MIT Technology Review

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 think I'm running out of ways to say it: it's hot. Saturday's heat was crushing in New York, with temperatures topping 90 F (32 C) and air that was absolutely sticky...

Enterprises are shifting operations from on-premises to the cloud, and industry momentum for digital transformation continues to push forward. Gartner estimates that 80% of CEOs are increasing investment in digital technologies in 2023 to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. Cloud and digitization are becoming a necessity across industries to ensure competitiveness. But as companies make...

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. Decoding the data of the Chinese mpox outbreak Almost exactly a year after the World Health Organization declared mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) a public health emergency, the hot spot for the outbreak...

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. Almost exactly a year after the World Health Organization declared mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) a public health emergency, the hot spot for the outbreak has quietly moved from the US...

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. China is suddenly dealing with another public health crisis: mpox The Chinese government is battling a new public health concern: mpox. The World Health Organization reports that China is currently experiencing the world's...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Earlier this year, when I realized how ridiculously easy generative AI has made it to manipulate people's images, I maxed out the privacy settings on my social media accounts and swapped...

Hazmat suits, PCR tests, quarantines, and contact tracing-it was hard not to feel deja vu last week when China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention published new guidance on how to contain a disease outbreak. But what was happening was not another covid wave. Rather, the Chinese government was addressing a potentially significant new public...

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. Cryptography may offer a solution to the massive AI-labeling problem The White House wants big AI companies to disclose when content has been created using artificial intelligence, and very soon the EU will...

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 wrotea short storyabout a project backed by some major tech and media companies trying to help identify content made or altered by AI....

The White House wants big AI companies to disclose when content has been created using artificial intelligence, and very soon the EU will require some tech platforms to label their AI-generated images, audio, and video with prominent markings" disclosing their synthetic origins. There's a big problem, though: identifying material that was created by artificial intelligence...

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. Six ways that AI could change politics -Bruce Schneier & Nathan E. Sanders When it comes to how AI may threaten our democracy, much of the public conversation lacks imagination. People talk about...

ChatGPT was released just nine months ago, and we are still learning how it will affect our daily lives, our careers, and even our systems of self-governance. But when it comes to how AI may threaten our democracy, much of the public conversation lacks imagination. People talk about the danger of campaigns that attack opponents...

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 new tool could protect your pictures from AI manipulation What's happening? There's currently nothing stopping someone taking the selfie you posted online last week and editing it using powerful generative AI systems....

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The unending heat this summer has kept the air conditioners in my apartment windows wildly busy. When I'm not taking guesses about what my electric bill might look like this month, I've...

Remember that selfie you posted last week? There's currently nothing stopping someone taking it and editing it using powerful generative AI systems. Even worse, thanks to the sophistication of these systems, it might be impossible to prove that the resulting image is fake. The good news is that a new tool, created by researchers at...

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. These moisture-sucking materials could transform air conditioning A surprising set of materials could soon help make more efficient air conditioners that don't overtax the electrical grid on hot days. As extreme heat continues...

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. Even though I know that Temu and Shein, two Chinese e-commerce platforms, occupy the same off-price shopping space, I have to admit I didn't expect the tensions between them to escalate...

A surprising set of materials could soon help make more efficient air conditioners that don't overtax the electrical grid on hot days. As extreme heat continues to shatter records around the globe, electricity demand for air conditioning is expected to triple in the next few decades-an increase of about 4,000 terawatt-hours between 2016 and 2050,...

Many people think of generative AI as a tool that allows them to use their own words to ask questions or generate copy and images-both of which it does remarkably well. However, it also has incredible potential to transform our personal and professional work-helping us access, consume, and utilize the untapped information that floods our...

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. It's high time for more AI transparency In less than a week since Meta launched its open source AI model, LLaMA 2, startups and researchers have already used it to develop a chatbot...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. That was fast. In less than a week since Meta launched its AI model,LLaMA 2,startups and researchers have already used it to developachatbotand anAI assistant. It will be only a matter...

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 moon It's been more than 50 years since humans last walked on the moon. But starting this year, an array of missions from private companies and national space agencies...

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 week, I published an in-depth story about efforts to restrict face recognition in the US. The story's genesis came during a team meeting a...

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. We're going back to the moon. And back. And back. And back again. It's been more than 50 years since humans last walked on 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. Is the digital dollar dead? In 2020, digital currencies were one of the hottest topics in town. China was well on its way to launching its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC,...

It's summer 2020. The world is under a series of lockdowns as the pandemic continues to run its course. And in academic and foreign policy circles, digital currencies are one of the hottest topics in town. China is well on its way to launching its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC, and many other...

