MIT Technology Review

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. This week, I’ve been working on a big story about a controversial treatment that creates babies with three genetic parents. The “three-parent baby” technique was thought to help parents avoid passing diseases…

One of the earliest stages in the process of identifying a potential new drug is to expose cells to the compound in a lab dish and scour microscope images to see the effects. Biologists who do this work tend to focus on a few select features that could indicate the drug is working—a cluster of…

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, with zero fanfare, in late November 2022, the San Francisco–based artificial-intelligence company had few expectations. Certainly, nobody inside OpenAI was prepared for a viral mega-hit. The firm has been scrambling to catch up—and capitalize on its success—ever since. It was viewed in-house as a “research preview,” says Sandhini Agarwal, who works…

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. Three-parent baby technique could create babies at risk of severe disease When the first baby born using a controversial procedure that meant he had three genetic parents was born back in 2016, it…

When the first baby born using a controversial procedure that meant he had three genetic parents was born back in 2016, it made headlines. The baby boy inherited most of his DNA from his mother and father, but he also had a tiny amount from a third person. The idea was to avoid having the…

Last September, researchers in the UK launched a high-altitude weather balloon that released a few hundred grams of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, a potential scientific first in the solar geoengineering field, MIT Technology Review has learned. Solar geoengineering is the theory that humans can ease global warming by deliberately reflecting more sunlight into space.…

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 official—after over a month of open voting, hydrogen planes are the readers’ choice for the 11th item on our 2023 list of Breakthrough Technologies! I’d like to thank the academy, and all…

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. These companies want to tackle food waste with microbes Some people might look in a grocery store’s dumpster and see garbage. But others are starting to see dollar signs. New facilities are popping…

Some people might look in a grocery store’s dumpster and see garbage. But others are starting to see dollar signs. New facilities are popping up in the US to help tackle food waste using a process called anaerobic digestion, which uses microbes to break down organic materials. Divert, a company working to address food waste,…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. If you take a look at app stores in the US right now, you might be surprised to find they are dominated by Chinese programs. On Monday, the three most downloaded free apps on Apple’s…

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. Ethereum moved to proof of stake. Why can’t Bitcoin? Last year, Ethereum went green. The second-most popular crypto platform transitioned to proof of stake, an energy-efficient framework for adding new blocks of transactions,…

Tech Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more here. Last year, Ethereum went green. The second-most-popular crypto platform transitioned to proof of stake, an energy-efficient framework for adding new blocks of transactions, NFTs, and other information to the blockchain.…

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. Welcome to Chula Vista, where police drones respond to 911 calls In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program 10 hours a day, seven days a…

A group of 10 companies, including OpenAI, TikTok, Adobe, the BBC, and the dating app Bumble, have signed up to a new set of guidelines on how to build, create, and share AI-generated content responsibly. The recommendations call for both the builders of the technology, such as OpenAI, and creators and distributors of digitally created…

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. All eyes were on the US Supreme Court this week as it weighed up arguments for two cases relating to recommendation algorithms and content moderation, both…

In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program 10 hours a day, seven days a week from four launch sites, it’s not uncommon to see an unmanned aerial vehicle darting across the sky. For officers on the force, tapping into this aerial reconnaissance resource has gone from a…

Penny Chisholm picked up Nancy Hopkins in the cancer center an hour before their appointment with the dean on August 11, 1994. They walked across the street to collect Lisa Steiner and Mary-Lou Pardue in the biology department, then to the main campus to pick up JoAnne Stubbe and Sylvia Ceyer. The six MIT professors…

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 image generator Midjourney blocks porn by banning words about the human reproductive system The news: The popular AI image generator Midjourney bans a wide range of words about the human reproductive system…

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. This week’s newsletter is coming to you from Lisbon, Portugal. It’s a nice change of scene from chilly London. The sun is shining, the sky is bright blue, and the Tagus River…

The popular AI image generator Midjourney bans a wide range of words about the human reproductive system from being used as prompts, MIT Technology Review has discovered. If someone types “placenta,” “fallopian tubes,” “mammary glands,” “sperm,” “uterine,” “urethra,” “cervix,” “hymen,” or “vulva” into Midjourney, the system flags the word as a banned prompt and doesn’t…

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. When hydrogen will help climate change—and when it won’t. Hydrogen is often heralded as a climate hero because when it’s used as a fuel in things like buses or steel production, there are…

Have you ever heard of the hydrogen rainbow? While hydrogen gas is colorless, the industry sometimes uses colors as shorthand to describe which of the many possible processes was used to make a particular batch. There’s gray, green, and blue hydrogen, along with more vibrant tones like pink—a whole rainbow (kind of). Hydrogen is often…

Many companies looking to enter the software economy, the ecosystem of companies that create or are enabled by software, do so through acquisitions, often by targeting startups. Evaluating the potential value of these smaller companies, however, is a specialized skill, says Jeff Vogel, head of the Software Strategy Group for EY-Parthenon. For companies, discovering and…

The combined power of AI and robotics is revolutionizing mobility and manufacturing. Automated vehicles, airplanes, people movers, and warehouse robots are improving in their range, flexibility, situational awareness, and intelligence, while better technology, a hunger for increased productivity and efficiency, and the pressures of covid-19 lockdowns have fueled investment in autonomous systems. In 2020 and…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. It’s the perfect moment to talk about EV batteries and China: yesterday, I published a story unpacking the country’s two decades of investment into becoming a world leader in the EV industry. It’s about how…

