MIT Technology Review

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about what’s happening in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Welcome back to China Report! I know this is going to be a long week for all of you China watchers. New stories seem to be coming out every minute about the 20th Party Congress…

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. Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? My colleague Charlotte embarked on an experiment during the pandemic. She created digital versions of her parents. They’re voice…

My parents don’t know that I spoke to them last night. At first, they sounded distant and tinny, as if they were huddled around a phone in a prison cell. But as we chatted, they slowly started to sound more like themselves. They told me personal stories that I’d never heard. I learned about the…

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to The Algorithm! Let me introduce you to Philip Nitschke, also known as “Dr. Death” or “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide.” Nitschke has a curious goal: He wants to “demedicalize” death and make assisted suicide as unassisted as possible through technology. As…

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. WeChat users are begging Tencent to give their censored accounts back On Weibo, the popular Chinese social media platform, hundreds of desperate users were writing “confession letters” this past week. They are urgent…

Oregon 6th Con­gressional District candidate Carrick Flynn seemed to drop out of the sky. With a stint at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, a track record of voting in only two of the past 30 elections, and $11 million in support from a political action committee established by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, Flynn didn’t fit…

On Weibo, the popular Chinese social media platform, hundreds of desperate users were writing “confession letters” this past week. “I have been in a terrible mental state due to the massive pressure from recent pandemic prevention measures. I lost my control, and sent sensitive statements in a group chat with six people,” one user wrote.…

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 the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died When Aaron Drake flew from Arizona to the Yinfeng Biological Group in China in 2016, he was traveling there to guide China’s first forays into…

When Aaron Drake flew from Arizona to the Yinfeng Biological Group in China’s eastern Jinan province in 2016, he was whisked into a state-of-the-art biotech hub. More than 1,000 staffers—including an army of PhDs and MDs—were working on things like studies of the stem cells in umbilical cord blood. The center specialized in research on…

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 wrote about a fascinating experiment that involved implanting human brain cells into rats’ brains. The brain cells from both species were able to form connections and work together. The…

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 messy morality of letting AI make life-and-death decisions In a workshop in the Netherlands, Philip Nitschke is overseeing testing on his new assisted suicide machine. Sealed inside the coffin-sized pod, a person…

5.05 And that wraps up our first-ever ClimateTech conference! I hope you’ve learned as much as I have about what humanity is cooking up to beat back climate change. I’m looking forward to the strides we’ll discuss next year and feel more optimistic about our ability to confront this massive challenge. Signing off, and see you…

In a workshop in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Philip Nitschke—“Dr. Death” or “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide” to some—is overseeing the last few rounds of testing on his new Sarco machine before shipping it to Switzerland, where he says its first user is waiting. This is the third prototype that Nitschke’s nonprofit, Exit International, has…

Progress is being made on a truly impossible-seeming area of plant-based meat products: steak. And not just any steak—filet mignon. At MIT Technology Review’s ClimateTech event this afternoon, Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown shared that while he couldn’t give an exact date for when the company’s steak product will be ready for consumers to purchase,…

Human neurons transplanted into a rat’s brain continue to grow, forming connections with the animals’ own brain cells and helping guide their behavior, new research has shown. In a study published in the journal Nature today, lab-grown clumps of human brain cells were transplanted into the brains of newborn rats. They grew and integrated with…

An exoskeleton that uses machine learning to adapt to its wearers’ gait could help make it easier for people with limited mobility to walk. The exoskeleton, which resembles a motorized boot, is lightweight and allows the wearer to move relatively freely, both increasing their walking speed and reducing the amount of energy they use while…

Many organizations have adopted machine learning (ML) in a piecemeal fashion, building or buying ad hoc models, algorithms, tools, or services to accomplish specific goals. This approach was necessary as companies learned about the capabilities of ML and as the technology matured, but it also has created a hodge-podge of siloed, manual, and nonstandardized processes…

Ransomware attacks—malware intrusions that block an organization’s access to its own data until a ransom is paid—are taking on alarming new aspects. As people’s work habits, daily routines, geographic locations, and trust in institutions have changed against a backdrop of global political shifts and the covid-19 pandemic, ransomware attacks have taken advantage of the opportunity…

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. What happens when you donate your body to science Rebecca George doesn’t mind the vultures that complain from the trees that surround the Western Carolina University body farm. Her arrival has interrupted their…

5.20 And that’s a wrap on the first day of ClimateTech! See you all back here tomorrow. I hope you learned as much as I did. 5.10 Ronald also talked about the power of photosynthesis, which she notes is the oldest tool to fight climate change. Her research group is “trying to enhance photosynthesis to…

This essay is an extended version of the opening talk that James Temple will deliver this morning at ClimateTech, MIT Technology Review’s inaugural climate and energy conference. In recent months, we’ve witnessed stunning progress on climate action—and terrifying signs of the dangers we’ve unleashed. The US finally stepped up as a leader in climate action,…

