MIT Technology Review

Everywhere I look, I see AI clones. On X and LinkedIn, thought leaders" and influencers offer their followers a chance to ask questions of their digital replicas. OnlyFans creators are having AI models of themselves chat, for a price, with followers. Virtual human" salespeople in China are reportedly outselling real humans. Digital clones-AI models that...

Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one of their online sessions, so Declan suggested they turn off their video feeds. Instead, his therapist began inadvertently sharing his screen. Suddenly, I was watching him use ChatGPT," says Declan,...

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. Can an AI doppelganger help me do my job? -James O'Donnell Digital clones-AI models that replicate a specific person-package together a few technologies that have been around for a while now: hyperrealistic video...

Next week, we'll publish our 2025 list of Innovators Under 35, highlighting smart and talented people who are working in many areas of emerging technology. This new class features 35 accomplished founders, hardware engineers, roboticists, materials scientists, and others who are already tackling tough problems and making big moves in their careers. All are under...

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. The case against humans in space Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is...

For just the second time in nearly two decades, the United States has granted an export license to an American company planning to sell nuclear technology to India, MIT Technology Review has learned. The decision to greenlight Clean Core Thorium Energy's license is a major step toward closer cooperation between the two countries on atomic...

A lot of Americans don't eat well. And they're paying for it with their health. A diet high in sugar, sodium, and saturated fat can increase the risk of problems like diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease, to name a few. And those are amongthe leading causes of death in the US. This is hardly...

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's still not giving us the full picture on AI energy use -Casey Crownhart Google just announced that a typical query to its Gemini app uses about 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. That's about...

Over the past 20 years building advanced AI systems-from academic labs to enterprise deployments-I've witnessed AI's waves of success rise and fall. My journey began during the AI Winter," when billions were invested in expert systems that ultimately underdelivered. Flash forward to today: large language models (LLMs) represent a quantum leap forward, but their prompt-based...

Google just announced that a typical query to its Gemini app uses about 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. That's about the same as running a microwave for one second-something that, to me, feels virtually insignificant. I run the microwave for so many more seconds than that on most days. I was excited to see this report...

Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn't always easy. That's why we've created the AI Hype Index-a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Using AI to improve our health and well-being is one of the areas scientists and researchers are most excited about. The last month...

Across industries, enterprises are increasingly adopting an on-demand approach to compute, storage, and applications. They are favoring digital services that are faster to deploy, easier to scale, and better integrated with partner ecosystems. Yet, one critical pillar has lagged: the network. While software-defined networking has made inroads, many organizations still operate rigid, pre-provisioned networks. As...

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: the Security issue It would be naive to think we are going back to a world without AI. We're not. But it's only one of many urgent problems we need to address...

When Jitender was a child in New Delhi, both his parents worked as manual scavengers-a job that involved clearing the city's sewers of solid waste by hand. Now, he is among almost 200 contractors involved in the Delhi government's effort to shift from this manual process to safer mechanical methods. Although it has been outlawed...

When I picked up my daughter from summer camp, we settled in for an eight-hour drive through the Appalachian mountains, heading from North Carolina to her grandparents' home in Kentucky. With little to no cell service for much of the drive, we enjoyed the rare opportunity to have a long, thoughtful conversation, uninterrupted by devices....

Earlier this year, the $800 million Vera Rubin Observatory commenced its decade-long quest to create an extremely detailed time-lapse movie of the universe. Rubin is capable of capturing many more stars than any other astronomical observatory ever built; it also sees many more satellites. Up to 40% of images captured by the observatory within its...

Overthink This is a podcast in which two very smart people (who happen to be young and hilarious professors of philosophy) draw unexpected philosophical connections between facets of modern life. Ellie Anderson and David Pena-Guzman have done hour-long episodes on everything from mommy issues to animal justice, with particularly sharp segments on tech-adjacent issues like...

As I write in late July, we're contending with a major tax increase on the annual returns from MIT's endowment as well as other investments and assets. This new tax burden will strain the resources we use to support research, innovation, and student scholarships and financial aid-the heart and soul of the Institute. And the...

Textiles account for 5% of landfill space-and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community...

Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have identified areas needing repair and then mixed the exact shades needed to fill in one area at a time. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade. Now an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering...

Most people with type 1 diabetes inject insulin to prevent their blood sugar levels from getting too high. However, if their blood sugar gets too low, it can lead to confusion, seizures, and even death. To combat this hypoglycemia, some patients carry syringes of glucagon, a hormone that stimulates release of glucose. Now MIT engineers...

Today, 2.2 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. But the atmosphere contains millions of billions of gallons of water in the form of vapor, and researchers have tried various strategies to capture and condense it in places where traditional sources are inaccessible. Now MIT engineers have improved on that approach...

Anantha Chandrakasan became the Institute's new provost on July 1, succeeding Cynthia Barnhart, SM '86, PhD '88, who announced her decision to step down in February. Chandrakasan, who earned his BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, joined MIT in 1994. Head of the Energy-Efficient Circuits...

A team at MIT and the Scripps Research Institute has made important progress toward vaccines that can protect against HIV, and potentially other diseases, with a single dose. The researchers treated mice with a vaccine that combines two different adjuvants, materials that help stimulate the immune system-one incorporating a compound previously developed by Scripps professor...

