MIT Technology Review

The first sparks that ignited in the Montecito hills above Santa Barbara, California, on November 13, 2008, were stoked by ferocious sundowner winds gusting at up to 85 miles per hour, pushing the flames down into the densely populated canyon. Troy Harris, then the director of institutional resilience at Westmont College in Montecito, rushed from…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. If regulators don’t act now, the generative AI boom will concentrate Big Tech’s power even further. That’s the central argument of a new report from research institute AI Now. And it makes sense. To…

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. This technology could alter the entire planet. These groups want every nation to have a say. Picture two theoretical futures: one in which nations counteract climate change by reflecting sunlight back into space,…

Picture two theoretical futures: one in which nations counteract climate change by spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere, and another where the world continues heating up. There are big differences between the two, but a lot of smaller, more subtle changes too. Take malaria, for example—the sixth-largest killer in low-income countries. By 2070, the overall…

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 years, the US has struggled to process all the people who want to come and live here. It’s a slow-rumbling problem that has become…

In a Copenhagen suburb, a fifth-grade classroom is having its weekly cake-eating session, a common tradition in Danish public schools. While the children are eating chocolate cake, the teacher pulls up an infographic on a whiteboard: a bar chart generated by a digital platform that collects data on how they’ve been feeling. Organized to display…

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. Bacteria can be engineered to fight cancer in mice. Human trials are coming. The news: There are trillions of microbes living in and on our bodies—and we might be able to modify them…

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. It’s spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. There are daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths in full bloom in parks and window boxes where I live in London. I even saw some lambs on…

The release of ChatGPT has sent shock waves through the halls of higher education. Universities have rushed to release guidelines on how it can be used in the classroom. Professors have taken to social media to share a spectrum of AI policies. And students—whether or not they’ll admit it—have cautiously experimented with the idea of allowing…

There are trillions of microbes living in and on our bodies—and we might be able to modify them to help us treat diseases. Scientists have altered the genomes of some of these bacteria that live on skin, essentially engineering microbes that can prevent or treat cancer. It appears to work in mice, and human trials…

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. EVs just got a big boost. We’re going to need a lot more chargers. The US government is pushing for many more electric vehicles to hit the roads in the next few years.…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. It’s finally springtime in New York. The skies are clearing up, the trees are blooming, and I’m already wishing I could bottle up all this sunshine to save for when winter comes around…

The US government is pushing for a massive wave of electric vehicles to hit the roads in the next few years, but the country doesn’t have nearly enough chargers installed to power them all. The Environmental Protection Agency released proposed standards today that set limits for companies on total carbon dioxide emissions from fleets of…

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. AI literacy might be ChatGPT’s biggest lesson for schools This year millions of people have tried—and been wowed by— artificial intelligence systems. That’s in no small part thanks to OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. When…

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 year millions of people have tried—and been wowed by— artificial-intelligence systems. That’s in no small part thanks to OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. When it launched last November, the chatbot became an instant…

As real and virtual worlds continue to overlap, customers are drawn in by the metaverse and its potential of highly functional and immersive environments. Conceptions of the metaverse may seem fanciful, but the metaverse promises to be the next revolution of the internet, says Denise Zheng, managing director for the Metaverse Continuum Business Group and…

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 hottest new climate technology is bricks Heavy industries generate about a quarter of worldwide emissions, and alternative power sources can’t consistently generate the amount of heat that factories need to create their…

It’s an evening in 1531, in the city of Venice. In a printer’s workshop, an apprentice labors over the layout of a page that’s destined for an astronomy textbook—a dense line of type and a woodblock illustration of a cherubic head observing shapes moving through the cosmos, representing a lunar eclipse. Like all aspects of…

As businesses look to get the greatest value from their data, investments in cloud infrastructure from customer relationship management (CRM) systems to email to points of sale can help make data more accessible and bolster innovation, says PwC principal in the analytics insights practice, Anil Nagaraj and Microsoft director of product management Azure Synapse Analytics…

A handful of startups think bricks that hold heat could be the key to bringing renewable energy to some of the world’s biggest polluters. Industries that make products ranging from steel to baby food require a lot of heat—most of which is currently generated by burning fossil fuels like natural gas. Heavy industry makes up…

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. On April 3, my colleague Eileen Guo and I published a story that takes readers inside a tense debate about privacy within one of the…

