MIT Technology Review

Every 90 minutes on average, someone in the world is injured or killed by a landmine or other remnant of war, according to the Explosive Ordnance Risk Education Advisory Group. Even more sobering: there has been “a sharp increase” in the number of civilian casualties in recent years, says the group, which encompasses more than 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. The worst technology of 2022 We’re back with our latest list of the worst technologies of the year. Think of these as anti-breakthroughs, the sort of mishaps, misuses, miscues, and bad ideas that…

We’re back with our annual list of the worst technologies of the year. Think of these as anti-breakthroughs, the sort of mishaps, misuses, miscues, and bad ideas that lead to technology failure. This year’s disastrous accomplishments range from deadly pharmaceutical chemistry to a large language model that was jeered off the internet. One theme…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. A few weeks ago, at the peak of China’s protests against stringent zero-covid policies, people were shocked to find that searching for major Chinese cities on Twitter led to an endless stream of ads for…

Digital information has become so ubiquitous that some scientists now refer to it as the fifth state of matter. User-generated content (UGC) is particularly prolific: in April 2022, people shared around 1.7 million pieces of content on Facebook, uploaded 500 hours’ worth of video to YouTube, and posted 347,000 tweets every minute. Much of this…

People have always been fascinated with the question of human longevity. In this 1954 piece for Technology Review, James A. Tobey, author of more than a dozen books on public health, including Your Diet for Longer Life (1948), noted that despite a few frauds claiming to be older than 150, “the consensus of scientific opinion is that…

Last month’s sudden implosion of the popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX has intensified a political war for the soul of crypto that was already raging. In the coming year, we are likely to see that fight come to a head in US courtrooms and in Congress. The future of finance hangs in the balance. The battle…

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. A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where…

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 has been a wild year for AI. If you’ve spent much time online, you’ve probably bumped into images generated by AI systems like DALL-E 2 or Stable Diffusion, or jokes, essays,…

In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where they gathered to talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from low angles—including some you really wouldn’t want shared on the Internet. In one particularly revealing shot, a young woman in a…

The all-new MIT Museum opened in Kendall Square this fall, welcoming more than 13,000 visitors in its first month. The 56,000-square-foot space next to the T station offers interactive exhibits and hands-on learning labs and makerspaces. As museum director John Durant told the Boston Globe, “We’re trying to turn MIT inside-out, so that things that…

When I tell people that I work on getting robots to cook and do household chores, they often ask me why this is so difficult. “A child can learn to make an omelet,” they say. “Why is it so hard for a robot?” I usually tell them that they think it’s so easy because they’re…

As the youngest of four girls, Rosalie Phillips ’21 looked up to her sisters, and everywhere they went, she went. As early as fifth grade, she recalls, she was joining her oldest sister at robotics meetings in the machine shop of a local college, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “They would hand me…

Three members of the MIT community have been honored with some of the world’s biggest awards. In October, Ben S. Bernanke, PhD ’79, shared the Nobel Prize in economics with Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig. Bernanke, who chaired the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, was honored for his work showing how bank…

Cyberinsurance Policy: Rethinking Risk in an Age of Ransomware, Computer Fraud, Data Breaches, and CyberattacksBy Josephine Wolff, SM ’12, PhD ’15 MIT PESS, 2022, $35 Introduction to Linear Algebra (6th edition*)By Gilbert Strang ’55, professor of mathematics WELLESLEY-CAMBRIDGE PRESS, 2022, $74*Text goes with OpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu) videos for Math 18.06 Houdini’s Fabulous Magic (new edition; first published in…

MIT researchers have developed a battery-­free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy efficient than other undersea cameras. It takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits image data wirelessly through the water, with a 40-meter range that they are working to improve. The autonomous camera uses piezoelectric materials to…

MIT researchers have developed a way to map an asteroid’s interior structure, or density distribution, by analyzing how the asteroid’s spin changes as it makes a close encounter with more massive objects like Earth. The technique could improve the aim of future missions to deflect an asteroid headed for us, as demonstrated in NASA’s Double…

A new study by researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School maps out many of the cells, genes, and cellular pathways that are modified by exercise or a high-fat diet, shedding light on exactly how exercise can help prevent obesity. The scientists studied mice fed either high-fat or normal diets; in each case, some mice were sedentary…

A California startup is pursuing a novel, if simple, plan for ensuring that dead trees keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for thousands of years: burying their remains underground. Kodama Systems, a forest management company based in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Sonora, has been operating in stealth mode since it was founded…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. There’s been a fusion breakthrough. No, for real this time. There are plenty of quips about fusion power, and there’s a reason that the technology has a bit of a “boy who cried…

