MIT Technology Review

NASA is celebrating the success of humanity’s first test of a planetary defense system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to change its orbit. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, was intentionally smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. US Eastern time last night, spelling the end to a successful…

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm! Some technologists hope that one day we will develop a superintelligent AI system that people will be able to have conversations with. Ask it a question, and it will offer an answer that sounds like something composed by a human…

This episode, we’re doing something a little bit different. Join us as we take a trip to a Californian vineyard to learn about how it’s deploying sensors and other forms of AI. We meet: Dirk Heuvel, vice president of vineyard operations, McManis Family Vineyards Credits: This episode was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from…

After silicon chipmaker Broadcom acquired CA Technologies in 2018 and Symantec Enterprise in 2019, it decided to invest in hybrid cloud environments, which integrate and orchestrate public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises services. The CA and Symantec acquisitions onboarded vastly different tech stacks and operation workflows, with a variety of hosting scenarios: on-premises, colocation, and…

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. This startup’s AI is smart enough to drive different types of vehicles The news: Wayve, a driverless-car startup based in London, has made a machine-learning model that can drive two different types of…

In 2007, YouTube made a decision that created a career out of what was previously just a hobby: the company announced it would give over half of the revenue it earned running ads on videos to creators themselves. Fifteen years later, that creator cut—55%—supports the nearly 400,000 people in the US working 40-hour weeks as…

Wayve, a driverless-car startup based in London, has made a machine-learning model that can drive two different types of vehicle: a passenger car and a delivery van. It is the first time the same AI driver has learned to drive multiple vehicles. The news comes less than a year after Wayve showed that it could…

When Vladimir Putin declared the partial call-up of military reservists on September 21, in a desperate effort to try to turn his long and brutal war in Ukraine in Russia’s favor, he kicked off another, parallel battle: one to convince the Russian people of the merits and risks of conscription. And this one is being…

To the naked eye, organoids aren’t much to look at. They’re basically tiny blobs. Closer inspection reveals their true complexity: these lab-grown balls of cells can resemble miniature organs. So far, organoids have mostly been used for research. But teams have started transplanting them into animals with the hope of curing disease. Humans are next—albeit…

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 YouTube baker fighting back against deadly “craft hacks” Ann Reardon is probably the last person whose content you’d expect to be banned from YouTube. A former Australian youth worker and a mother…

Ann Reardon is probably the last person whose content you’d expect to be banned from YouTube. A former Australian youth worker and a mother of three, she has her own cookbook, has baked for the BBC, and once made a coin-size apple pie for two baby chicks. Since 2011 she’s been using her YouTube channel…

The trick to making a good AI-powered chatbot might be to have humans tell it how to behave—and force the model to back up its claims using the internet, according to a new paper by Alphabet-owned AI lab DeepMind. In a new non-peer-reviewed paper out today, the team unveils Sparrow, an AI chatbot that is…

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 world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech Despite President Biden’s assurances at Wednesday’s United Nations meeting that the US is not seeking a new cold war,…

Despite President Biden’s assurances at Wednesday’s United Nations meeting that the US is not seeking a new cold war, one is brewing between the world’s autocracies and democracies—and technology is fuelling it. Late last week, Iran, Turkey, Myanmar, and a handful of other countries took steps toward becoming full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization…

Immersing patients in virtual reality could help reduce the amount of local anesthetic needed for surgery, a new study has found. A team of researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston split 34 patients undergoing elective hand surgery into two equal-size groups. One group was given a VR headset and offered a range…

A mini-swarm’s worth of drones have been trained to work together to 3D-print some simple towers. One day, the method could help with challenging projects such as post-disaster construction or even repairs on buildings that are too high to access safely, the team behind it hopes. Inspired by the way bees or wasps construct large…

During the past two decades, the health care sector has undergone a rapid and far-reaching digital transformation. But digitalization has generated a new challenge: information overload. According to one estimate, the volume of health care-related data being generated digitally doubles every 73 days. Much of it is stored in discrete silos—such as digital imaging and…

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. We’ve only just begun to examine the racial disparities of long covid Liza Fisher is preparing for a busy day. In about an hour, her mother will drive her to a clinic, where…

The rolls of fiber-optic cable currently unwinding in a remote corner of northwest Montana represent a vital, long-overdue change for the region. Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs,…

Welcome to the very first China Report newsletter! I’m Zeyi Yang, and every Tuesday I’ll bring you news about China’s technology industry. This week, let’s unpack recent actions on China from the Biden administration. Lately, President Biden has been getting busy with executive orders that are, without naming China, very related to China. In the…

