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. How AI can help us understand how cells work-and help cure diseases Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are cofounders and co-CEOs of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Cells are key to understanding disease-yet so...

As the smallest living units, cells are key to understanding disease-and yet so much about them remains unknown. We do not know, for example, how billions of biomolecules-like DNA, proteins, and lipids-come together to act as one cell. Nor do we know how our many types of cells interact within our bodies. We have limited...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. So smart! So talented! This week I'm pleased to introduce you to a new crop of bright minds working on some of the most challenging problems in AI and beyond. You...

Scroll through the livestreaming videos at 4 a.m. on Taobao, China's most popular e-commerce platform, and you'll find it weirdly busy. While most people are fast asleep, there are still many diligent streamers presenting products to the cameras and offering discounts in the wee hours. But if you take a closer look, you may notice...

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. DeepMind's cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What's next is interactive AI. DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman wants to build a chatbot that does a whole lot more than chat. In a recent...

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. I want to talk about the battle that's raging every day between people who want to censor online content and those who want to protect...

In 2017, BP took on a cloud-first approach that committed to building any new hardware or system builds on the cloud. Just a year prior, only 2% of BP applications lived on the cloud. At the close of 2022, 90% of BP applications had migrated to cloud environments, changing product and service integration and BP's...

DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman wants to build a chatbot that does a whole lot more than chat. In a recent conversation I had with him, he told me that generative AI is just a phase. What's next is interactive AI: bots that can carry out tasks you set for them by calling on other software...

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 driverless car company is using chatbots to make its vehicles smarter The news: Self-driving car startup Wayve can now interrogate its vehicles, asking them questions about their driving decisions-and getting answers back...

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 just had a birthday, and you know what that means-I'm newly eligible for a screening colonoscopy. (#milestones!). I've been thinking about cancer screening a lot recently, because...

Covid case numbers have been rising across the United States since mid-July. So the news that updated covid vaccines are finally available comes as a relief to many. The first updated covid-19 shots from Moderna and Pfizer, which target an omicron variant known as XBB, hit some pharmacies as early as yesterday, and many more...

Self-driving car startup Wayve can now interrogate its vehicles, asking them questions about their driving decisions-and getting answers back. The idea is to use the same tech behind ChatGPT to help train driverless cars. The company combined its existing self-driving software with a large language model, creating a hybrid model it calls LINGO-1. LINGO-1 synchs...

AI is getting better at passing tests designed to measure human creativity. In a study published in Scientific Reports today, AI chatbots achieved higher average scores than humans in the Alternate Uses Task, a test commonly used to assess this ability. This study will add fuel to an ongoing debate among AI researchers about what...

Multiple factors are driving organizations to prioritize sustainability. Regulations are requiring organizations to meet emissions disclosure requirements. Investors are increasingly incorporating sustainability into decision-making processes. Consumers are demanding environmentally and ethically sustainable products. Employees, particularly millennials and Generation Z, want to work for organizations whose morals and ethics reflect their own. According to the Deloitte...

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 the climate innovators of tomorrow A lot of bright minds are working on solutions to climate change. You can find some of them in the latest edition of our annual 35 Innovators...

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 lot of bright minds are working on solutions to climate change. You can find some of them in the latest edition of our annual 35 Innovators Under 35 list. We've highlighted...

MIT Technology Review's 2023 list of 35 Innovators Under 35 is now live. This annual list recognizes young entrepreneurs, researchers, and scientists working in some of the most promising areas of technology today. Explore the list and meet this year's class of innovators, who are working across fields including artificial intelligence, climate and energy, biotechnology,...

For many organizations, innovation is focused on a few strategically prioritized initiatives and often is incremental by design. Change and the surprises it brings can be a grudgingly accepted necessity. Savvy companies, however, acknowledge that innovation must also be part of a firm's strategy and deployed through every department. The value of most companies in...

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 has a new tool to outsmart authoritarian internet censorship The news: Google is launching new anti-censorship technology created in response to actions by Iran's government during the 2022 protests, the company has...

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. When China announced back in July that it was restricting exports of germanium and gallium, it was a reminder of the leverage that China holds in the global supply chain for...

Google is launching new anti-censorship technology created in response to actions by Iran's government during the 2022 protests there, hoping that it will increase access for internet users living under authoritarian regimes all over the world. Jigsaw, a unit of Google that operates sort of like an internet freedom think tank and that creates related...

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: Our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2023 How do you know what's coming next, especially with a topic as fast-moving as technology? One way is to focus on the technology itself,...

In his essay introducing this year's class of Innovators Under 35, Andrew Ng argues that AI is a general-purpose technology, much like electricity, that will be built into everything else. Indeed, it's true, and it's already happening. AI is rapidly becoming a tool that powers all sorts of other tools, a technological underpinning for a...

Julia Joung is one of MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovators Under 35. When an AI beat one of the world's best Go players in 2017, Julia Joung felt relief. She'd spent her childhood in Taiwan mastering the ancient game and once aspired to become a professional player, representing her country. I felt like part of...

