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. We will never build a sex robot," says Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is...

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is taking AI in a dangerous direction by building chatbots that present as human: He worries that people will be tricked into seeing life instead of lifelike behavior. In August, he published a...

A few weeks ago, I set out on what I thought would be a straightforward reporting journey. After years of momentum for AI-even if you didn't think it would be good for the world, you probably thought it was powerful enough to take seriously-hype for the technology had been slightly punctured. First there was 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. I tried OpenAI's new Atlas browser but I still don't know what it's for -Mat Honan OpenAI rolled out a new web browser last week called Atlas. It comes with ChatGPT built in,...

OpenAI rolled out a new web browser last week called Atlas. It comes with ChatGPT built in, along with an agent, so that you can browse, get direct answers, and have automated tasks performed on your behalf all at the same time. I've spent the past several days tinkering with Atlas. I've used it to...

Right now, MIT alumni and friends are voicing their support for: America's scientific and technological leadership Merit-based admissions and affordable education Advances that increase US health, security, and prosperity Our community is standing up for MIT and its mission to serve the nation and the world. And we need you to join us at this...

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 carbon removal? After years of growth that spawned hundreds of startups, the nascent carbon removal sector appears to be facing a reckoning. Running Tide, a promising aquaculture company, shut down...

How are you feeling? I'm genuinely interested in the well-being of all my treasured Checkup readers, of course. But this week I've also been wondering how science and technology can help answer that question-especially when it comes to pain.In the latest issue of MIT Technology Review magazine, Deena Mousa describes how an AI-powered smartphone app...

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. In the early 2020s, a little-known aquaculture company in Portland, Maine, snagged more than $50 million by pitching a plan to harness nature to fight back...

As organizations weave AI into more of their operations, senior executives are realizing data engineers hold a central role in bringing these initiatives to life. After all, AI only delivers when you have large amounts of reliable and well-managed, high-quality data. Indeed, this report finds that data engineers play a pivotal role in their organizations...

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 startup is about to conduct the biggest real-world test of aluminum as a zero-carbon fuel Found Energy, a startup in Boston, aims to harness the energy in scraps of aluminum metal to...

Rondo Energy just turned on what it says is the world's largest thermal battery, an energy storage system that can take in electricity and provide a consistent source of heat. The company announced last week that its first full-scale system is operational, with 100 megawatt-hours of capacity. The thermal battery is powered by an off-grid...

The crushed-up soda can disappears in a cloud of steam and-though it's not visible-hydrogen gas. I can just keep this reaction going by adding more water," says Peter Godart, squirting some into the steaming beaker. This is room-temperature water, and it's immediately boiling. Doing this on your stove would be slower than this." Godart 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. Introducing: the body issue We're thrilled to share the latest edition of MIT Technology Review magazine, digging into the future of the human body, and how it could change in the years ahead...

Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman This science fiction book series confronted me with existential questions like Are we alone in the universe?" and Do I actually like LitRPG??" (LitRPG-which stands for literary role-playing game"-is a relatively new genre that merges the conventions of computer RPGs with those of science fiction and fantasy novels.) In...

It's late August in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, and people are filling a large hall at one of Africa's biggest gatherings of minds in AI and machine learning. The room is draped in white curtains, and a giant screen blinks with videos created with generative AI. A classic East African folk song by the Tanzanian singer...

Embryologists are the scientists behind the scenes of in vitro fertilization who oversee the development and selection of embryos, prepare them for transfer, and maintain the lab environment. They've been a critical part of IVF for decades, but their job has gotten a whole lot busier in recent years as demand for the fertility treatment...

At the southern tip of San Francisco Bay, surrounded by the tech giants Google, Apple, and Microsoft, sits the historic NASA Ames Research Center. Its rich history includes a grab bag of fascinating scientific research involving massive wind tunnels, experimental aircraft, supercomputing, astrobiology, and more. Founded in 1939 as a West Coast lab for the...

On November 2, 2000, NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd, OCE '78, SM '78, and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko made history as their Soyuz spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. The event marked the start of 25 years of continuous human presence in space aboard the ISS-a prolific period for space research. MIT-trained...

Institute Professor Mildred Millie" Dresselhaus forever altered our understanding of matter-the physical stuff of the universe that has mass and takes up space. Over 57 years at MIT, Dresselhaus also played a significant role in inspiring people to use this new knowledge to tackle some of the world's greatest challenges, from producing clean energy to...

Take a stroll along the Infinite Corridor these days and you'll encounter a striking new space, in a prominent location on the first floor of Building 11. With bright blue seating modules, orange accents, and an eye-catching design, it looks like a futuristic space station, sleek and ultramodern-but also welcoming and fun. This is the...

MIT researchers have developed a new bionic knee that is integrated directly with the user's muscle and bone tissue. It can help people with above-the-knee amputations walk faster, climb stairs, and avoid obstacles more easily than they could with a traditional prosthesis, which is attached to the residual limb by means of a socket and...

A lot of attention has been paid to how climate change can reduce biodiversity. Now MIT researchers have shown that the reverse is also true: Loss of biodiversity can jeopardize regrowth of tropical forests, one of Earth's most powerful tools for mitigating climate change. Combining data from thousands of previous studies and using new tools...

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat bacteria: multi-drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The team used two approaches. First, they directed generative AI to design molecules based on a chemical fragment their model had predicted would show antimicrobial activity, and second, they let the...

City life is often described as fast-paced." A study coauthored by MIT scholars suggests that's more true than ever: The average walking speed in three northeastern US cities increased 15% from 1980 to 2010, while the number of people lingering in public spaces declined by 14%. The researchers used machine-learning tools to assess 1980s-era video...