Good design has a habit of making things simple—sometimes too simple. You may look at the first iPod, for example, and marvel at its minimalist elegance without having to consider who designed it, where it was made and by whom, what materials it required, or even how long it would work. The ease of use…

It was drawing, or disegno, as deployed in the making of Italian buildings during the Renaissance, that gave us the word “design”—or such was the enthusiastic explanation I received as an architecture student at the end of the 1990s. History, of course, tells a more complex story. Though there was indeed a key shift in…

Wean Khing Wong, an attorney, mediator, speaker, and life coach, knows from personal experience that there are many ways to support the institutions and ideals that are important to you. As founder and former president of the MIT Chinese Alumni Group—which alumni and students of any ethnic background are welcome to join—she has produced free…

Sally Kornbluth officially began her tenure as MIT’s 18th president on January 1. A welcome banner—in Duke blue, presumably to ease her transition to 02139—greeted her in Lobby 7 as she began taking her first sips from the firehose. Here’s her video hello to the MIT community:

Forecasting earthquakes is complex, relying on specialized analysis of minute signals from the Earth’s crust. Cancer treatment is also a highly complex field, involving thousands of researchers and billions of dollars worldwide. Either would be enough to fill the waking hours of any scientist. But the work of Jie Zhang, PhD ’97, a geophysicist and…

In the days of the Apollo program, space policy wasn’t really about rockets, it was about international politics: beating the Soviets to the moon. But in the 21st century, with space now populated by thousands of satellites, telescopes, and other technologies, space policy has become far more complex. So after earning her degree in aerospace…

At Universal Studios Japan, one of the world’s most popular theme parks, a single parade can run 45 minutes and involve more than 100 performers, a half-dozen floats, intricate choreography, and a huge all-out water fight with the audience. It’s an enormous feat of engineering. Good thing an MIT alumnus is in charge. Daniel Pérez…

After a stroke in 2010, Debra Meyerson ’79, SM ’80, was paralyzed on the right side of her body and needed months of speech therapy before she was able to produce even the simplest of words. Today, she’s speaking out about stroke recovery—especially the mental health and emotional aspects of healing, which she says don’t…

Tina Bahadori ’84, SM ’88, studied the chemistry of turbulent diffusion flames and wrote a thesis on Les Liaisons Dangereuses as a double major in chemical engineering and humanities. Then she earned MIT master’s degrees in chemical engineering and technology and policy. So, it’s no surprise that she now works at the complex intersection of…

When the MIT Museum opened its new 56,000-square-foot space in Kendall Square last October, it was a time of public celebration. It was also a private point of pride for David Nuñez, SM ’15, who helped guide the museum’s transformation as its director of technology and digital strategy. Nuñez joined the museum in 2017, about…

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 did China come to dominate the world of electric cars? Before most people could realize what was happening, China became a world leader in electric vehicles. And the momentum hasn’t slowed: 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. Have you been threatened by an AI chatbot yet? Over the past week it seems like almost every news outlet has tried Microsoft’s Bing AI search and found that the chatbot makes up…

Nakeema Stefflbauer had only lived in Berlin for a couple of years when refugees from countries such as Syria and Iraq began arriving in Germany in great numbers in 2015. A native New Yorker who was familiar with Arabic and Middle Eastern culture from her travels in the area, Stefflbauer decided to volunteer to support…

Tech Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more here. Before most people could realize the extent of what was happening, China became a world leader in making and buying EVs. And the momentum hasn’t slowed: In just the past…

The residents of Vanuatu, a clutch of islands in the South Pacific, are no strangers to flooding. The ocean floor around them is frequently shaken by tsunami-triggering earthquakes. Some advance warning could give residents enough time to get to higher ground before tsunamis strike, saving lives. But the world’s 65 active deep-ocean buoys, which are…

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 Citizen is trying to remake itself by recruiting elderly Asians Members of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community in the US are living through a period of ongoing race-based attacks—most recently in…

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network. When it’s dark outside and Josephine Zhao has to walk even a few blocks home in San Francisco, she will sometimes call in an extra set of eyes—literally. After opening the Citizen app on her phone, Zhao connects with one of the…

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. We often hear big (and unrealistic) promises about the potential of AI to solve the world’s ills, and I was skeptical when I first learned that AI…

ONE Jarrod Burks opened the rear cargo door of his van and pointed to an array of strange equipment tangled inside. White PVC tubes were locked together, forming an expandable, fence-like grid, with large, rugged wheels attached beneath. Beside it all, on a layer of soft blankets, were a tablet computer, many yards of cables,…

New batteries are coming to America. This week, Ford announced plans for a new factory in Michigan that will produce lithium iron phosphate batteries for its electric vehicles. The plant, expected to cost $3.5 billion and begin production in 2026, would be the first to make these batteries in the US. “This is a big…

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. Welcome to the oldest part of the metaverse Today’s headlines treat the metaverse as a hazy dream yet to be built. But if it’s defined as a network of virtual worlds we can…

Today’s headlines treat the metaverse as a hazy dream yet to be built, but if it’s defined as a network of virtual worlds we can inhabit, its oldest extant corner has been already running for 25 years. It’s a medieval fantasy kingdom created for the online role-playing game Ultima Online—and it has already endured a…

The batteries propelling electric vehicles have quickly become the most crucial component, and expense, for a new generation of cars and trucks. They represent not only the potential for cleaner transportation but also broad shifts in geopolitical power, industrial dominance, and environmental protection. According to recent predictions, EVs will make up just over half of…