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by Melissa Heikkilä on (#6BC02)
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This week’s big news is that Geoffrey Hinton, a VP and Engineering Fellow at Google, and a pioneer of deep learning who developed some of the most important techniques at the heart…
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MIT Technology Review
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| Updated | 2024-11-23 21:30 |
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by Will Douglas Heaven on (#6BBXD)
I met Geoffrey Hinton at his house on a pretty street in north London just four days before the bombshell announcement that he is quitting Google. Hinton is a pioneer of deep learning who helped develop some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern artificial intelligence, but after a decade at Google,…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6BB56)
A noninvasive brain-computer interface capable of converting a person’s thoughts into words could one day help people who have lost the ability to speak as a result of injuries like strokes or conditions including ALS. In a new study, published in Nature Neuroscience today, a model trained on functional magnetic resonance imaging scans of three…
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by Tate Ryan-Mosley on (#6BAY3)
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 recently published a story about a new kind of job that’s becoming essential at the frontier of the internet: the role of metaverse content…
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by Will Douglas Heaven on (#6BAVN)
Geoffrey Hinton, a VP and engineering fellow at Google and a pioneer of deep learning who developed some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern AI, is leaving the company after 10 years, the New York Times reported today. According to the Times, Hinton says he has new fears about the technology…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B8C5)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How an undercover content moderator polices the metaverse When Ravi Yekkanti puts on his headset to go to work, he never knows what the day spent in virtual reality will bring. Who might…
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by Melissa Heikkilä on (#6B88M)
AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard are excellent at crafting sentences that sound like human writing. But they often present falsehoods as facts and have inconsistent logic, and that can be hard to spot. One way around this problem, a new study suggests, is to change the way the AI presents information. Getting users…
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by Tate Ryan-Mosley on (#6B870)
When Ravi Yekkanti puts on his headset to go to work, he never knows what the day spent in virtual reality will bring. Who might he meet? Will a child’s voice accost him with a racist remark? Will a cartoon try to grab his genitals? He adjusts the extraterrestrial-looking goggles haloing his head as he…
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6B871)
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Feces are good for so much more than flushing. Yes, our waste contains the stuff that our bodies are generally trying to get rid of. But it can also provide insight into…
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by Ken Mugrage on (#6B7CN)
The relentless hype surrounding generative AI in the past few months has been accompanied by equally loud anguish over the supposed perils — just look at the open letter calling for a pause in AI experiments. This tumult risks blinding us to more immediate risks — think sustainability and bias — and clouds our ability…
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by James Temple on (#6B785)
Early last year, entrepreneur Luke Iseman says, he released a pair of sulfur dioxide–filled weather balloons from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, in the hope that they’d burst miles above Earth. It was a trivial act in itself, involving far less of the gas than a commercial airliner releases. But the launch was imbued with meaning,…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B74J)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. America’s first IVF baby is pitching a way to pick the DNA of your kids Elizabeth Carr is head of commercial development at Genomic Prediction, a genetic testing startup that says it will…
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by Casey Crownhart on (#6B70T)
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. We’re gathered here today to commemorate the demise of a towering figure in the energy world: nuclear power in Germany. Born: June 16, 1961. Died: April 15, 2023. Just a decade ago, Germany…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6B66H)
Health data is all around us. Your electronic health records (EHRs) include your medical issues, test results, vital signs, allergies, prescriptions, and surgeries. Your health insurer’s database collects the claims paid on your behalf. Your pharmacy may record your flu and covid-19 shots. Maybe a smartwatch counts your steps and measures your heart rate; perhaps…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B5XC)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: The Education issue —Mat Honan, editor in chief Welcome to the Education Issue, our latest print magazine. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re in an entirely new place when it comes to…
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by Antonio Regalado on (#6B6Y7)
Elizabeth Carr is head of commercial development at Genomic Prediction, a New Jersey genetic testing startup that says it will assess embryos created in IVF clinics for their future chance of common diseases and then rank them, so parents can pick the one with the best future. It’s a controversial area that has some critics…
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by Claire L. Evans on (#6B5PR)
In the late 1980s, NASA conducted a study to determine how well indoor plants like aloe vera, Chinese ivy, and potted chrysanthemums abate air pollution. The results were a boon to nursery owners everywhere: the research showed that houseplants can capably dispatch harmful pollutants including benzene and formaldehyde. But NASA’s study was conducted in sealed…
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by Allison Arieff on (#6B5PQ)
When the designer and typographer Marcin Wichary stumbled upon a tiny museum just outside Barcelona five years ago, the experience tipped his interest in the history of technology into an obsession with a very particular part of it: the keyboard. “I have never seen so many typewriters under one roof. Not even close,” he shared…
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by Daliah Singer on (#6B5PP)
Atorrus Rainer, age 41, is standing in the center of a stuffy, fluorescent-lit room. A virtual-reality headset covers his eyes like oversize goggles. Every so often, he extends his arm, using the VR controller to pick up garbage bags, a toothbrush, and toilet paper during a simulated trip to the supermarket. The experience is limited—Rainer…
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by Mat Honan on (#6B5PN)
Welcome to the Education Issue. I cheated on my editor’s letter. This one that you are reading right now. I’m very sorry. Look, I didn’t set out to do this, but the thing about magazines is that they have very hard deadlines, and if you miss them, you’re left with blank pages. So when I…
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by Ariel Aberg-Riger on (#6B5PM)
Artist Ariel Aberg-Riger is author of America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History.
