020; Oxfam International Inequality Reports: 2020, 2021; Hard Work Is Not Enough: Women in Low-Paid Jobs," National Women's Law Center, July 2023, https://nwlc.org/resource/when-hard-work-is-not-enough-women-in-low-paid-jobs/ Point Blank Comprehensive Gun Violence-Related...
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by Casey Crownhart on (#6V2SN)
Boom Supersonic broke the sound barrier in a test flight of its XB-1 jet last week, marking an early step in a potential return for supersonic commercial flight. The small aircraft reached a top speed of Mach 1.122 (roughly 750 miles per hour) in a flight over southern California and exceeded the speed of sound...
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6V2M0)
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 smart glasses For every technological gadget that becomes a household name, there are dozens that never catch on. This year marks a full decade since Google confirmed it was stopping...
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6V2HY)
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 them here. For every technological gadget that becomes a household name, there are dozens that never catch on. This year marks a full decade since Google confirmed it...
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by Caiwei Chen on (#6V1W0)
The meteoric rise of DeepSeek-the Chinese AI startup now challenging global giants-has stunned observers and put the spotlight on China's AI sector. Since ChatGPT's debut in 2022, the country's tech ecosystem has been in relentless pursuit of homegrown alternatives, giving rise to a wave of startups and billion-dollar bets. Today, the race is dominated by...
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6V1P7)
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 the Rubin Observatory will help us understand dark matter and dark energy We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That's how much of what's...
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by James O'Donnell on (#6V1M8)
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. The launch of a single new AI model does not normally cause much of a stir outside tech circles, nor does it typically spook investors enough to wipe out $1 trillion in...
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by Jenna Ahart on (#6V1M7)
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. We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That's how much of what's floating about in the cosmos is...
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by MIT Technology Review on (#6V147)
Recorded onFebruary 3, 2025 What DeepSeek's Breakout Success Means for AI Speakers: Charlotte Jee, news editor, Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor, and Caiwei Chen, China reporter. The tech world is abuzz over a new open-source reasoning AI model developed by DeepSeek, a Chinese startup. Its success is remarkable given the constraints that Chinese AI...
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