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. 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...

As I write in late July, we're contending with a major tax increase on the annual returns from MIT's endowment as well as other investments and assets. This new tax burden will strain the resources we use to support research, innovation, and student scholarships and financial aid-the heart and soul of the Institute. And the...

Textiles account for 5% of landfill space-and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community...

Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have identified areas needing repair and then mixed the exact shades needed to fill in one area at a time. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade. Now an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering...

Most people with type 1 diabetes inject insulin to prevent their blood sugar levels from getting too high. However, if their blood sugar gets too low, it can lead to confusion, seizures, and even death. To combat this hypoglycemia, some patients carry syringes of glucagon, a hormone that stimulates release of glucose. Now MIT engineers...

Today, 2.2 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. But the atmosphere contains millions of billions of gallons of water in the form of vapor, and researchers have tried various strategies to capture and condense it in places where traditional sources are inaccessible. Now MIT engineers have improved on that approach...

Anantha Chandrakasan became the Institute's new provost on July 1, succeeding Cynthia Barnhart, SM '86, PhD '88, who announced her decision to step down in February. Chandrakasan, who earned his BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, joined MIT in 1994. Head of the Energy-Efficient Circuits...

A team at MIT and the Scripps Research Institute has made important progress toward vaccines that can protect against HIV, and potentially other diseases, with a single dose. The researchers treated mice with a vaccine that combines two different adjuvants, materials that help stimulate the immune system-one incorporating a compound previously developed by Scripps professor...

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAIBy Karen Hao '15PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 2025, $32 Read MIT Technology Review's excerpt here. Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the ArtsBy Samuel Jay Keyser, HM '97, emeritus professor of linguisticsMIT PRESS, 2025, $30 Data, Systems, and Society: Harness AI for Societal GoodBy Munther A. Dahleh,...

On a mission to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing components, Siemens turned its attention to the design of a robot gripper. Making up just 2%of the robot, the impact of this hand-likedevice may seem inconsequential. But, reducing its weight by 90% and the number of constituent parts by 84% can save up to 3...

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 these two brothers became go-to experts on America's mystery drone" invasion In 2024 alone, 350 known drone incursions were reported over a hundred different US military installations. A lack of coordination or...

On a Friday evening last December, every tier of US law enforcement-federal, state, and local-was dispatched to the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, a military research installation outside Boston. A squadron of about 15 to 20 drones had been spotted violating the base's restricted airspace. The culprits could not be found. One retired major...

Baafour Asiamah-Adjei '03 is the founder and CEO of one of Ghana's largest private power companies, Genser Energy-an entrepreneurial engineer who aims to deliver sustainable energy across West Africa. And he credits MIT with much of his success. But when he was applying to colleges, the Institute wasn't even on his radar. The son of...

Stop me if you've heard this one before. The AI learns it is about to be switched off and goes rogue, disobeying commands and threatening its human operators. It's a well-worn trope in science fiction. We see it in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's the premise of the Terminator series, in...

The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January 2025 left an indelible mark on the Southern California landscape. The Eaton and Palisades fires raged for 24 days, killing 29 people and destroying 16,000 structures, with losses estimated at $60 billion. More than 55,000 acres were consumed, and the landscape itself was physically transformed....

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. In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses Google has just released a report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In...

In October, a new academic conference will debut that's unlike any other. Agents4Science is a one-day online event that will encompass all areas of science, from physics to medicine. All of the work shared will have been researched, written, and reviewed primarily by AI, and will be presented using text-to-speech technology. The conference is the...

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 the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our home world and expand our civilization to extraterrestrial vistas. This belief has been mainstream for...

Last year, I added my DNA profile to a private genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked Yes" to allow the police to search my genes. In 2018, police in California announced they'dcaught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded capture for decades. They did it by uploading crime-scene DNA to websites like the one...

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. On the ground in Ukraine's largest Starlink repair shop Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine's ability to continue in the fight against Russia. It's how troops in battle zones stay connected with faraway...