MIT Technology Review

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Form Energy is building iron-based batteries that could store renewable energy on the grid for long stretches, saving up for times when electricity sources such as wind and solar aren't available. Using iron, one of the most common metals on the planet, could help the...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Sublime Systems has invented a new way to make cement. The startup's approach employs electrochemistry to dramatically cut emissions, both by tweaking the chemical reactions involved and by eliminating the need for high temperatures. Intro Sublime Systems is reinventing how we make cement-a material that's...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. By designing a better battery, BYD has pulled ahead in the global electric vehicle race. Its affordable and versatile cars are making EVs far more accessible, and could ultimately help countries including China to dramatically reduce emissions from transportation. Intro BYD has come a long...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Fervo Energy is commercializing a geothermal technology that could significantly expand the regions that could tap into the steady, carbon-free energy source, by creating or widening cracks under the surface to allow water to more easily circulate underground. These enhanced geothermal plants could become an...

Explorethe 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Offshore wind power has tremendous potential to help the world meet its climate goals. Former fossil-fuel company Orsted is leading the charge to unlock that potential by building massive offshore wind farms in Europe and installing some of the first turbines in US waters. Intro...

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. Underground thermal energy networks are becoming crucial to the US's energy future The news: Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a...

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. It was probably the highest-stakes mobile game match that's ever been played. On the evening of September 26, 10 men from China and Malaysia sat on a stage in Hangzhou, China, each...

Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources. Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it...

Artificial intelligence has turbocharged state efforts to crack down on internet freedoms over the past year. Governments and political actors around the world, in both democracies and autocracies, are using AI to generate texts, images, and video to manipulate public opinion in their favor and to automatically censor critical online content. In a new report...

Advances in imaging technologies are giving physicians unprecedented insights into disease states, but fragmented and siloed information technology systems make it difficult to provide the personalized, coordinated care that patients expect. In the field of medical imaging, health care providers began replacing radiographic films with digital images stored in a picture and archiving communication system...

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 Big Tech's bet on AI assistants is so risky Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, tech companies have been feverishly trying to come up with the killer app for 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. Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, tech companies have been feverishly trying to come up withthe killer app for the technology. First it was online search, withmixed results. Now...

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. Child online safety laws will actually hurt kids, critics say This summer, the Senate moved two bills dealing with online privacy for children and teens out of committee. We've also seen many states...

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This summer, the Senate movedtwo billsdealing with online privacy for children and teens out of committee. Both have been floating around Congress in various forms...

Technology Radar is a snapshot of the current technology landscape produced by Thoughtworks twice a year; it's based on technologies we've been using as an organization and communicates our perspective on them. There is always a long list of candidates to be featured for us to work through and discuss, but with each edition that...

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 wants more bandwidth between people and machines. Do we need it? Last week, Elon Musk made the bold assertion that sticking electrodes in people's heads is going to lead to a...

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. On September 19, US Food and Drug Administration advisors met to discuss how to move research on artificial wombs from animals into humans. These medical devices are...

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. Last week, a post by Elon Musk on X (formerly known as Twitter) caught my eye. The entrepreneur claimed that sticking electrodes in people's heads...

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 dream of fusion power isn't going away There's a joke about fusion power that always comes up when people start talking about the technology. It goes like this: Fusion is the...

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 joke about fusion power that always comes up when people start talking about the technology. It goes like this: Fusion is the energy of the future ... and it always...

Nations around the globe have begun to put in place the policies, capital and technologies needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but the world still must move far faster to address the rising dangers of climate change. MIT Technology Review's ClimateTech conference will bring together leading scientists, investors, entrepreneurs and officials working to accelerate the...

A wearable exoskeleton can help runners increase their speed by encouraging them to take more steps, allowing them to cover short distances more quickly. While previous studies have focused on how wearable exoskeletons can help people reduce the energy they expend while running, the new study, published today in Science Robotics, examines how wearable robots...

When it comes to banking, whether it's personal, business, or private, customer experience is everything. Building new technologies and platforms, employing them at scale, and optimizing workflows is especially critical for any large bank looking to meet evolving customer and internal stakeholder demands for faster and more personalized ways of doing business. Institutions like JPMorgan...

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. Meet Europe's surprising best-selling Chinese EV maker China's electric vehicle sector has been lavished with fame and attention. But its global ambitions hit a roadblock this month when the European Commission launched an...

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. These days, few Chinese tech sectors have received more fame and attention than electric vehicles. With domestic EV adoption rising aggressively every year, Chinese EV companies are the stars of auto shows...

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. Europe is working to slow down the global expansion of Chinese EVs Earlier this month, the European Commission announced it is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China. The move...

