MIT Technology Review

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. Inside Charm Industrial’s big bet on corn stalks for carbon removal In recent weeks, a crew of staffers from a company called Charm Industrial have been working on the edge of Kansas corn…

Charm Industrial has gained attention for its unusual approach to storing away carbon dioxide: converting plant matter into bio-oil that it then pumps into deep wells and salt caverns. (See related story.) But the San Francisco startup is now exploring whether that oil could be used to cut emissions from iron and steelmaking as well,…

In recent weeks, a crew of staffers from a company called Charm Industrial have been working on the edge of Kansas corn fields, moving rolled bales of stalks, leaves, husks, and tassels up to a white semi-trailer. Inside, a contraption called a pyrolyzer uses high temperatures in the absence of oxygen to break down 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 dark secret behind those cute AI-generated animal images Another month, another flood of weird, wonderful and cute images generated by an artificial intelligence. In April, OpenAI showed off its new picture-making neural…

Another month, another flood of weird and wonderful images generated by an artificial intelligence. In April, OpenAI showed off its new picture-making neural network, DALL-E 2, which could produce remarkable high-res images of almost anything it was asked to. It outstripped the original DALL-E in almost every way. Now, just a few weeks later, Google…

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 walls are closing in on Clearview AI Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than $10 million by the UK’s data protection watchdog for collecting the faces of UK…

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined almost $10 million by the UK’s data protection watchdog for collecting the faces of UK citizens from the web and social media. The firm was also ordered to delete all of the data it holds on UK citizens. The move by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office…

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 hype around DeepMind’s new AI model misses what’s actually cool about it Earlier this month, DeepMind presented a new “generalist” AI model called Gato. The model can play the video game Atari, caption…

Earlier this month, DeepMind presented a new “generalist” AI model called Gato. The model can play Atari video games, caption images, chat, and stack blocks with a real robot arm, the Alphabet-owned AI lab announced. All in all, Gato can do 604 different tasks. But while Gato is undeniably fascinating, in the week since its…

The carbon impact of the world’s manufacturing industries has held the imagination of climate change activists for decades. The belching factory smokestack was one of the first salient targets of the decarbonization movement, beginning with the passage of the US Clean Air Act in 1970. Today, with ever-dire projections of the impact that global warming…

The world is rapidly moving from human-directed manufacturing using computerized assembly lines to largely automated smart factories that manufacture more efficiently using real-time data. Considered by many to be the fourth industrial revolution, or “Industry 4.0,” this transformation requires a bevy of technologies to deliver on its promise of ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC). From smart devices…

In a one-minute video that went viral in China in early May, three government workers in hazmat suits spray disinfectant all over someone’s home: inside the fridge, under the television, over the couch. On social media, Chinese people worried about whether their home would experience the same treatment if they were unlucky enough to catch…

Money is weird now. When we were settling in on the theme for our May/June issue, I decided to buy an NFT of an Olive Garden for my friend Katie, who really loves Olive Garden. It was also an attempt to try to better understand NFTs. Each of the “Non-Fungible Olive Gardens,” really just a…

Solar panels are basically synonymous with silicon. The material is used in about 95% of the panels in today’s market. But silicon solar cells are limited in how much energy they can harness from the sun, and they are still relatively expensive to make. For many, compounds called perovskites have long held promise as potentially…

After Ashley Diaz had her baby in early April, she faced a setback. She wasn’t producing enough breast milk. Her newborn son needed formula to supplement his nutrition. So she sent her mother to Target to stock up. She came back with only two boxes—the maximum allowed. Now, many of those store shelves are empty,…

Covid-19 is far more likely to kill you if you’re old. One reason is that aged immune systems struggle to cope with infections and recover from them. So why not try drugs that make bodies young again? That’s the bold idea now being explored in clinical trials around the world, which are testing drugs that…

One shiny premise of DeFi, or decentralized finance—a catch-all term for cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects related to the exchange of value—is that by spreading out and automating operations, and removing power from middlemen like banks, it can offer a system more resilient to global forces, able to survive events like war and economic downturns that…

Last month, a video went viral that showed a San Francisco police officer, at night, stopping a car that didn’t have its headlights on. Except that this was no ordinary car. As the cop approaches the vehicle, someone off-camera shouts, “Ain’t nobody in it!” The car, operated by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, is…

It’s a Wild West out there for artificial intelligence. AI applications are increasingly used to make important decisions about humans’ lives with little to no oversight or accountability. This can have devastating consequences: wrongful arrests, incorrect grades for students, and even financial ruin. Women, marginalized groups, and people of color often bear the brunt of…

Geo-political tensions and digital transformation—which continue to reshape production and assembly processes across various industries—have exposed vulnerabilities in the traditional “just-in-time” (JIT) supply-chain model in the last few years. Pioneered in Japan and popularized by Toyota in the 1970s, the JIT method aims to avoid excess inventory by ordering products and raw materials only when…

The supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy has been photographed for the first time, giving astronomers invaluable insight into how black holes interact with their surroundings. The object, known as Sagittarius A*, was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, the same global team that took the famous first-ever picture…

Google Search displays advertisements for stalkerware services that boast real-time monitoring of romantic partners and spouses, despite the company’s self-imposed ban on such ads. According to research by mobile security firm Certo Software and confirmed by MIT Technology Review, Google Search queries related to tracking partners such as a wife or girlfriend commonly return ads…

Just an hour before Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Russian government hackers targeted the American satellite company Viasat, officials from the US, EU, and UK said today. The operation resulted in an immediate and significant loss of communication in the earliest days of the war for the Ukrainian military, which relied on Viasat’s services for command…

A few years ago, Jamie Gravell needed help. She was working full time as a research assistant while finishing her dissertation, her son had just turned two, and the housework was piling up, even after she’d repeatedly asked her husband to do more. So she downloaded Cozi. It’s one example of an increasingly popular solution:…

Ubiquitous computing has triggered an avalanche of data that is beyond human processing capabilities. AI technologies have emerged as the only viable way to turn this data into information. As more computing produces more data, more computing power is needed to power AI. Next generation AI will soon look to planetary-scale computing systems to further…

There are 3 common challenges that organizations face while transforming AI aspirations into scalable and intelligent solutions. Get an insider’s view of use case scenarios that illustrate real business and functional value through a proven framework and process toward sustainable digital transformation. About the speaker Vishal Kapoor, Vice President, Data and AI, Kyndryl Vishal Kapoor…

The pig heart transplanted into an American patient earlier this year in a landmark operation carried a porcine virus that may have derailed the experiment and contributed to his death two months later, say transplant specialists. David Bennett Sr. was near death in January when he received a genetically edited pig heart in a pioneering…

Meta’s AI lab has created a massive new language model that shares both the remarkable abilities and the harmful flaws of OpenAI’s pioneering neural network GPT-3. And in an unprecedented move for Big Tech, it is giving it away to researchers—together with details about how it was built and trained. “We strongly believe that the…

In the quest to find a better way to store power for the grid, an Italian startup is turning to an unlikely source: carbon dioxide. The company, called Energy Dome, has built a test facility to put the greenhouse gas to work in energy storage. Renewable power has been growing worldwide, but sources like wind…

Research shows that businesses, governments, and consumers around the world are increasingly concerned about the environment. But despite our apparent concern, we seem to be doing very little about it. Per a recent report, material extraction and use has nearly quadrupled in the last 50 years, outpacing even population growth. The current economy is built…