More companies are starting to consider the impact that quantum computing will have on their business in the coming years. According to a survey by Deloitte, about half of all companies believe that they are vulnerable to a “harvest now, decrypt later” attack, where encrypted information is stored until a future quantum computer can decrypt…

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Embryos are special. These tiny blobs of cells have the potential to create life. That’s why we limit what scientists can do with them. Researchers are generally not allowed to grow human…

Embryos made from stem cells—instead of a sperm and egg—have been created from monkey cells for the first time. When researchers put these “synthetic embryos” into the uteruses of adult monkeys, some showed the initial signs of pregnancy. It’s the furthest scientists have ever been able to take lab-grown embryos in primates—and the work hints…

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. ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it Just days after OpenAI dropped ChatGPT in late November 2022, the chatbot was widely denounced as a free essay-writing, test-taking tool that made it…

The response from schools and universities was swift and decisive. Just days after OpenAI dropped ChatGPT in late November 2022, the chatbot was widely denounced as a free essay-writing, test-taking tool that made it laughably easy to cheat on assignments. Los Angeles Unified, the second-­largest school district in the US, immediately blocked access to OpenAI’s…

I’ve been on the road this week, and by a stroke of luck I got to visit one of my favorite places in the world: the whale shark exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The tank is massive, holding over 6 million gallons of water. Six full-sized whale sharks swim around it, along with…

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 a Chinese battery company powers Turkey’s home-grown EVs 2023 is a big year for Turkey, with both the republic’s 100-year-anniversary and a high-stakes election coming up. It’s also the year when the…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. First, a quick housekeeping note: China Report will be off for a few weeks. I’ll be away from work for the rest of the month, so the newsletter will take a brief pause.…

Building a better train doesn’t end with delivering the railcars. When Siemens was asked to improve train reliability, the company added sensors and built digital models that could predict the need for door maintenance 10 days before a door actually got stuck—allowing mechanics to prevent delays before they happened. Peter Koerte, chief technology and strategy…

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 Russia killed its tech industry In the months after Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, Russia saw a mass exodus of IT workers. According to government figures, about 100,000 IT specialists…

A new kind of machine-learning model built by a team of researchers at the music-streaming firm Spotify captures for the first time the complex math behind counterfactual analysis, a precise technique that can be used to identify the causes of past events and predict the effects of future ones. The model, described earlier this year…

Seven days after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Belugin packed up his and his family’s belongings, canceled the lease on his apartment in Moscow, withdrew his kids from kindergarten, and started a new life outside of Russia. Not long after that, he resigned from his position as chief commercial officer for small and medium businesses…

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 week, AI insiders were hotly debating an open letter signed by Elon Musk and various industry heavyweights arguing that AI poses an “existential risk” to humanity. They called for labs to introduce a…

AI language models are the shiniest, most exciting thing in tech right now. But they’re poised to create a major new problem: they are ridiculously easy to misuse and to deploy as powerful phishing or scamming tools. No programming skills are needed. What’s worse is that there is no known fix. Tech companies are racing…

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. Inside the bitter campus privacy battle over smart building sensors When computer science students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Software Research returned to campus in the summer of 2020, there…

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. We’re consuming toxic chemicals. Now we need to figure out how they’re affecting us. What are chemical pollutants doing to our bodies? It’s a timely question given that last week, people in Philadelphia…

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. Inside the cozy but creepy world of VR sleep rooms People are gathering in virtual spaces to relax, and even sleep, with their headsets on. VR sleep rooms are becoming popular among people…

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 spent last week in Washington, DC, and when I wasn’t fawning over the cherry blossoms, I was soaking up all the newest and wildest ideas in energy. The Advanced Research Projects Agency…

Lo-fi chill music was playing in the distance. Shooting stars sliced through the sparkling galaxy overhead. I was defying physics, hovering in space, on my back. Relaxed, I yawned and stretched, my fist punching a pillow that I had forgotten about. I was, of course, not in space. Physically, I was on a chaise in…

As the emergence of radically disruptive technologies over the last decades has created, destroyed, or fundamentally changed many business models, most organizations have undergone some kind of digital transformation in response. Many have been reluctant, however, to acknowledge the degree to which they need to disrupt their standard way of working to succeed in this…