MIT Technology Review

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…

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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…

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 White House just unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights The news: US President Biden has today unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights, which outlines five protections Americans should have in…

The White House wants Americans to know: The age of AI accountability is coming. President Joe Biden has today unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights, which outlines five protections Americans should have in the AI age. Biden has previously called for stronger privacy protections and for tech companies to stop collecting data. But the…

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm! Is anyone else feeling dizzy? Just when the AI community was wrapping its head around the astounding progress of text-to-image systems, we’re already moving on to the next frontier: text-to-video. Late last week, Meta unveiled Make-A-Video, an AI that generates…

Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines were a key part of Europe’s energy infrastructure. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Nord Stream lines supplied 18% of all Europe’s gas imports. Half of Russia’s gas imports to Europe came through Nord Stream 1—a record high. (Nord Stream 2,…

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 EU wants to put companies on the hook for harmful AI What’s happening: The EU is creating new rules to make it easier to sue AI companies for harm. A bill unveiled…

The EU is creating new rules to make it easier to sue AI companies for harm. A bill unveiled this week, which is likely to become law in a couple of years, is part of Europe’s push to prevent AI developers from releasing dangerous systems. And while tech companies complain it could have a chilling…

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. Meta’s new AI can turn text prompts into videos What’s happened: Meta has unveiled an AI system that generates short videos based on text prompts. Make-A-Video lets you type in a string of…

Hello, hallo, and bonjour! This week’s Checkup is coming to you from Switzerland. It’s still dark when I arrive at the Grand Bellevue hotel at 7 a.m., and it’s tipping with rain. But I’ve braved the elements to make it to an early “longevity workout.” It’s the first event scheduled at an aging conference I’m attending…

As the Chinese government works to reach ambitious carbon goals—an emissions peak by 2030 and neutrality by 2060—the country has become a global leader in the adoption of electric vehicles. But that’s not the only greener car alternative it’s pursuing. Earlier this month, on September 16, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it…

Meta has today unveiled an AI system that generates short videos based on text prompts. Make-A-Video lets you type in a string of words, like “A dog wearing a superhero outfit with a red cape flying through the sky,” and then generates a five-second clip that, while pretty accurate, has the aesthetics of a trippy…

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. Amazon has a new plan for its home robot Astro: to guard your life The news: Amazon announced yesterday that its home robot, Astro, will be getting a slew of major updates aimed…

Digital twins capture the physical look and expressions of real humans. Increasingly these replicas are showing up in the entertainment industry and beyond. It gives rise to some interesting opportunities as well as thorny questions. We speak to: Greg Cross, CEO and co-founder of Soul Machines Sounds from: 2PAC HOLOGRAM | LIVE Coachella Recording | High…

Amazon’s home robot, Astro, will be getting a slew of major updates aimed at further embedding it in homes—and in our daily lives, the firm announced on Wednesday. Broadly speaking, the new features offer more home monitoring. The capabilities include some standard fare: Astro will be able to watch pets and send a video feed…

In a recent trial, a bionic pancreas that automatically delivers insulin proved more effective than pumps or injections at lowering blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a serious condition that causes a person’s level of glucose, or sugar, to become too high because the pancreas can’t produce enough…

Business leaders are heading for composable infrastructures, putting aside large and bulky traditional systems. Demand for increased flexibility and scale is driven by rapidly advancing technology and rising customer expectations. Gartner likens composable infrastructures to a structure made of simple building blocks. This modular structure permits fast changes and responds quickly to new demand, traffic…

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 false rumor of a Chinese coup went viral If you’re on Twitter and follow news about China, you likely have heard a pretty wild rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was…

Starr Davis was smitten when she met a handsome stranger with flawless skin and a wide smile during a brief trip to Houston in March 2020. He was charming and persistent; she gave him her phone number and they started talking. Their whirlwind romance took a major turn when she told him that she was…

Hi, and welcome back to China Report! If you are on Twitter and follow news about China, you likely have heard a pretty wild rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was under house arrest and that there was about to be a major power grab in the country. First of all, let me be very…

In any enterprise, digital transformation is not only a technology transformation but enables business transformation itself, driving new products, solutions and innovations. Having an efficient data strategy is critical to any successful digital transformation but requires careful investment into both people and systems. “To achieve that goal, availability of good data, of the right data,…

Around the start of the year, Carnegie Mellon researchers used a robotic system to run dozens of experiments designed to generate electrolytes that could enable lithium-ion batteries to charge faster, addressing one of the major obstacles to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. The system of automated pumps, valves, and instruments, known as Clio, mixed…