MIT Technology Review

This week on Radio Corona, join us for a discussion about digital contact tracing initiatives with Gideon Lichfield, our editor-in-chief, Danny Weitzner of MIT’s CSAIL, and Bobbie Johnson, a Tech Review Senior Editor. Bobbie is part of the team at TR that has been reporting on contact tracing apps around the world. Danny has been working…

The news: Virgin Orbit failed in the first test of its LauncherOne rocket yesterday, after seven years of development and testing. The rocket was transported by a Boeing 747 and released over the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. It was supposed to fall for a few seconds, ignite, and then propel itself into…

The moonshot program to come up with a vaccine against covid-19 is advancing faster than anyone could have hoped. At least four experimental vaccines have been shown to protect monkeys, and three of those are already being given to brave human volunteers. The aim is a vaccine by January, and money is no object. On…

This report is part of “The global AI agenda,” a thought leadership program by MIT Technology Review Insights examining how organizations are using AI today and planning to do so in the future. Featuring a global survey of 1,004 AI experts conducted in January and February 2020, it explores AI adoption, leading use cases, benefits, and…

In a warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey, a handful of people stand around the base of a white box as big as a house. Every few seconds a plastic bin emerges from an opening in its sleek walls. Someone reaches in and grabs an item of lingerie or swimwear, and then the bin is gone…

Editor’s note 05/27: we’ll update this post as more information comes in, including the status of the launch and any postponements. Update 05/27, 4:20 p.m. Eastern: The launch has been scrubbed due to adverse weather conditions. The next window is set for Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. Update 05/27, 9:17 a.m. Eastern: Tropical Storm…

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are two of the most hyped drugs being studied as treatments for covid-19, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump’s repeated promotion during his public appearances. Trump told reporters this week he had been taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure. But a new study published Friday in The Lancet suggests not…

Brandon Moak felt as if a freight train had hit him. It was mid-March, and the cofounder and CTO of the autonomous- trucking startup Embark Trucks had been keeping tabs on the emergence of covid-19. As a shelter-in-place order went into effect throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, where Embark is based, Moak and his…

A day in the life of Salesforce workers will look very different when they return to the software company’s offices. The San Francisco–based business says all of its 49,000 employees can continue working from home for the rest of the year. But as regions relax stay-at-home rules and the company reopens in phases, employees who…

Kathleen M. Carley and her team at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Informed Democracy & Social Cybersecurity have been tracking bots and influence campaigns for a long time. Across US and foreign elections, natural disasters, and other politicized events, the level of bot involvement is normally between 10 and 20%, she says. But in a…

The news: North Dakota was one of the first American states to launch a coronavirus contact tracing app, in April. Now, several weeks into the process of reopening the state, the government in Bismarck says it will take advantage of the newly released Apple-Google exposure notification system—but that doing so will require it to run…

Studies on macaques suggest that infection with the coronavirus grants some immunity to catching it again—and that vaccines also seem to offer some protection. The questions: Does getting infected by the coronavirus make you immune? And can a vaccine do the same job? In two studies published today in Science, a group led by researchers at Harvard…

Apple and Google are releasing their much-anticipated “exposure notification” technology to help global health authorities track the coronavirus pandemic. Governments around the world can now use the technology in their own contact tracing apps, subject to approval by the two tech giants. Contact tracing—tracking down those who may have been exposed to an infectious person—is…

The news: Astronomers have made what are possibly the first ever observations of a planet in the process of being born. The newly released images are of a very young star system called AB Aurigae, about 520 light-years away. They show a massive disc of swirling gas and dust. The disc features a prominent twist…

You are feeling feverish and have a cough. Is it just a cold, or is it covid-19? That’s a question that’s going to be hanging over all of us, possibly for several years. Right now, getting tested for the coronavirus means going to a doctor or a drive-in clinic and potentially exposing other people, and…

Deep Tech is a new subscriber-only podcast that brings alive the people and ideas our editors and reporters are thinking about. Episodes are released every two weeks. We’re making this episode—like much of the rest of our coronavirus coverage—free to everyone. No sooner had the stay-at-home orders come down than mobile app developers around the…