Liza Fisher is preparing for a busy day. In about an hour, her mother will drive her to a clinic, where she will receive IV fluids and iron treatments for her anemia. When the IV bag is empty, she’ll head to an adaptive gym, where she’ll don compression pants and take a class for people…

Retailers face an evolving landscape of fraud tactics each day. It’s why companies are increasingly turning to AI to try and catch threat patterns never seen before, and block attacks before they ever happen. While this approach lends itself to efficiency, it’s also one that relies on increasingly complex data profiles of consumers. In this…

Welcome to The Algorithm 2.0! I’m Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review’s senior reporter for AI. I’m so happy you’re here. Every week I will demystify the latest AI breakthroughs and cut through the hype. This week, I want to talk to you about some of the unforeseen consequences that might come from one of the hottest…

Nearly a decade after they emerged from science labs, AI and machine learning are firmly embedded in enterprise technology environments and are starting to generate value for many businesses. It is increasingly difficult to find organizations that have not at least explored AI use in their business in some way. In a survey, conducted by…

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. This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it. Those cool AI-generated images you’ve seen across the internet? There’s a good chance they are based on the works of Greg…

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm drives 70% of what people watch on the platform. That algorithm shapes the information billions of people consume, and YouTube has controls that purport to allow people to adjust what it shows them. But, a new study finds, those tools don’t do much. Instead, users have little power to keep unwanted videos—including…

You may have noticed it’s a little harder to get around in cyberspace. More six-digit authorization codes texted to your phone. More requests to confirm the name of your first pet or fourth-grade teacher. More boxes to check to “trust this device.” Overall, having to prove more often that you are you. It’s not your…

Those cool AI-generated images you’ve seen across the internet? There’s a good chance they are based on the works of Greg Rutkowski. Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who uses classical painting styles to create dreamy fantasy landscapes. He has made illustrations for games such as Sony’s Horizon Forbidden West, Ubisoft’s Anno, Dungeons & Dragons,…

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. An AI that can design new proteins could help unlock new cures and materials What’s happened?: A new AI tool could help researchers discover previously unknown proteins and design entirely new ones. When…

Hello, and welcome to this first edition of The Checkup! Every week I’ll be covering what I think are the most exciting, fascinating, and controversial developments in health, medical science, and biotech—and how they might help diagnose, treat, enhance, or even harm us. Thanks for joining me! (If you want to be among the first…

Climate change very likely intensified the South Asian monsoon that flooded Pakistan in recent weeks, killing more than 1,000 people and destroying nearly 2 million homes. That’s according to a new analysis by World Weather Attribution, a network of scientists who use climate models, weather observations, and other tools to determine whether global warming increased…

A new AI tool could help researchers discover previously unknown proteins and design entirely new ones. When harnessed, it could help unlock the development of more efficient vaccines, speed up research for the cure to cancer, or lead to completely new materials. Alphabet-owned AI lab DeepMind took the world by surprise in 2020 when it…

After crunching through thousands of chest x-rays and the clinical reports that accompany them, an AI has learned to spot diseases in those scans as accurately as a human radiologist. The majority of current diagnostic AI models are trained on scans labeled by humans, but that labeling is a time-consuming process. The new model, called…

Data governance has historically been a serious bottleneck for analytics. While managing data to ensure it complies with policies and regulations is important, these processes can also make it difficult to locate and access data. Businesses that govern data at scale, in real time, and in the cloud often find the situation even more complicated.…

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 Merge is here: Ethereum has switched to proof of stake What’s happened: “The Merge”, a major upgrade to the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, was finally completed early this morning after a six-year buildup.…

“The Merge”, a major upgrade to the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, was finally completed today after a six-year buildup. As of 2:43 ET this morning, Ethereum now uses proof of stake, a way to approve new transactions that promises to cut the blockchain’s energy requirements by 99.9% and usher in a new era for the second-largest…

There’s a new text-to-image AI in town. With ERNIE-ViLG, a new AI developed by the Chinese tech company Baidu, you can generate images that capture the cultural specificity of China. It also makes better anime art than DALL-E 2 or other Western image-making AIs. But there are many things—like Tiananmen Square, the country’s second-largest city…

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 are quantum-resistant algorithms—and why do we need them? Cryptographic algorithms are what keep us safe online, protecting our privacy and securing the transfer of information. But many experts fear that quantum computers…

Cryptographic algorithms are what keep us safe online, protecting our privacy and securing the transfer of information. But many experts fear that quantum computers could one day break these algorithms, leaving us open to attack from hackers and fraudsters. And those quantum computers may be ready sooner than many people think. That’s why there is…