MIT Technology Review

Generative adversarial networks, or GANs, are fueling creativity—and controversy. Here’s how they work.

The maker community helped me create everything from my bouquet to my cake toppers—and gave me an insight into the technology’s possibilities.

Optical chips have been tried before—but the rise of deep learning may offer an opportunity to succeed where others have failed.

The US economy could lose $221 billion annually by 2090 as people stop working as much or as hard.

And that’s just in the United States.

He Jiankui says he created twin girls whose genes were edited to make them resistant to HIV. Was that ethical? Or even legal?

A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.

A diet supplemented with red algae could lessen the huge amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by cows and sheep, if we can just figure out how to grow enough.

The delivery giant’s new machine-learning app aims to reroute packages away from snow and other trouble spots in its global network.

The main targets were foreign media websites, says a new service that automates censorship-tracking in countries governed by repressive regimes.

A startup says it has tackled a long-standing problem that has kept smart contracts from responding to actual events.

Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world.

The automaker believes sponsorship and ride-sharing will be key to making its nascent autonomous-car business take off.

A sensor that can spot the wind direction from miles away will let DARPA’s surveillance balloons hover at the very edge of space in one spot indefinitely.

Policies leading to more destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado would have a huge impact on climate change.

Debate over a new idea for stopping malaria is pitting some environmental groups against Bill Gates.

But are the country’s next-generation power lines a clean-power play or a global power move?

Kebotix is using AI and robotics to brainstorm—and then test—novel compounds.

The firm will pit its Bristlecone quantum processor against a classical supercomputer early next year and see which comes out on top.

At Ethereum’s annual developer conference, its founder tells us why his technology can only be truly decentralized if it stops depending on him.

With the growth in e-sports, more gamers are investing in some personal tutoring to help them progress. We paid a Fortnite coach to teach us his top tips.

An MIT experiment is handing a single person’s free will to the crowd to test how the digital hive mind works.

A manufacturing trick with magnetic fields produces a battery that may discharge fast enough to get an aircraft off the ground.

The fiber-optic cables carrying data across the internet are vulnerable to hacking. Two US initiatives aim to fix that by creating super-secure quantum transmissions.

The infamous “trolley problem” was put to millions of people in a global study, revealing how much ethics diverge across cultures.

One day, gene therapy may help with the rarest of diseases. Some parents aren’t waiting.

Are we designing inequality into our genes?

Amazon paid $1 billion for the security company. Our data analysis questions the claims that purchase was based on.

Your life span is written in your DNA, and we’re learning to read the code.

Your family and friends will be able to interact with a digital “you” that doles out advice—even when you’re gone.

But can any company afford to manufacture one-off medical care?

A new wave of chatbots are replacing physicians and providing frontline medical advice—but are they as good as the real thing?

Analyzing the way you type and scroll can reveal as much as a psychological test.

We’ve been using it to type for 144 years. Here’s why it works, and what it would take for us to give it up.

Even the best AI programs still make stupid mistakes. So DARPA is launching a competition to remedy the field’s most glaring flaw.

A simulation lets autonomous cars experience situations that are too dangerous to try in reality.

Lockheed Martin engineers wear the goggles to help them assemble the crew capsule Orion—without having to read thousands of pages of paper instructions.

In as little as 24 hours, Mapper will deliver a machine-readable map of any place on earth with public roads.

It should be possible to automatically identify dubious news sources—but we’ll need a lot more data.

The White House should worry less about China’s progress and invest heavily in artificial intelligence breakthroughs, according to Kai-Fu Lee.

A fresh diplomatic push could help put vital public services off limits to nation-state cyberattacks.

What kind of robot could handle this impossible-seeming cave mission?

Lime and other companies are gathering masses of location-based information that some cities are leveraging to improve their streets.

Facebook’s VR unit revealed the new Quest headset at its conference for developers, but I couldn’t try it from my couch.

Meet the man behind Alibaba’s gamble on emerging tech.

The flexible stamp can collect data that usually requires bulky, invasive equipment.

A popular anti-aging strategy keeps mice from getting senile.

A proposed state law would help bolster the security of internet-connected devices, but what’s really needed is federal action.

Wireless startup WiTricity wants cars to power up without human help and feed utilities energy during peak demand.

The furniture store’s design agency has dreamed up seven ways we might use autonomous vehicles if we don’t actually have to focus on driving.