MIT Technology Review

Fly, goat, fly! A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen before such as Goat Simulator 3, a fun action game with exaggerated physics. Researchers were able to get it to follow text commands to play seven different games and move around in three different 3D...

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. Let's not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media -Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce...

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms' role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening...

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 VR headsets can be hacked with an Inception-style attack In the Christoper Nolan movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio's character uses technology to enter his targets' dreams to steal information and insert false details into...

The application of AI to health-care data has promise to align the U.S. health-care system to quality care and positive health outcomes. But AI for health care hasn't reached its full capacity. One reason is the inconsistent quality and integrity of the data that AI depends on. The industry-hospitals, providers, insurers, and administrators-uses diverse systems....

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I remember the first time I tried on a VR headset. It was the first Oculus Rift, and I nearly fainted after experiencing an intense but visually clumsy VR roller-coaster. But...

A handful of studies have concluded that making minor adjustments to the routes of a small fraction of airplane flights could meaningfully reduce global warming. Now a new paper finds that these changes could be pretty cheap to pull off as well. The common climate concern when it comes to airlines is that planes produce...

Since their inception, it's been clear that large language models like ChatGPT absorb racist views from the millions of pages of the internet they are trained on. Developers have responded by trying to make them less toxic. But new research suggests that those efforts, especially as models get larger, are only curbing racist views that...

In the Christoper Nolan movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio's character uses technology to enter his targets' dreams to steal information and insert false details into their subconscious. A new inception attack" in virtual reality works in a similar way. Researchers at the University of Chicago exploited a security vulnerability in Meta's Quest VR system that allows...

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 OpenAI spinoff has built an AI model that helps robots learn tasks like humans The news: In the summer of 2021, OpenAI quietly shuttered its mulrobotics team, announcing that progress was being...

In the summer of 2021, OpenAI quietly shuttered its robotics team, announcing that progress was being stifled by a lack of data necessary to train robots in how to move and reason using artificial intelligence. Now three of OpenAI's early research scientists say the startup they spun off in 2017, called Covariant, has solved that...

This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission enacted a set of long-awaited climate rules, requiring most publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse-gas emissions and the climate risks building up on their balance sheets. Unfortunately, the federal agency watered down the regulations amid intense lobbying from business interests, undermining their ultimate effectiveness-and missing 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. The many uses of mini-organs This week, we reported on a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells. Because these tiny 3D cell clusters mimic...

Forty years ago, Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was full of deserted warehouses and dying low-tech factories. Today, it is arguably the center of the global biotech industry. During my 30 years in MIT's Technology Licensing Office, I witnessed this transformation firsthand, and I know it was no accident. Much of it was the direct...

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. This week I wrote about a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells floating around in the amniotic...

While the vendors pitched their latest voting machines in Concord, New Hampshire, this past August, the election officials in the room gasped. They whispered, No way." They nodded their heads and filled out the scorecards in their laps. Interrupting if they had to, they asked every kind of question: How much does the new scanner...

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. Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower. Hydropower is one of the world's largest sources of renewable electricity. But last year, weather conditions caused hydropower to fall short in a major...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Hydropower is a staple of clean energy-the modern version has been around for over a century, and it's one of the world's largest sources of renewable electricity. But last year, weather conditions...

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. I used generative AI to turn my story into a comic-and you can too -Will Douglas Heaven Thirteen years ago, as an assignment for a journalism class, I wrote a stupid short story...

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. So far, electric vehicles have mostly been discussed in the US through a scientific, economic, or environmental lens. But all of a sudden, they have become highly political. Last Thursday, the Biden...

Thirteen years ago, as an assignment for a journalism class, I wrote a stupid short story about a man who eats luxury cat food. This morning, I sat and watched as a generative AI platform called Lore Machine brought my words to life. I fed my story into a text box and got this message:...

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 robots are coming. And that's a good thing. -This is an excerpt from a new book, The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, by MIT CSAIL director Daniela Rus...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I've been experimenting with using AI assistants in my day-to-day work. The biggest obstacle to their being useful is they often get things blatantly wrong. In one case, I used an...

In this excerpt from the new book, The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, CSAIL Director Daniela Rus explores how robots can extend the reach of human capabilities. Years ago, I befriended the biologist Roger Payne at a meeting of MacArthur Foundation fellows. Roger, who died in 2023, was best known for...

Recorded on August 10, 2023 The AI Economy Speakers: Mat Honan, Editor in chief and David Rotman, Editor at large There's no doubt that generative AI will impact the economy-but how, exactly, remains an open question. Despite fears that these AI tools will upend workers and exacerbate wealth inequality, early evidence suggests the technology could...

Recorded on September 12, 2023 How should we regulate AI? Speakers: Melissa Heikkila, Senior reporter for AI and Charlotte Jee, News editor There's little doubt that artificial intelligence will be subject to more regulation in the years ahead. Major tech companies have requested it, and multiple countries and regions are now moving forward with plans...

Recorded on October 11, 2023 How does AI work? Speakers: Mary Beth Griggs, Science editor and Will Douglas Heaven, Sr Editor for AI Everyone's talking about large language models and image generators built on artificial intelligence. Many people have tested out tools like ChatGPT or DALL-E 2 and been amazed at the results, or disturbed...

Recorded on November 28, 2023 Future of Families: How reproductive technology can reverse population decline Speakers: Antonio Regalado, Sr Editor of biomedicine and special guest Martin Varsavsky, Founder of Prelude Fertility Birth rates have been plummeting in wealthy countries, well below the replacement" rate. Even in China, a dramatic downturn in the number of babies...