Take a deep breath. Now, tell me … how are you feeling? There are no wrong answers, and no one else needs to know. Give your day a score out of 10 if you can’t think of the right words. Even better, write it down. Set a reminder to write down how you’re feeling every…

We are witnessing a new wave of technological progress with enormous potential to profoundly transform our societies. Together with globalization, climate change, demographic transformations, and the risk of pandemics such as covid-19, digital disruption is generating far-reaching changes in the global economy. Economic growth is almost exclusively a feature of industrial revolutions and is relatively…

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On Friday, May 15, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, announced that it will build a $12 billion plant in Arizona, to open by 2024. It expects the facility to employ roughly 1,600 people and indirectly generate thousands of other jobs. At first blush, the announcement looks like a victory…

The moon is a treasure trove of valuable resources. Gold, platinum, and many rare earth metals await extraction to be used in next-generation electronics. Non-radioactive helium-3 could one day power nuclear fusion reactors. But there’s one resource in particular that has excited scientists, rocket engineers, space agency officials, industry entrepreneurs—virtually anyone with a vested interest…

Drug maker Moderna has just announced encouraging interim results from the ongoing phase 1 trial for its experimental coronavirus vaccine. The early results suggest the vaccine has the potential to confer immunity against covid-19 in people. What is the vaccine and how does it work? Moderna specializes in vaccines designed to elicit an immune response…

Countries around the world have responded to the covid-19 coronavirus with lockdowns, restrictions, and technology solutions that use artificial intelligence to combat the virus. As the world begins to emerge from the pandemic, China is first to emerge from covid-19 imposed lockdowns thanks to cutting-edge technology, with autonomous vehicles and smart cities seeing an acceleration during this…

For years we’ve been using the phrase “gone viral” to describe something that becomes wildly popular on the internet. But it strikes a different note in the middle of a global pandemic, especially when the viral content is about an actual virus that is killing people. It’s even worse when you’re talking about “viral” content…

Dozens of states across the US are pinning their hopes on contact tracing to control the spread of the coronavirus and enable regions to reopen without sparking major resurgences of the outbreak. Alaska, California, Massachusetts, New York, and others are collectively hiring and training tens of thousands of people to interview infected patients, identify people…

Technology Review is running a project to monitor and observe the development and deployment of automated contact tracing apps aimed at curbing the spread of covid-19. Each weekday we review submissions, source information and update our database. This page lists changes, documentation, and reasoning where it is required. If you have a change to submit…

Brian Pokorny had heard of AI systems for call centers before. But as the IT director of Otsego County, New York, he assumed he couldn’t afford them. Then the pandemic hit, and the state governor ordered a 50% reduction of all government staff, forcing Pokorny to cut most of his call center employees. Meanwhile, inbound…

Covid-19 is primarily a respiratory infection that attacks the lungs, making it harder for patients to breathe and get enough oxygen to the rest of the body. Pneumonia and other respiratory conditions can quickly set in, eventually leading to death if the body cannot fight off the infection. But after over four months of cases,…

The story of blockchain market adoption closely resembles the path taken by other disruptive technologies: an initial industry explores what is possible, others give form and substance to what is plausible, and the marketplace helps define what is practical. It’s no longer a question of whether the technology will work—it does work. What’s at play…

The news: Thousands of droplets from the mouths of people who are talking loudly can stay in the air for between eight and 14 minutes before disappearing, according to a new study. The research, conducted by a team with the US National Institutes of Health and published in PNAS Wednesday, could have significant impact on…

Like most children in the US, Juana* hasn’t been to school in two months. Her mother, Dilma, left school after first grade and doesn’t speak English. Until recently, the family in Oakland, California, only had a very simple cell phone they used to make calls home to family in Guatemala. Without a computer to connect…

Some people die from covid-19, and others who are infected don’t even show symptoms. But scientists still don’t know why. Now consumer genomics company 23andMe is going to offer free genetic tests to 10,000 people who’ve been hospitalized with the disease, hoping to turn up genetic factors that could point to an answer. While it’s…