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 Friday marked six months since the Future of Life Institute (FLI), a nonprofit focusing on existential risks surrounding artificial intelligence, sharedan open lettersigned by famous people such as Elon Musk,...

The boom has finally been lowered on Chinese electric-vehicle companies. On September 13, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the Union speech to announce that the organization is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China." The move-which could have serious ramifications for global automakers-has long been in...

Computer vision systems are everywhere. They help classify and tag images on social media feeds, detect objects and faces in pictures and videos, and highlight relevant elements of an image. However, they are riddled with biases, and they're less accurate when the images show Black or brown people and women. And there's another problem: the...

Getty Images is so confident its new generative AI model is free of copyrighted content that it will cover any potential intellectual-property disputes for its customers. The generative AI system, announced today, was built by Nvidia and is trained solely on images in Getty's image library. It does not include logos or images that have...

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. You can now have a voice conversation with ChatGPT The news: OpenAI has launched two new ways to interact with its flagship large language model in a major update. You can have a...

In one of the biggest updates to ChatGPT yet, OpenAI has launched two new ways to interact with its viral app. First, ChatGPT now has a voice. Choose from one of five lifelike synthetic voices and you can have a conversation with the chatbot as if you were making a call, getting responses to your...

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. Recently, I wrote a quick guide about what we might expect at Congress's first AI Insight Forum. Well, now that meeting has happened, and we...

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. In January 2023, Tara Sweeney's plane landed on Thwaites Glacier, a 74,000-square-mile mass of frozen water in West Antarctica. She arrived with an international research team to study the glacier's geology and ice fabric, and how its ice melt might contribute to sea level...

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 inverse vaccines might tackle diseases like multiple sclerosis On the whole, typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But scientists are also working on inverse vaccines" that teach the immune system...

This article first appeared inTheCheckup, MIT Technology Review's weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. I've written about vaccines for years, but recently I stumbled across a concept I had never heard of before. Typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But...

Consider a supply chain where delivery vehicles, shipping containers, and individual products are sensor-equipped. Real-time insights enable workers to optimize routes, reduce delays, and efficiently manage inventory. This smart orchestration boosts efficiency, minimizes waste, and lowers costs. Many industries are rapidly integrating sensors, creating vast data streams that can be leveraged to open profound business...

Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), will play a crucial role in the future of customer and employee experiences, software development, and more. Building a solid foundation in machine learning operations (MLOps) will be critical for companies to effectively deploy and scale LLMs, and generative AI capabilities broadly. In this uncharted territory, improper management...

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 the world's fastest supercomputers When the Frontier supercomputer came online last year, it marked the dawn of so-called exascale computing, with machines that can execute an exaflop-or a quintillion (1018)...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Have you ever repeated a word so many times it started to sound like gibberish? Try saying peanut butter," roughhousing," or warbler" about 50 times, and you'll be wondering whether the words...

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 series here. It can be difficult to wrap your brain around the number-crunching capability of the world's fastest supercomputer. But computer scientist Jack Dongarra, of the University...

We live in a tech-enabled world, but for organizations to advance world-changing innovations, they need skilled people who can build, install, and maintain the systems that underlie them. Finding that talent is one of the biggest ongoing problems - and opportunities - in tech. The IT staffing shortages brought on by covid-19 and the Great...

The enthusiasm for AI and its applications is reaching a nadir, according to an August 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle press release, where generative AI is nearly perched atop the category of technologies at their Peak of Inflated Expectations," ready to plunge into the Trough of Disillusionment." A quick look at social media agrees, with some...

Product information is a powerful commodity in today's digital economy. Making it accessible can let consumers know if an item contains allergens, help retailers respond swiftly to product recalls, and enable suppliers to track real-time inventory levels. But data can become siloed and inaccessible if organizations fail to make it easy to connect with. 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. A Disney director tried-and failed-to use an AI Hans Zimmer to create a soundtrack When Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was thinking about the soundtrack for his...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology developments in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Writing about China, a question I always get is: What technology is ubiquitous there but hasn't caught on in the West? One of my go-to answers is livestream e-commerce. If you...

Google DeepMind says it's trained an artificial intelligence that can predict which DNA variations in our genomes are likely to cause disease-predictions that could speed diagnosis of rare disorders and possibly yield clues for drug development. DeepMind, founded in London and acquired by Google 10 years ago, is known for artificial-intelligence programs that play video...

Hans Zimmer, 1; AI, 0. When Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was thinking about the soundtrack for his upcoming movie about artificial intelligence, The Creator, he decided to try composing it with AI-and got pretty damn good" results. The cheeky part of me thought it'd be even better if...