MIT Technology Review

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. Inside the hunt for new physics at the world's largest particle collider In 2012, using data from CERN's Large Hadron Collider, researchers discovered a particle called the Higgs boson. In the process, they...

Gary Marcus meets me outside the post office of Vancouver's Granville Island wearing neon-coral sneakers and a blue Arc'teryx jacket. I'm in town for a family thing, and Marcus has lived in the city since 2018, after 20 years in New York City. I just find it to be paradise," he tells me, as I...

In 1977, Ray and Charles Eames released a remarkable film that, over the course of just nine minutes, spanned the limits of human knowledge. Powers of Ten begins with an overhead shot of a man on a picnic blanket inside a one-square-meter frame. The camera pans out: 10, then 100 meters, then a kilometer, 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. The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter's icy moon Europa Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, is nothing like ours. Its surface is a vast saltwater ocean, encased in a blanket of cracked ice,...

We've known of Europa's existence for more than four centuries, but for most of that time, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon was just a pinprick of light in our telescopes-a bright and curious companion to the solar system's resident giant. Over the last few decades, however, as astronomers have scrutinized it through telescopes and six spacecraft have...

Recorded on February 15, 2024 Building a Cleaner Future: Better Batteries and Their Materials Speakers: Casey Crownhart, Climate reporter, David Rotman, Editor at large, James Temple, Sr Editor of Climate & Energy Electric vehicles are taking to the roads like never before, and a grid with a growing share of renewables like wind and solar...

On a warm, sunny day in Montevideo, Uruguay, the air is smogless and crisp. Inside a highly secured facility at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) are a sophisticated gene gun, giant microscopes, and tens of thousands of gene-edited flies, their bright blue wings fluttering against the walls of their small, white, netted cages....

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. OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a...

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. Lynn Cole had a blood infection she couldn't shake. For years, she was in and out of the hospital. Each time antibiotics would force the infection...

OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a detailed, high-definition film clip up to a minute long. Based on four sample videos that OpenAI shared with MIT Technology Review ahead of today's announcement, the San Francisco-based firm has pushed the...

The sudden appearance of application-ready generative AI tools over the last year has confronted us with challenging social and ethical questions. Visions of how this technology could deeply alter the ways we work, learn, and live have also accelerated conversations-and breathless media headlines-about how and whether these technologies can be responsibly used. Responsible technology use,...

Google DeepMind today launched the next generation of its powerful artificial-intelligence model Gemini, which has an enhanced ability to work with large amounts of video, text, and images. It's an advancement from the three versions of Gemini 1.0 that Google announced back in December, ranging in size and complexity from Nano to Pro to Ultra....

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. Three things to love about batteries It's hard to pick favorites when it comes to climate technologies. Really, anything that helps us get closer to tackling climate change is worth writing about, both...

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 wouldn't exactly say I have favorites when it comes to climate technologies. Anything that could help us get closer to tackling climate change is worth writing about, both to share the...

Whether your favorite condiment is Heinz ketchup or your preferred spread for your bagel is Philadelphia cream cheese, ensuring that all customers have access to their preferred products at the right place, at the right price, and at the right time requires careful supply chain organization and distribution. Amid the proliferation of e-commerce and shifting...

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 the internet pushed China's New Year red packet tradition to the extreme If you ask any child in China what's the most exciting thing about the Lunar New Year, they are likely...

A methane-measuring satellite will launch in March that aims to use Google's AI to quantify, map, and reduce leaks. The mission is part of a collaboration with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, and the result, they say, will be the most detailed portrait yet of methane emissions. It should help to identify where the worst...

The key to building less-expensive batteries that could extend the range of EVs might lie in a cheap, abundant material: sulfur. Addressing climate change is going to require a whole lot of batteries, both to drive an increasingly electric fleet of vehicles and to store renewable power on the grid. Today, lithium-ion batteries are the...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. If you ask any child in China what's the most exciting thing about welcoming another year, they are likely to answer: the red packets. It's a festive tradition: During the holidays, people...

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 environmental DNA is giving scientists a new way to understand our world Environmental DNA is a relatively inexpensive, widespread, potentially automated way to observe the diversity and distribution of life. Unlike previous...

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 week I am happy to bring you some encouraging news from the world of AI. Following the depressingTaylor Swift deepfake porn scandaland the proliferation of political deepfakes, such asAI-generated robocalls...

In the late 1980s, at a federal research facility in Pensacola, Florida, Tamar Barkay used mud in a way that proved revolutionary in a manner she could never have imagined at the time: a crude version of a technique that is now shaking up many scientific fields. Barkay had collected several samples of mud -...

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. Join us at EmTech Digital Europe in London For over ten years, academics, policymakers, and business and technology leaders have gathered at our EmTech Digital event in Silicon Valley and on the MIT...

