MIT Technology Review

Google is creating AI-powered robots that navigate without human intervention—a prerequisite to being useful in the real world.

Thousands ordered masks that let them unlock their phones during outbreaks. But this viral art project doesn’t just work with surveillance technology—it works against it, too.

One of the 20th century’s foremost physicists died today.

Some of the smartest people I know are getting ready for a crisis—including me.

Adversarial attacks against the technique that powers game-playing AIs and could control self-driving cars shows it may be less robust than we thought.

But it restricts some of the tools we may need to rapidly cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Texas’s wind-powered digital gold rush might redraw the global map of the Bitcoin mining network.

NASA’s Artemis program is heralding a moon rush, and nobody—from SpaceX to Russia—wants to be left behind.

Super-cheap DNA sequencing could boost cancer screening, prenatal tests, and research into population genetics.

In recent years, advancements in socially-assistive robots have opened up a promising new way for more affordable and personalized care.

A fiction story about the future

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the elite of the elite gather to hatch plans for the future of the planet. I asked some of this year’s participants to tell me one thing they think will happen by 2030 that most people don’t realize.

Everywhere from business to medicine to the climate, forecasting the future is a complex and absolutely critical job. So how do you do it—and what comes next?

In a race to cure his daughter, a Google programmer enters the world of hyper-personalized drugs.

Predictions of any importance are never only about saying what will happen. Right or wrong, they also shape the course of events.

And wherever humans go, they’ll be taking satellite constellations with them to moon and Mars.

These are the big trends of the coming decades that need to be considered for any new technologies to be successful.

An introduction to our March/April 2020 special issue on prediction

Here’s a list of promising drugs being tried on people infected with the virus.

These canaries in the coal mines of AI would be signs that superintelligent robot overlords are approaching

The app is another entrant in the new age of intimate social media. Can it actually make you feel closer to someone?

The first results from the mission depict a complex Martian interior and geology, but raise new questions about the planet’s history.

It has fueled prosperity of the last 50 years. But the end is now in sight.

Without design fiction, critical hits like Black Mirror would look very different.

The robot mandala is a faster and—proponents argue, easier—way to create the traditional sand artwork used for Buddhist meditation.

The Democratic presidential candidate has adopted more favorable views of fracking, nuclear, and carbon removal than his more progressive rivals.

A regime known for iron-fisted control can’t keep all its secrets on the global internet.

Artificial intelligence won’t be very smart if computers don’t grasp cause and effect. That’s something even humans have trouble with.

A two inch piece of tape fooled the Tesla’s cameras and made the car quickly and mistakenly speed up.

The AI moonshot was founded in the spirit of transparency. This is the inside story of how competitive pressure eroded that idealism.

Synthetic versions of the deadly virus could help test treatments. But what are the risks when viruses can be synthetized from scratch?

A lack of government regulation isn’t just bad for consumers. It’s bad for the field, too.