In this week’s episode of Radio Corona, we explore why the US has no idea how to manage all the testing data it’s collecting. Last week, reporter Neel Patel wrote about how the US’s decentralized public health system means there are no common standards for reporting testing data. That could create chaos in attempts to fight the pandemic, especially when it comes…

The news: In its latest Community Standards Enforcement Report, released today, Facebook detailed the updates it has made to its AI systems for detecting hate speech and disinformation. The tech giant says 88.8% of all the hate speech it removed this quarter was detected by AI, up from 80.2% in the previous quarter. The AI…

The amount of data generated by businesses today has reached unprecedented levels following successive waves of digitalization across products, services, operations, and supply chains, and as a result of ubiquitous cloud computing technology. Data volumes are set to increase further still, as 5G leads to exponential growth in connectivity and makes largescale IoT deployments a…

The news: Wuhan’s entire population of 11 million people will be tested for coronavirus after the city, where the pandemic started, discovered new infections for the first time since its lockdown was lifted. Each district in the city has been instructed to create a plan to test every resident within 10 days, according to a…

The country has the highest penetration of any automated contact tracing app in the world, but one senior figure says it “wasn’t a game changer.”

In the week of April 12-18, the top 10 search terms on Amazon.com were: toilet paper, face mask, hand sanitizer, paper towels, Lysol spray, Clorox wipes, mask, Lysol, masks for germ protection, and N95 mask. People weren’t just searching, they were buying too—and in bulk. The majority of people looking for masks ended up buying…

America is hiring an army of people to track down coronavirus cases. What’s the job like? How do people respond? And how stressful is it?

This weekend I’m going to break my isolation for the first time in two months. Aside from occasional socially distanced bike rides and walks in the park with a handful of trusted friends, I haven’t spent time with anyone, much less touched anyone beyond a hasty (and sleeved) elbow bump. But now I’ve agreed with…

The news: A 25-minute clip of an upcoming documentary featuring a well-known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist was viewed millions of times this week on social media, before Facebook and YouTube pledged to remove copies of it from their platforms. On Thursday, Facebook told reporters that the documentary violated its policies by promoting the potentially harmful claim…

Millions of Indian citizens are being forced to download the country’s tracking app—a line no other democracy has yet crossed in the fight against the coronavirus.

There's a deluge of apps that detect your covid-19 exposure, often with little transparency. Our Covid Tracing Tracker project will document them.

For our Covid Tracing Tracker project, we are sifting files, documents, and interviewing sources to monitor the status of automated contact tracing apps all around the world. But we’re also asking for your help to make the database better and more accurate. There are many countries worldwide, documentation and information in many languages, and a…

When the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was kicked off YouTube and Facebook in 2018, the lesson was supposed to be that deplatforming works. Without access to his millions of followers on mainstream social media, Jones became an online ghost, diminished and shouting his dangerous unfinished business to a much smaller audience. But some people…

Imagine you’re an epidemiologist or public health expert in the US during the current crisis. Senior elected officials have just contacted you to ask your advice on whether it’s safe to ease some lockdown restrictions. To prepare your answer, you will need to take a closer look at what the covid-19 testing data says. Getting…

On Friday, March 13, the management of the large hospital in Sacramento, California, where Kate works as a nurse anesthetist announced the cancellation of all elective surgeries. Kate and her husband had been pursuing fertility treatments for nearly a year. She had an appointment the following Monday at a private clinic to prepare for her…

Information firehose: The standard practice for teaching a machine-learning algorithm is to give it all the details at once. Say you’re building an image classification system to recognize different species of animals. You show it examples of each species and label them accordingly: “German shepherd” and “poodle” for dogs, for example. But when a parent…

Deep Tech is a new subscriber-only podcast that brings alive the people and ideas our editors and reporters are thinking about. Episodes are released every two weeks. We’re making this episode—like much of the rest of our coronavirus coverage—free to everyone. When it comes to the latest technologies for testing, treating, and preventing the spread…

On Saturday, after three hours of flirting and playing games, Katia Ameri got “engaged” to Ronak “Ro” Trivedi—and the whole thing was live-streamed on Zoom. “I thought that he was very sincere!” she told me on Tuesday. “And he just seemed like someone I would get along with in the real world.” The pair were taking…