On August 10, MIT Technology Review is launching Roundtables, a participatory subscriber-only online event series, to keep you informed about emerging tech. Subscribers will get exclusive access to 30-minute monthly conversations with our writers and editors about topics they're thinking deeply about-including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, tech policy, and more. (If you're not yet...

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. Face recognition in the US is about to meet one of its biggest tests Just four years ago, the movement to ban police departments from using face recognition in the US was riding...

Just four years ago, the movement to ban police departments from using face recognition in the US was riding high. By the end of 2020, around 18 cities had enacted laws forbidding the police from adopting the technology. US lawmakers proposed a pause on the federal government's use of the tech. In the years since,...

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 was chatting with a group recently about which technology is the most crucial one to address climate change. With the caveat that we'll definitely need a whole host of solutions to...

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. Meta's latest AI model is free for all The news: Meta is going all in on open-source AI. The company has unveiled LLaMA 2, its first large language model that's available for anyone...

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. It's no secret that Chinese state-owned media are active on Western social platforms, but sometimes they take a covert approach and distance themselves from China, perhaps to reach more unsuspecting audiences....

Today's retailers are faced with a clear opportunity for transformation. Consumer expectations are constantly evolving, challenging retailers to keep pace. A blend of online and in-person shopping forged during the pandemic persists, forcing retailers to deliver a highly personalized omnichannel experience. And retailers' values are becoming as important to consumers as their products and services....

Meta is going all in on open-source AI. The company is today unveiling LLaMA 2, its first large language model that's available for anyone to use-for free. Since OpenAI released its hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT last November, tech companies have been racing to release models in hopes of overthrowing its supremacy. Meta has been...

Building fair and transparent systems with artificial intelligence has become an imperative for enterprises. AI can help enterprises create personalized customer experiences, streamline back-office operations from onboarding documents to internal training, prevent fraud, and automate compliance processes. But deploying intricate AI ecosystems with integrity requires good governance standards and metrics. To deploy and manage the...

The emergence of consumer-facing generative AI tools in late 2022 and early 2023 radically shifted public conversation around the power and potential of AI. Though generative AI had been making waves among experts since the introduction of GPT-2 in 2019, it is just now that its revolutionary opportunities have become clear to enterprise. The weight...

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 judges, not politicians, could dictate America's AI rules It's becoming increasingly clear that courts, not politicians, will be the first to determine the limits on how AI is developed and used in...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. There's an AI revolution brewing. Last week, Hollywood's union for actors went on strike, joining a writers' strike already in progress-the first time these unions have been on strike simultaneously in...

It's becoming increasingly clear that courts, not politicians, will be the first to determine the limits on how AI is developed and used in the US. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into whether OpenAI violated consumer protection laws by scraping people's online data to train its popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. Meanwhile,...

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 company plans to transplant pig hearts into babies next year A biotech company called eGenesis is experimenting with transplanting the hearts of young gene-edited pigs into baby baboons as part of a...

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. You might think (or at least hope) that sensitive data like your tax returns would be kept under close care. But we learned this week...

The baby baboon is wearing a mesh gown and appears to be sitting upright. This little lady ... looks pretty philosophical, I would say," says Eli Katz, who is showing me the image over a Zoom call. This baboon is the first to receive a heart transplant from a young gene-edited pig as part of...

From securing a hybrid workforce to building pipelines for ever-increasing data streams and keeping multiple mission-critical systems up and running, the modern IT department faces numerous pressures. As director of IT for the packaged food company Conagra, Amit Khot is optimistic about the ways modern technology solutions and infrastructure can enable businesses to thrive and...

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. My new Turing test would see if AI can make $1 million -Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI and a venture partner at Greylock, a venture capital firm. Before...

AI systems are increasingly everywhere and are becoming more powerful almost by the day. But even as they become ever more ubiquitous and do more, how can we know if a machine is truly intelligent"? For decades the Turing test defined this question. First proposed in 1950 by the computer scientist Alan Turing, it tried...

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. As regular readers will know, I tend to start each edition of this newsletter by telling you all about a topic that's been on my...

People have been using ChatGPT to help them to do their jobs since it was released in November of last year, with enthusiastic adopters using it to help them write everything from marketing materials to emails to reports. Now we have the first indication of its effect in the workplace. A new study by two...

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 common chemicals could help clean up global shipping Global shipping is a big deal for the climate, accounting for 3% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Last week saw a big news announcement...

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've been thinking a lot about boats lately, and not just because it's been hot in New York for days and hopping into any body of water sounds incredibly refreshing right now....