Heat pumps are still a hot technology, though sales in the US, one of the world's largest markets, fell in 2023. Even with the drop, the appliances beat out gas furnaces for the second year in a row and saw their overall market share increase compared to furnaces, sales of which also fell last year....

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 engineers are working to build better pulse oximeters Visit any health-care facility, and one of the first things they'll do is clip a pulse oximeter to your finger. These devices, which track...

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. Visit any health-care facility, and one of the first things they'll do is clip a pulse oximeter to your finger. These devices, which track heart rate...

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 Gemini is now in everything. Here's how you can try it out. The news: In the biggest mass-market AI launch yet, Google is rolling out Gemini, its family of large language models,...

In the biggest mass-market AI launch yet, Google is rolling out Gemini, its family of large language models, across almost all its products, from Android to the iOS Google app to Gmail to Docs and more. You can now get your hands on Gemini Ultra, the most powerful version of the model, for the first...

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 must be tough to be a solar panel. They're consistently exposed to sun, heat, and humidity-and the panels installed today are expected to last 30 years or more. But how can...

According to UN climate experts, 2023 was the warmest year on record. This puts the heat squarely on companies to accelerate their sustainability efforts. It's quite clear that the sense of urgency is increasing," says Jonas Bohlin, chief product officer for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) platform provider Position Green. That pressure is coming from...

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what's coming next. You can read more from the series here. For more than a century, the prevalent image of power plants has been characterized by towering smokestacks, endless coal trains, and loud spinning turbines. But 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 China is betting big on chiplets For the past couple of years, US sanctions have had the Chinese semiconductor industry locked in a stranglehold. Chinese companies can still manufacture chips for today's...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Last month, MIT Technology Review unveiled our pick for 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2024. These are the technological advancements that we believe will change our lives today or sometime in the future....

For the past couple of years, US sanctions have had the Chinese semiconductor industry locked in a stranglehold. While Chinese companies can still manufacture chips for today's uses, they are not allowed to import certain chipmaking technologies, making it almost impossible for them to produce more advanced products. There is a workaround, however. A relatively...

In 2015, JPMorgan Chase embarked on a journey to build a more secure and open wholesale banking. For chief technology officer at Onyx by J.P.Morgan, Suresh Shetty, investing in blockchain, a distributed ledger technology in its early days, was about ubiquity. We actually weighted ubiquity in terms of who can use the technology, who was...

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. A chatbot helped more people access mental-health services The news: An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Human babies are fascinating creatures. Despite being completely dependent on their parents for a long time, they can do some amazing stuff. Babies have an innate understanding of the physics of...

Late last month, the Biden administration announced it's suspending permit applications for exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) as it reevaluates the economic, environmental, and climate impacts of the fuel. LNG is produced by cooling natural gas into a liquid state, making it easier to store and ship to overseas markets. Natural gas itself has been...

An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups who are less likely to seek help, new research has found. Demand for mental-health services in England is on the rise, particularly since the covid-19 pandemic. Mental-health services received 4.6 million patient...

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. Solar geoengineering could start soon if it starts small -David W. Keith, founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago, and Wake Smith, a lecturer at the...

For half a century, climate researchers have considered the possibility of injecting small particles into the stratosphere to counteract some aspects of climate change. The idea is that by reflecting a small fraction of sunlight back to space, these particles could partially offset the energy imbalance caused by accumulating carbon dioxide, thereby reducing warming 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. This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language Human babies are far better at learning than even the very best large language models. To be able to...

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. Welcome back to The Checkup! Today I want to talk about ... mRNA vaccines. I can hear the collective groan from here, but wait-hear me out!...

Human babies are far better at learning than even the very best large language models. To be able to write in passable English, ChatGPT had to be trained on massive data sets that contain millions or even a trillion words. Children, on the other hand, have access to only a tiny fraction of that data,...

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 recycling alone can't power climate tech The potential to use old, discarded products to make something new sounds a little bit like magic. This is why, in some cases at least, recycling...

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 potential to use old, discarded products to make something new sounds a little bit like magic. I absolutely understand the draw, and in some cases, recycling is going to be a...

Robots are good at certain tasks. They're great at picking up and moving objects, for example, and they're even getting better at cooking. But while robots may easily complete tasks like these in a laboratory, getting them to work in an unfamiliar environment where there's little data available is a real challenge. Now, a new...

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 the world's biggest EV maker is getting into shipping Earlier this month, a massive ship picked up over 5,000 electric cars from two ports in northern and southern China. Five days later,...

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter about technology in China.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. For people who have been watching BYD for a long time, it won't be surprising that the company has just ventured into a new field. The Chinese electric-vehicle maker has been particularly...