Sharon Li is MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovator of the Year. Meet the rest of this year's Innovators Under 35. As we launch AI systems from the lab into the real world, we need to be prepared for these systems to break in surprising and catastrophic ways. It's already happening. Last year, for example, a...

Young Suk Jo is one of MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovators Under 35. Transportation is one of the world's most polluting industries, accounting for roughly 15% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Electric vehicles will make a dent in those emissions in the coming decades, but batteries can't hold enough energy to power vehicles used in other...

This essay is part of MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovators Under 35 package.Meet this year's honorees. Innovation is a powerful engine for uplifting society and fueling economic growth. Antibiotics, electric lights, refrigerators, airplanes,smartphones-we have these things because innovators created something that didn't exist before. MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 list celebrates individuals who have...

Lerrel Pinto is one of MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovators Under 35. Asked to explain his work, Lerrel Pinto, 31, likes to shoot back another question: When did you last see a cool robot in your home? The answer typically depends on whether the person asking owns a robot vacuum cleaner: yesterday or never. Pinto's...

Yatish Turakhia is one of MIT Technology Review's 2023 Innovators Under 35. When covid-19 started spreading in early 2020, scientists quickly realized that tracking how the virus was mutating would be essential for public health as new strains emerged that put people at greater risk. Yatish Turakhia, then a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz's Genomics...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Before we get started I wanted to flag two great talks this week. On Tuesday, September 12, at 12 p.m. US Eastern time, we will be hosting asubscriber-only roundtableconversation about...

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 to know about Congress's inaugural AI meeting The US Congress is heading back into session, and they're hitting the ground running on AI. We're going to be hearing a lot about various...

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. The US Congress is heading back into session, and they are hitting the ground running on AI. We're going to be hearing a lot about...

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 to know about this autumn's covid vaccines Many people have started testing positive for covid recently. Hospitalizations for the disease in the US rose nearly 16% during the third week of August,...

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. Last week I came down with some kind of bug. So I got to play one of my least favorite games: Covid or Not Covid?" In my case,...

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. Zinc batteries that offer an alternative to lithium just got a big boost The news: One of the leading companies offering alternatives to lithium batteries for the grid has just received a nearly...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. I'd be willing to bet that you probably haven't spent much time thinking about the liquid that sloshes around inside batteries. But this liquid-called the electrolyte-is one of their key ingredients, and...

One of the leading companies offering alternatives to lithium batteries for the grid just got a nearly $400 million loan from the US Department of Energy. Eos Energy makes zinc-halide batteries, which the firm hopes could one day be used to store renewable energy at a lower cost than is possible with existing lithium-ion batteries....

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 need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. In the past year, kids, teachers, and parents have had a crash course in artificial intelligence, thanks...

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. Chinese ChatGPT-like bots are having a moment right now. As I reported last week, Baidu became the first Chinese tech company to roll out its large language model-called Ernie Bot-to the...

In the past year, kids, teachers, and parents have had a crash course in artificial intelligence, thanks to the wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. In a knee-jerk reaction, some schools, such as the New York City public schools, banned the technology-only to cancel the ban months later. Now that many adults have caught up 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. Coming soon: MIT Technology Review's 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch For decades, MIT Technology Review has published annual lists highlighting the advances redefining what technology can do and the brightest minds pushing...

AI language models are not humans, and yet we evaluate them as if they were, using tests like the bar exam or the United States Medical Licensing Examination. The models tend to do really well in these exams, probably because examples of such exams are abundant in the models' training data. As my colleague Will...

For decades, MIT Technology Review has published annual lists highlighting the advances redefining what technology can do and the brightest minds pushing their fields forward. This year, we're launching a new list, recognizing companies making progress on one of society's most pressing challenges: climate change. MIT Technology Review's 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch will...

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 one elite university is approaching ChatGPT this school year For many people, the start of September marks the real beginning of the year. Back-to-school season always feels like a reset moment. However,...

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. For many people, the start of September marks the real beginning of the year. No fireworks, no resolutions, but fresh notebooks, stiff sneakers, and packed...

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 biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people's brains The news: In an important test for stem-cell medicine, biotech company BlueRock Therapeutics says implants of lab-made neurons introduced into the brains...

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 published a story about the results of a study on Parkinson's disease in which a biotech company transplanted dopamine-making neurons into people's brains....

In an important test for stem-cell medicine, a biotech company says implants of lab-made neurons introduced into the brains of 12 people with Parkinson's disease appear to be safe and may have reduced symptoms for some of them. The added cells should produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, a shortage of which is what produces the devastating...

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. Chinese ChatGPT alternatives just got approved for the general public The news: Baidu, one of China's leading artificial-intelligence companies, has announced it's opening up access to its ChatGPT-like large language model, Ernie Bot,...

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. When I was growing up near the US Gulf Coast, it was more common for my school to get called off for a hurricane than for a snowstorm. So even though I...