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by John Williamson ’64, Tay McNamara on (#6B5XD)
Among the Ojibwe of North America, an older person is referred to as a “great person” and young people are taught not to answer back when chastised by their elders, out of respect for their wisdom. But some of the Chukchi people living in Siberia adhered to a custom based on a very different view…
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by Laura Bliss on (#6B59C)
If you think of Michelle Wu as the architect of Boston’s new city government, then Tiffany Chu ’10 might be the general contractor. As the chief of staff to Mayor Wu, Chu is in charge of figuring out how visions of urban transformation actually take shape. Take the Thursday afternoon in early February that found…
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by Michael Blanding on (#6B59A)
Lights, muscles, action Ritu Raman’s engineered muscle cells contract in response to light—and could lead to biologically based robots that adapt to their environment or repair themselves after a crash. Ritu Raman rubs her gloved hands with ethanol and reaches into an incubator the size of a mini-fridge to pull out a tray of petri…
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by Jennifer Chu on (#6B599)
No two hearts beat alike—and that can make it more complicated to treat heart disease. But a team of MIT engineers and others has developed a way to copy a patient’s unique heart in robotic form to help test different therapies more accurately. The procedure involves first converting medical images of a patient’s heart into…
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by Anne Trafton on (#6B597)
About 35 million Americans suffer from digestive issues such as constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis (partial stomach paralysis). These so-called motility disorders, in which food fails to move through the system properly, are often diagnosed using endoscopy, nuclear imaging studies, or x-rays. But engineers at MIT and Caltech have come up with a less…
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by Melissa Heikkilä on (#6B4RJ)
Can you imagine a car company putting a new vehicle on the market without built-in safety features? Unlikely, isn’t it? But what AI companies are doing is a bit like releasing race cars without seatbelts or fully working brakes, and figuring things out as they go. This approach is now getting them in trouble. For…
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by Jenn Webb on (#6B4P8)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” Companies are collecting and sharing a growing amount of sustainability data, but they often fail to take advantage of the benefits that their data can provide. This critical cycle of collection and sharing can lead to insights that improve ESG outcomes…
by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B4M8)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The first babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot have been born Last spring, a group of engineers set out to test the sperm-injecting robot they’d designed. One of the team, with no real…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B4F8)
Joshua Bergen is a very productive person. His secret is the workspace app Notion. Bergen, a product manager living in Vancouver, uses it to plan trips abroad in meticulous detail, with notes and timelines. He uses it to curate lists of the movies and TV shows he’s watched, and records what he thought of them.…
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by Antonio Regalado on (#6B4F9)
Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they’d designed and sent it by DHL to New York City. They followed it to a clinic there, called New Hope Fertility Center, where they put the instrument back together, assembling a microscope, a mechanized needle, a tiny petri dish, and a laptop. Then one…
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by Nika Simovich Fisher on (#6B4FA)
One January afternoon last year, a bouquet of balloons arrived at Karen Rose’s residence in Delray Beach, Florida. She wasn’t expecting a delivery, since it wasn’t her birthday or wedding anniversary, and she thought someone had made a mistake until she noticed the words “AND NOW?” printed on each balloon. “AND NOW?” is the prompt…
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by Chuan on (#6B42B)
Digital transformation has become more than a mantra for organizations that want to stay competitive in today’s ever-shifting global business landscape. Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, are increasingly embedded in key areas of businesses to improve processes, satisfy fluctuating consumer demands, and boost operational resilience in times of uncertainty. “Technology has become…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6B3N1)
Commitments toward sustainability have become a greater priority in recent years as enterprises look to comply with environmental, social, and governance standards. However, many enterprises are finding that meeting sustainability goals not only aligns with compliance but also offers opportunities to drive new value, growth, and revenue streams. “Just as the digital revolution transformed how…
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by Michael Hathaway, Willoughby Arévalo on (#6B3GJ)
Although most of us think of fungi as “mushrooms,” these spore-producing bodies are just the reproductive organs of mycelium—decentralized, weblike bodies of branching tubes. Though usually microscopic, these structures can be enormous; the largest known example is a honey mushroom (Armillaria) that covers almost 10 square kilometers (3.7 square miles) and has lived for millennia. …