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAIBy Karen Hao '15PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 2025, $32 Read MIT Technology Review's excerpt here. Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the ArtsBy Samuel Jay Keyser, HM '97, emeritus professor of linguisticsMIT PRESS, 2025, $30 Data, Systems, and Society: Harness AI for Societal GoodBy Munther A. Dahleh,...

On a mission to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing components, Siemens turned its attention to the design of a robot gripper. Making up just 2%of the robot, the impact of this hand-likedevice may seem inconsequential. But, reducing its weight by 90% and the number of constituent parts by 84% can save up to 3...

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 these two brothers became go-to experts on America's mystery drone" invasion In 2024 alone, 350 known drone incursions were reported over a hundred different US military installations. A lack of coordination or...

On a Friday evening last December, every tier of US law enforcement-federal, state, and local-was dispatched to the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, a military research installation outside Boston. A squadron of about 15 to 20 drones had been spotted violating the base's restricted airspace. The culprits could not be found. One retired major...

Baafour Asiamah-Adjei '03 is the founder and CEO of one of Ghana's largest private power companies, Genser Energy-an entrepreneurial engineer who aims to deliver sustainable energy across West Africa. And he credits MIT with much of his success. But when he was applying to colleges, the Institute wasn't even on his radar. The son of...

Stop me if you've heard this one before. The AI learns it is about to be switched off and goes rogue, disobeying commands and threatening its human operators. It's a well-worn trope in science fiction. We see it in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's the premise of the Terminator series, in...

The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January 2025 left an indelible mark on the Southern California landscape. The Eaton and Palisades fires raged for 24 days, killing 29 people and destroying 16,000 structures, with losses estimated at $60 billion. More than 55,000 acres were consumed, and the landscape itself was physically transformed....

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. In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses Google has just released a report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In...

In October, a new academic conference will debut that's unlike any other. Agents4Science is a one-day online event that will encompass all areas of science, from physics to medicine. All of the work shared will have been researched, written, and reviewed primarily by AI, and will be presented using text-to-speech technology. The conference is the...

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our home world and expand our civilization to extraterrestrial vistas. This belief has been mainstream for...

Last year, I added my DNA profile to a private genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked Yes" to allow the police to search my genes. In 2018, police in California announced they'dcaught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded capture for decades. They did it by uploading crime-scene DNA to websites like the one...

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. On the ground in Ukraine's largest Starlink repair shop Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine's ability to continue in the fight against Russia. It's how troops in battle zones stay connected with faraway...

Google has just released a technical report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In total, the median prompt-one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand-consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of running a standard microwave for about one second. The company also provided average estimates...

I remember using a princess toothbrush when I was little. The handle was purple, teal, and sparkly. Like most of the other pieces of plastic that have ever been made, it's probably still out there somewhere, languishing in a landfill. (I just hope it's not in the ocean.) I've been thinking about that toothbrush again...

Oleh Kovalskyy thinks that Starlink terminals are built as if someone assembled them with their feet. Or perhaps with their hands behind their back. To demonstrate this last image, Kovalskyy-a large, 47-year-old Ukrainian, clad in sweatpants and with tattoos stretching from his wrists up to his neck-leans over to wiggle his fingers in the air...

NASA and IBM have released a new open-source machine learning model to help scientists better understand and predict the physics and weather patterns of the sun. Surya, trained on over a decade's worth of NASA solar data, should help give scientists an early warning when a dangerous solar flare is likely to hit Earth. Solar...

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 churches use data and AI as engines of surveillance On a Sunday morning in a Midwestern megachurch, worshippers step through sliding glass doors into a bustling lobby-unaware they've just passed through a...

Despite decades of green certifications, better material sourcing, and the use of more sustainable materials such as mass timber, the built environment is still responsible for a third of global emissions worldwide. According to a 2024 UN report, the building sector has fallen significantly behind on progress" toward becoming more sustainable. Changing the way we...

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 to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states-blue and red alike -Joshua A. Basseches is the David and Jane Flowerree Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy at Tulane...

When the US Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter hearing-aid software for Apple's AirPods Pro in September 2024, with a device price point right around $200, I was excited. I have mild to medium hearing loss and tinnitus, and my everyday programmed hearing aids cost just over $2,000-a lower-cost option I chose after my audiologist...

On a Sunday morning in a Midwestern megachurch, worshippers step through sliding glass doors into a bustling lobby-unaware they've just passed through a gauntlet of biometric surveillance. High-speed cameras snap multiple face probes" per second, isolating eyes, noses, and mouths before passing the results to a local neural network that distills these images into digital...

How do you want your AI to treat you? It's a serious question, and it's one that Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, has clearly been chewing on since GPT-5's bumpy launch at the start of the month. He faces a trilemma. Should ChatGPT flatter us, at the risk of fueling delusions that can spiral out of...

The second Trump administration is proving to be more disastrous for the climate and the clean energy economy than many had feared. Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed most of the clean energy incentives in former president Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, his EPA administrator moved to revoke the endangerment finding, 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. Why we should thank pigeons for our AI breakthroughs People looking for precursors to artificial intelligence often point to science fiction by authors like Isaac Asimov or thought experiments like the Turing test....