MIT Technology Review

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…

Since the first ATM was installed in 1967 and New York’s Nasdaq exchange debuted digital trading in 1971, the financial services industry has been a frontrunner in technological innovation. But for decades, technology remained a back-office affair, servicing traders and executives who called the shots. Today, however, technology has been propelled to the top of…

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 US is launching a trial for blood tests that promise to catch cancers earlier The news: The US is launching a national trial to assess how effective tests designed to spot signs…

Most cancers can’t be reliably screened for before symptoms begin—tools like mammograms and pap smears are exceptions, not the rule. To improve detection, dozens of companies have designed single tests to spot signs of multiple kinds of cancer in blood drawn from a patient’s arm. Now, a national trial is preparing to launch in the…

It’s no secret that digital predators are lurking online in record numbers, exposing others to harmful language, images, videos, and activities. With 300 hours of user-generated content uploaded to the internet every minute, protecting unsuspecting users has become a mammoth task. According to Variety, user-generated content represents 39% of all time spent with media. So,…

If today’s metaverse were a shopping mall, you could visit any number of department stores, each with its own rich selection of products and experiences. You could pop into virtual platforms like Roblox to buy a new outfit for your avatar or stop by Decentraland to gauge the latest valuation of digital real estate. You…

Here’s a thought experiment: It’s just a few years from now, and you’re shopping for new sneakers. You get a mobile notification from your favorite retailer—a pair you’ve been eyeing is on sale. You promptly grab your VR glasses and step into a digital representation of the store, where you design your fully personalized shoes,…

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. I took an international trip with my frozen eggs to learn about the fertility industry Like me, my eggs were flying economy class, writes Anna Louie Sussman. My dog Stewie and I were…

Like me, my eggs were flying economy class. We—my dog Stewie and I—were in seat 8D, while 12 of my cryopreserved oocytes, four straws of three eggs each, had a window seat further back. They were ensconced in a cryogenic storage flask, known as a dewar, which was packed into a rolling metal suitcase the…

Roblox users will soon be able to give their avatars facial expressions that mimic the player’s own, the platform announced today. The update, announced today at the Roblox Developer Conference, will be available only to select creators on the platform for now, but is expected to be widely available to all Roblox users by early…

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 conservative Facebook groups are changing what books children read in school Conservative Facebook groups that rate and review children’s books are being used as a way to campaign for restricting certain books…

A new x-ray technique that works alongside a deep-learning algorithm to detect explosives in luggage could eventually catch potentially deadly tumors in humans. Concealing explosives inside electronics and other objects can make it difficult to detect them using conventional x-ray techniques. But the new method was able to detect explosives with 100% accuracy under test…

Conservative Facebook groups that rate and review children’s books are being used as a way to campaign for restricting certain books in school libraries or removing them altogether. It’s the latest development in a debate tearing up the US in recent weeks as schools open for the new year. In October 2021, Matt Krause, a…

The covid-19 pandemic is still not over. And while injected vaccines provide good protection from severe disease, they don’t stop us from catching the virus or spreading it to others. Vaccines that you inhale through the nose or mouth, on the other hand, potentially could. In the last week, regulatory bodies in both India and…

As more business, shopping, and banking is done online and from, well, anywhere, customers increasingly expect high-quality digital-first services that remove the need to go into a physical store or bank. “People were working from home, shopping from home, banking from home, and are more tech and digital savvy than ever,” says Mike Dargan, group…

If you were just looking at his LinkedIn page, you’d certainly think Mai Linzheng was a top-notch engineer. With a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua, China’s top university, and a master’s degree in semiconductor manufacturing from UCLA, Mai began his career at Intel and KBR, a space tech company, before ending up at SpaceX in 2013.…

In today’s digital economy, people buy things differently. Customers expect interactions with companies to be thoughtful, customized, curated, and most importantly, quick. These experiences drive—and are driven by— technology’s constant progress. However, the advance of technology can cause headaches for the businesses delivering these interactions, even with the most talented product and delivery teams. Customization…

A unique form of brain stimulation appears to boost people’s ability to remember new information—by mimicking the way our brains create memories. The “memory prosthesis,” which involves inserting an electrode deep into the brain, also seems to work in people with memory disorders—and is even more effective in people who had poor memory to begin…

Long before Alexander Cohen—or anyone else—had heard of the alpha, delta, or omicron variants of covid-19, he and his graduate school advisor Pamela Bjorkman were doing the research that might soon make it possible for a single vaccine to defeat the rapidly evolving virus—along with any other covid-19 variant that might arise in the future. …

It’s a Thursday afternoon, and I should be at work. Instead, I’m chasing my toddler around the small, disheveled garden behind my doctor’s office, along with around 15 other parents. We’re all here for the same reason—to get our young children vaccinated against polio. “We’re doing about 200 children today,” the nurse tells me. My…

In his first month in office, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order calling for the nation to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions across the economy by 2050. That move redefined the mandate of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, the research agency…

After years of requests, Twitter is finally introducing an edit button, giving its users the ability to change their tweets up to 30 minutes after they’ve been sent. But the feature is unlikely to solve any of the biggest problems facing the company—and in some cases, it could worsen them. The feature will initially be…

During the covid-19 pandemic, antibodies played a front-and-center role. We used home tests to look for them, and we took vaccines so our bodies would make more. Less attention was paid to B cells, the immune-system cells that actually make antibodies, churning out as many as 10,000 a second—and which, after an infection, can persist…

For a reporter who covers AI, one of the biggest stories this year has been the rise of large language models. These are AI models that produce text a human might have written—sometimes so convincingly they have tricked people into thinking they are sentient. These models’ power comes from troves of publicly available human-created text…

Ammonia might seem like an unlikely fuel to help cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Best known for its odor, the gas can be dangerous and toxic. But it could also play a key role in decarbonizing global shipping, providing an efficient way to store the energy needed to power large ships on long journeys. The American Bureau…