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by Charlotte Jee on (#6B3ET)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why child safety bills are popping up all over the US Bills that are supposed to make the internet safer for children and teens have been popping up all over the United States…
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by Tate Ryan-Mosley on (#6B3CW)
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. Hello and welcome to The Technocrat! Bills ostensibly aimed at making the internet safer for children and teens have been popping up all over the…
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by Pradeep Niroula on (#6B3B6)
Mathematics has long been presented as a sanctuary from confusion and doubt, a place to go in search of answers. Perhaps part of the mystique comes from the fact that biographies of mathematicians often paint them as otherworldly savants—people who seem to pull nature’s deepest truths from thin air and transcribe them in prose so…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6B131)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Artificial intelligence is infiltrating health care. We shouldn’t let it make all the decisions. Would you trust medical advice generated by artificial intelligence? It’s a question raised by yet more headlines this week…
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by Valentine Benjamin on (#6B0XW)
Nigerians have become accustomed to long lines for gasoline and wild fluctuations in bus fares. Though the country is Africa’s largest producer of oil, its residents don’t benefit from a steady supply. Mustapha Gajibo, 30, is doing what he can to alleviate the problem: his startup, Phoenix Renewables Limited, is launching a homegrown electric-vehicle industry in the northeastern…
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#6B0XV)
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Would you trust medical advice generated by artificial intelligence? It’s a question I’ve been thinking over this week, in view of yet more headlines proclaiming that AI technologies can diagnose a range…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6AZV0)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why your iPhone 17 might come with a recycled battery Lithium-ion batteries power most of our personal electronics today. Mining the metals that make up those batteries can mean a lot of pollution,…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#6AZQV)
Driving is ubiquitous—a part of daily life for millions in rural and urban regions across the globe. Its by-products, however, are sobering. According to the World Economic Forum, transportation produces almost one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. There is an undeniable need to design, develop, and implement solutions to decarbonize and transition to net-zero emissions. Auto industry…
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by Casey Crownhart on (#6AZQW)
My phone is basically an extension of my arm at this point. To be honest, I have some mixed feelings about that, and not just because I worry about what being online 24/7 is doing to my brain cells. As you might know, lithium-ion batteries power most of our personal electronics today. Mining the metals…
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by Joy Lisi Rankin on (#6AZPH)
A decade ago, tech powerhouses the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon helped boost the nonprofit Code.org, a learn-to-code program with a vision: “That every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K–12 education.” It was followed by a wave of nonprofits and for-profits alike dedicated…
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by Tanya Basu on (#6AZ3G)
Snap is planning to launch augmented-reality mirrors that allow shoppers in stores to instantly see how clothes look on them without physically trying them on, the company announced today. The mirrors are going to appear in some US Nike stores later this year, and in the Men’s Wearhouse in Paramus, New Jersey. The mirrors are…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6AYMS)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. OpenAI’s hunger for data is coming back to bite it OpenAI has just over a week to comply with European data protection laws following a temporary ban in Italy, and a slew of…
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by Melissa Heikkilä on (#6AYHA)
OpenAI has just over a week to comply with European data protection laws following a temporary ban in Italy and a slew of investigations in other EU countries. If it fails, it could face hefty fines, be forced to delete data, or even be banned. But experts have told MIT Technology Review that it will…
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by Holly Korbey on (#6AYFR)
Linus Merryman spends about an hour a day on his laptop at his elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, mostly working on foundational reading skills like phonics and spelling. He opens the reading app Lexia with ease, clicking straight through to lessons chosen specifically to address his reading needs. This week Linus, who’s in second grade,…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#6AXEB)
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes With each devastating wildfire in the US West, officials consider new methods or regulations that might save homes or lives the next time. In the parts of…
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