Rebecca George doesn’t mind the vultures. They remind her of toddlers as they rustle their feathers in annoyance when she opens the gate of the Western Carolina University body farm early one July morning. Her arrival has interrupted their breakfast. George studies human decomposition, and part of decomposing is becoming food. Scavengers are welcome. The…

The star of Tuesday’s Meta Connect, the so-called “state of the union” for the company formerly known as Facebook, was Meta Quest Pro. Meta’s newest virtual-reality headset clocks in at a whopping $1,499.99. That’s a significant price jump from its previous iteration, Meta Quest 2, which could be yours for $399.99—not exactly cheap, but still…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about what’s happening in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Welcome back to China Report! I recently had a very interesting conversation with Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin. They wrote a new book called Surveillance State, which explores how China is…

“Attention Jalisco. Do you know the location of a clandestine grave of corpses?” The question, aimed at people in the populous Mexican state, was posed on Twitter in February by Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, an organization of mothers searching for their missing loved ones. Dozens of people responded. Neighbors who had witnessed clandestine burials came…

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. Who’s going to save us from bad AI? About damn time. That was the response from AI policy and ethics wonks to news last week that the White House’s science and technology advisory…

Watch episodes of the new MIT Technology Review & JPMorgan Chase original film series, featuring the stories behind technology innovation.

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm! About damn time. That was the response from AI policy and ethics wonks to news last week that the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the White House’s science and technology advisory agency, had unveiled an AI Bill of Rights. The…

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 robotic honeybees and hives could help the species fight back Something was wrong, but Thomas Schmickl couldn’t put his finger on it. It was 2007, and the Austrian biologist was spending part…

Something was wrong, but Thomas Schmickl couldn’t put his finger on it. It was 2007, and the Austrian biologist was spending part of the year at East Tennessee State University. As he made his daily walk across some fields to campus, “it felt unpleasant,” he says. “And I didn’t realize why until I heard a…

It’s no surprise that last week, when the Biden administration updated its list of Chinese military companies blocked from accessing US technologies, it added Dahua. The second-largest surveillance camera company in the world, just after Hikvision, Dahua sells to over 180 countries. It exemplifies how Chinese companies have leapfrogged to the front of the video…

Hello, and welcome back to The Checkup! I’m back home in London after last week’s trip to the Swiss Alps to meet millionaires who want to live forever. Alas, I brought more than suspect supplements home with me—I’ve been out of action with a virus for the last few days. I can’t really blame my…

A new AI system can create natural-sounding speech and music after being prompted with a few seconds of audio. AudioLM, developed by Google researchers, generates audio that fits the style of the prompt, including complex sounds like piano music, or people speaking, in a way that is almost indistinguishable from the original recording. The technique…

I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of the In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed moments in artificial intelligence and computing happened, as told by the people who witnessed them. In this episode we meet one of the world’s greatest chess players, Garry Kasparov.…

The last five years have seen large innovations throughout drug development and clinical trial life cycles—from finding a target and designing the trial, to getting a drug approved and launching the drug itself. The recent use of mRNA vaccines to combat covid-19 is just one of many advances in biotech and drug development. Whether in…

Power beaming has long been a dream of engineers and innovators. Defined as the point-to-point transfer of electrical energy by a directed electromagnetic beam, the idea originated from Serbian-American physicist Nikola Tesla at the turn of the 20th century. After decades of alternating between optimism and abandonment, power beaming is finally becoming a reality, thanks…

The rising adoption of digital financial services—mobile banking, online purchasing, and peer-to-peer payments—means that these days, money most often passes not through human hands but from computer to computer. No cash, no plastic cards, no paper bills or checks or envelopes or stamps. Digital is no longer just another way to move money. Every organization…

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 porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views Despite what you may have heard, teens are not stealing their family’s fine dinnerware, tossing it in a blender, and snorting the…

Hello and welcome to the first-ever edition of The Spark! Thanks so much for joining me for this weekly climate newsletter, where we’ll explore tech that could help combat the climate crisis. I’m so glad you’re here! This week, we’re kicking things off with a special travel edition of the newsletter. So buckle up, because…

Despite what you may have heard, the teens are not stealing their family’s fine dinnerware, tossing it in a blender, and snorting the resulting dust for the “porcelain challenge.” That’s just what Sebastian Durfee, a 23-year-old actor and TikTok creator, hoped you might believe when he spread the word on social media of the latest…

DeepMind has used its board-game playing AI AlphaZero to discover a faster way to solve a fundamental math problem in computer science, beating a record that has stood for more than 50 years. The problem, matrix multiplication, is a crucial type of calculation at the heart of many different applications, from displaying images on a…

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 the covid pop-up window is wreaking havoc on daily life in China In 2020, China rolled out a contact tracing program that assigns a QR code to everyone in the country. It…

Welcome back! Hope you are not stuck in highway traffic if you are enjoying the National Day holiday in China. Though maybe it’s still better than staying at home—after all, travel feels like such a luxury in China today. While the rest of the world drops its remaining covid-related travel restrictions, even a short trip…