As a fetus grows in the womb, it sheds cells into the amniotic fluid surrounding and protecting it. Now researchers have demonstrated that they can use those cells to grow organoids, three-dimensional structures that have some of the properties of human organs-in this case kidneys, small intestines, and lungs. These organoids could give doctors even...

AI is helping organizations in nearly every industry increase productivity, engage customers, realize operational efficiencies, and gain a competitive edge. Advances in supercomputing in the cloud and the ability to achieve processing at an exascale level are major catalysts for this new era of AI innovation. Common AI use cases today include personalized healthcare and...

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. Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. Two years ago, Yuri Burda and Harri Edwards, researchers at OpenAI, were trying to find out what it would take to...

Two years ago, Yuri Burda and Harri Edwards, researchers at the San Francisco-based firm OpenAI, were trying to find out what it would take to get a large language model to do basic arithmetic. They wanted to know how many examples of adding up two numbers the model needed to see before it was able...

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 shiny, high-tech solutions won't solve one of Africa's worst crises Herding- one of humanity's most foundational ways of life-is a pillar of survival in West Africa's Sahel. Migratory herders usher cattle between...

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. The diabetes medication metformin has been touted as a miracle drug. Not only does it keep diabetes in check, but it can reduce inflammation, curb cancer,...

Hainikoye hits Accept and a young woman greets him in Hausa, a gravelly language spoken across West Africa's Sahel region. She has three new cows and wants to know: Does he have advice on getting them through the lean season? Hainikoye-a twentysomething agronomist who has followed animals," as Sahelians refer to herding, since he first...

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 scientists are using quantum squeezing to push the limits of their sensors When two black holes spiral inward and collide, they shake the very fabric of space, producing ripples in space-time that...

OpenAI's recent reveal of its stunning generative model Sora pushed the envelope of what's possible with text-to-video. Now Google DeepMind brings us text-to-video games. The new model, called Genie, can take a short description, a hand-drawn sketch, or a photo and turn it into a playable video game in the style of classic 2D platformers...

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 looming problem in the carbon removal space. By one count, nearly 800 companies around the world are exploring a wide variety of methods for drawing planet-warming greenhouse gas out of...

Generative AI, though still an emergent technology, has been in the headlines since OpenAI's ChatGPT sparked a global frenzy in 2023. The technology has rapidly advanced far beyond its early, human-like capacity to enhance chat functions. It shows extensive promise across a range of use cases, including content creation, translation, image processing, and code writing....

When two black holes spiral inward and collide, they shake the very fabric of space, producing ripples in space-time that can travel for hundreds of millions of light-years. Since 2015, scientists have been observing these so-called gravitational waves to help them study fundamental questions about the cosmos, including the origin of heavy elements such as...

Recorded on January 16, 2024 SKIP TO 2:00 FOR START OF SESSION An Inside Look at the 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 Speakers: Amy Nordrum, Executive editor of operations, Rachel Courtland, Commissioning editor, and Abby Ivory-Ganja, Senior engagement editor Every year for the past 20+ years, MIT Technology Review has selected a list of the breakthrough...

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 Hidden Worlds issue A hidden world is fundamentally different from the undiscovered. We know the hidden world is there. We just can't see it or reach it. Hidden worlds exist in...

For more than 20 million years, beavers have been, well, busy. They've been felling trees for that long, and building dams and lodges for at least the last few million years, earning a well-deserved reputation for industriousness and ingenuity. It seemed only fitting, then, that MIT saw fit to claim the beaver as its mascot...

Allison V. Thompkins, PhD '11, used to spend her days steeped in statistical analysis, digging into economic data to understand how the world works. These days, you're more likely to find her writing about how to modify prayer or meditation practices to make them more accessible for people with disabilities. From the outside, the shift...

As our alumni and friends know better than anyone, the intellectual excellence and bold ingenuity of the people of MIT are the Institute's greatest strength. While IAP supplied its welcome respite, the first part of the year also offered inspiring reminders of MIT's ability to make a powerful, positive difference in the world. Here are...

We had just sat down to lunch with Dona Dada, an Indigenous Brazilian artisan, at her family farm in Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira. It was April of 2022, and my research colleagues and I were visiting to learn how she collects and processes plant fibers for use in her crafts. Before us were traditional foods...

William Warin Bainbridge Jr., Class of 1922, and Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge, Class of 1926, grew up on Manhattan's Riverside Drive, the eldest of three sons of an upwardly mobile stationer who dabbled in real estate. Both went to MIT. And both would play important roles in World War II-one on the front lines at Normandy...

Friends and colleagues of Paul Tompkins remember him as a person who never did anything halfway. Mountain climbing and scuba diving took him all over the world, and he constructed his own chain mail while taking medieval history courses at MIT. Space, though, was a lifelong passion: he was lead flight director for NASA's LunarCraterObservation...

When Fine Woodworking magazine printed its first issue in the winter of 1975, a bowl made by Irving Fischman, SM '72, PhD '75, was on the cover. Though he had started woodworking in the MIT Hobby Shop only a few years before, he had already become highly skilled at the craft and found a lifelong...

Living cells are bombarded with molecular signals that influence their behavior. Being able to measure those signals and the response to them could help scientists learn much more about how cells work, including what happens as they age or become diseased. Labeling molecules inside cells with fluorescent proteins that glow in different colors has been...