Like almost any MIT student, Mason Estrada wants to take what he learned on campus and apply it to the working world. Unlike any other current MIT student, Estrada'sprimary workplace isa pitcher's mound. Estrada, the star pitcher for MIT's baseball team, has signed a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who selected him 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. The astonishing embryo models of Jacob Hanna Instead of relying on the same old recipe biology has followed for a billion years, give or take, stem-cell scientist Jacob Hanna is coaxing the beginnings...

Shantana Hazel often thought her insides might fall out during menstruation. It took 14 years of stabbing pain before she ultimately received a diagnosis of endometriosis, an inflammatory disease where tissue similar to the uterine lining implants outside the uterus and bleeds with each cycle. The results can include painful periods and damaging scar tissue....

When the Palestinian stem-cell scientist Jacob Hanna was stopped while entering the US last May, airport customs agents took him aside and held him for hours in secondary," a back office where you don't have your passport and can't use your phone. There were two young Russian women and a candy machine in the room...

Chatbots today are everything machines. If it can be put into words-relationship advice, work documents, code-AI will produce it, however imperfectly. But the one thing that almost no chatbot will ever do is stop talking to you. That might seem reasonable. Why should a tech company build a feature that reduces the time people spend...

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 retina implant lets people with vision loss do a crossword puzzle The news: Science Corporation-a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk's brain-interface venture-has leapfrogged its rival after...

Science Corporation-a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk's brain-interface venture-has leapfrogged its rival after acquiring, at a fire-sale price, a vision implant that's in advanced testing,. The implant produces a form of artificial vision" that lets some patients read text and do crosswords, according to a report published in the...

For all the modern marvels of cardiology, we struggle to predict who will have a heart attack. Many people never get screened at all. Now, startups like Bunkerhill Health, Nanox.AI, and HeartLung Technologies are applying AI algorithms to screen millions of CT scans for early signs of heart disease. This technology could be a breakthrough...

Flowers play a key role in most landscapes, from urban to rural areas. There might be dandelions poking through the cracks in the pavement, wildflowers on the highway median, or poppies covering a hillside. We might notice the time of year they bloom and connect that to our changing climate. Perhaps we are familiar with...

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. From slop to Sotheby's? AI art enters a new phase In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can...

In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can seem absurd: What possible artistic value is there to be found in the likes of Shrimp Jesus and Ballerina Cappuccina? But amid all the muck, there are people using AI tools with...

It is a yellow blob with no brain, yet some researchers believe a curious organism known as slime mold could help us build more resilient cities. Humans have been building cities for 6,000 years, but slime mold has been around for 600 million. The team behind a new startup called Mireta wants to translate the...

This week we had some terrifying news from the World Health Organization: Antibiotics are failing us. A growing number of bacterial infections aren't responding to these medicines-including common ones that affect the blood, gut, and urinary tract. Get infected with one of these bugs, and there's a fair chance antibiotics won't help. The scary truth...

You live in a house you designed and built yourself. You rely on the sun for power, heat your home with a woodstove, and farm your own fish and vegetables. The year is 2025. This is the life of Marcin Jakubowski, the 53-year-old founder of Open Source Ecology, an open collaborative of engineers, producers, and...

Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges just five days or so after a fateful encounter between egg and sperm. This bundle of cells, about the size of a grain of sand pulled from a powdery white Caribbean beach, contains the...

Sucking carbon pollution out of the atmosphere is becoming a big business-companies are paying top dollar for technologies that can cancel out their own emissions. Today, nearly 70% of announced carbon removal contracts are for one technology: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Basically, the idea is to use trees or some other types...

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. Big Tech's big bet on a controversial carbon removal tactic Microsoft, JP MorganChase, and a tech company consortium that includes Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and Stripe have all recently struck multimillion-dollar deals to pay...

Artificial intelligence has always promised speed, efficiency, and new ways of solving problems. But what's changed in the past few years is how quickly those promises are becoming reality. From oil and gas to retail, logistics to law, AI is no longer confined to pilot projects or speculative labs. It is being deployed in critical...

It's the 25th of June and I'm shivering in my lab-issued underwear in Fort Worth, Texas. Libby Cowgill, an anthropologist in a furry parka, has wheeled me and my cot into a metal-walled room set to 40 F. A loud fan pummels me from above and siphons the dregs of my body heat through the...

For years at Orchard Care Homes, a 23facility dementia-care chain in northern England, Cheryl Baird watched nurses fill out the Abbey Pain Scale, an observational methodology used to evaluate pain in those who can't communicate verbally. Baird, a former nurse who was then the facility's director of quality, describes it as a tickbox exercise where...

Over the last century, much of the US pulp and paper industry crowded into the southeastern corner of the nation, setting up mills amid sprawling timber forests to strip the fibers from juvenile loblolly, long leaf, and slash pine trees. Today, after the factories chip the softwood and digest it into pulp, the leftover lignin,...

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 aging clocks can help us understand why we age-and if we can reverse it Wrinkles and gray hairs aside, it can be difficult to know how well-or poorly-someone's body is truly aging....

Be honest: Have you ever looked up someone from your childhood on social media with the sole intention of seeing how they've aged? One of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless, certainly has. He recently shared a photo of a former classmate. Can you believe we're the same age?" he asked, with a hint of...

From addictive algorithms to exploitative apps, data mining to misinformation, the internet today can be a hazardous place. Books by three influential figures-the intellect behind net neutrality," a former Meta executive, and the web's own inventor-propose radical approaches to fixing it. But are these luminaries the right people for the job? Though each shows conviction,...