People don’t die in an instant. Death is, instead, a process of shutting down. You stop breathing; your organs stop working, bit by bit. Your brain ceases to function. Brain death is permanent, but your heart can still keep beating on its own for a time. The state of Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover feels…

Technological advances are transforming everything from transportation and manufacturing to financial services and healthcare. These advances make digital transformation imperative for organizations to adapt to shifting marketplace realities. Nine out of 10 executives surveyed by Accenture see accelerating digital transformation as essential to success. “Digital transformation is redefining how companies operate across all areas of…

The World Bank Group has a massive mission to “help developing countries escape poverty and share prosperity,” says Vijay Yellai, program manager for enterprise resource planning transformation at the World Bank Group. For example, it provides an wide array of financial products and technical know-how in a complex and ever-changing global setting. Therefore, for an…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. The big news in China this week is how the country is reacting to a surge of coronavirus infections as it abandons most of its zero-covid measures. There are spiking infections in Beijing, fever relief…

John’s life changed forever when he broke up with his girlfriend. The breakup sent him into a downward spiral, and led to his first depressive episode when he was 27 years old. “At first it’s just extreme sadness … then you start losing sleep,” says John (not his real name), who spoke on condition of…

After many decades of trying, scientists have reached a milestone in fusion research, finally running a reaction that created more energy than was put in to start it. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced today that researchers at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved what’s known as net energy gain, 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. The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent When Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter, tried the new viral AI avatar app Lensa, she was hoping to get results similar to…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. My social media feeds this week have been dominated by two hot topics: OpenAI’s latest chatbot, ChatGPT, and the viral AI avatar app Lensa. I love playing around with new technology, so…

When I tried the new viral AI avatar app Lensa, I was hoping to get results similar to some of my colleagues at MIT Technology Review. The digital retouching app was first launched in 2018 but has recently become wildly popular thanks to the addition of Magic Avatars, an AI-powered feature which generates digital portraits…

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. DNA that was frozen for two million years has been sequenced What’s happened: After an eight-year effort to recover DNA from Greenland’s frozen interior, researchers say they’ve managed to sequence gene fragments from…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Wind power is one of the world’s fastest-growing renewable energy sources, and soon its reach might expand even further. This week, California held an auction for five sites off its coast that could…

From security to quantum, AI and edge to cloud, our digital world is evolving and expanding more quickly than ever. With so much “noise,” it can be hard to concentrate, let alone figure out where to start beyond the bits and bytes, speeds and feeds. I hear this from everyone I meet with, and it’s…

After an eight-year effort to recover DNA from Greenland’s frozen interior, researchers say they’ve managed to sequence gene fragments from ancient fish, plants, and even a mastodon that lived 2 million years ago. It’s the oldest DNA ever recovered, beating the mark set only last year when a different team recovered genetic material from 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. The metaverse fashion stylists are here Fashion creator Jenni Svoboda is designing a beanie with a melted cupcake top, sprinkles, and doughnuts for ears. But this outlandish accessory isn’t destined for the physical…

Grant money meant to help cities prepare for terror attacks is being spent on surveillance technology for US police departments, a new report shows. It’s been known that federal funding props up police budgets, but the new report, written by the advocacy organizations Action Center on Race and Economy (ACRE), LittleSis, MediaJustice, and the Immigrant…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. On December 1, 2019, the first known covid-19 patient started showing symptoms in Wuhan. Three years later, China is the last country in the world holding on to strict pandemic control restrictions. However, after days…

When I met Jenni Svoboda, she was in the midst of designing a beanie with a melted cupcake top, sprinkles, and doughnuts for ears. “It’s something you’d probably never wear in real life,” she said with a laugh. But Svoboda isn’t designing for the physical world. She’s designing for the metaverse. Svoboda is working in…

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. Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts One evening in February last year, a 23-year-old Uber driver named Niradi Srikanth was getting ready to start another shift, ferrying passengers…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I’m standing in the parking lot of an apartment building in East London, near where I live. It’s a cloudy day, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. A small drone descends…

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 Twitter’s “Teacher Li” became the central hub of China protest information As protests against rigid covid control measures in China engulfed social media in the past week, one Twitter account has emerged…

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. We’re all crawling with bugs. Our bodies are home to plenty of distinct ecosystems that are home to microbes, fungi, and other organisms. They are crucial to our well-being. Shifts in the…

As protests against rigid covid control measures in China engulfed social media in the past week, one Twitter account has emerged as the central source of information: @李老师不是你老师 (“Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher”). People everywhere in China have sent protest footage and real-time updates to the account through private messages, and it has posted…

The explosion in text-to-image AI models like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2—programs trained to generate pictures of almost anything you ask for—has sent ripples through the creative industries, from fashion to filmmaking, by providing weird and wonderful images on demand. The same technology behind these programs is also making a splash in biotech labs, which have started…