Even if the AI investment boom turns out to have been a bubble, the Big Tech companies that have cornered the cloud infrastructure market will emerge as strong as ever, or even stronger. That is why Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are in a league of their own, even compared to other giants like Meta a…
Even as a teenager, Laurie Stach ’06 says, she had a “crazy ambition to take on the world and solve problems.” At MIT, she realized she wasn’t the only one. “Adults always see these youth who are good at math and science and say, ‘You’re going to do great things—someday,’” says Stach. “Meanwhile, tr…
As a first-generation student from a small town, Gohar Khan ’21 had to navigate the college admissions process largely on his own. He founded his YouTube channel, Gohar’s Guide, to make things easier for other young people. Today, more than 10 million people follow Khan on social media for college a…
Petroleum-based adhesives are everywhere: bonding the wood and drywall in a construction project, holding together the joints of furniture, and even sticking labels to otherwise recyclable containers. “The labels on a container are held up with petroleum-based glue. And because of that, even though…
It’s a glorious day in Kirkland, Washington, an affluent Seattle suburb on the eastern shore of Lake Washington. The temperature is in the mid-80s, and the sky is incapable of being any more blue. The view from the Gates Ventures conference room overlooks the Carillon Point Marina, where a flotilla …
Puzzles and games have been central to AI development since the very beginning. Just as we humans like to test our smarts with crosswords or logic puzzles, developers can test how far models have advanced with a gaming gauntlet. The term “machine learning” was popularized in a 1959 article by the IB…
When my oldest child was born, I immediately set up Gmail and Twitter accounts in her name. I broadly announced her birth online and proceeded to plaster her photo across all sorts of platforms. In short, I began creating her digital footprint long before she could stand on her own two feet. Fast-f…
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. Introducing: the Kids issue If the desire to limit kids’ use of technology was once a subcurrent, it has become a raging flood. Countries around the world are ban…
EVs account for under 10% of total new-vehicle sales in the US, and the numbers are declining. From a climate perspective, that’s pretty dismal, especially because the transportation sector is the single biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the country. One thing that could help turn that …
Humanoid robots are having a moment in China. The popular machines are part of the country’s strategy to bring artificial intelligence into daily life. Embedding the technology into physical systems—an idea called embodied AI—was a key facet of China’s latest five-year plan, and companies here are a…
Counting the creatures in the world around us is critical for a raft of conservation efforts. It helps scientists gauge biodiversity, track migration, and spot invasive species. That census-taking, though, often requires humans to tabulate what they see, trap, or otherwise sense—a potentially labori…
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 to encourage smarter AI use in the classroom Chatbots took schools by surprise. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones that could magically answer …
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. Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundr…
This article is from Making AI Work, MIT Technology Review’s limited-run newsletter examining how to apply LLMs across industries. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Chatbots took many schools by surprise upon their release a few years ago. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones t…
Researchers have created a tiny chip that produces a stable “rainbow” of light capable of generating multiple high-frequency signals at once, potentially boosting the speed and capacity of future 6G networks. Its extreme precision could also make it valuable for quantum timing, navigation, radar, an…
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. AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost n…
Each day, an airline transports tens of thousands of passengers on hundreds of flights. Often these are not straightforward point-to-point routes, with passengers requiring multiple connections. The airline can consider potentially hundreds of variables to price each of these journeys: demand, seaso…
There’s a hunt for new sources of hydrogen, and the gas (or at least the right conditions to make it) could be hiding beneath our feet. Hydrogen can be used as a fuel in everything from large trucks to planes to steelmaking. It’s often hailed as a climate solution because when burned, it produces wa…
“Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” …
A company that plans to beam sunlight from space to Earth on demand might unintentionally brighten the night sky for many more people than intended, according to a new study. Later this year, the US company Reflect Orbital plans to launch a test satellite called Eärendil-1 that will extend an 18-by-…
When the biotech company Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it enthusiastically claimed in a press release that the molecule had been “discovered by” its generative AI platform. Insilico leads a pack of companies using AI to rapidly come up…
“Daddy?” Theo curled against my side in bed. “Where do words go when they die?” I’d orchestrated the bedtime routine flawlessly: bath (taken), teeth (brushed), potty (tinkled), books (two), song (one, poorly sung), and snuggle (his chin on my second rib). Now was the moment when our son’s eyelids we…
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. This company’s plans to deploy space mirrors could jeopardize the night sky for many A company that plans to beam sunlight from space to Earth on demand might uni…
When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they…
This summer has been a scorcher for much of the Northern Hemisphere. June and July marked the hottest two-month stretch in Europe since record-keeping began. The contiguous US endured its hottest month on record in July. South Korea saw its highest-ever recorded temperature. The heat isn’t over ye…
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 kids feel about AI, in their own words —Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara, the founding editors of Anyway, an independent print magazine for tweens and teens W…
The police-tech giant Flock is announcing today that it will change officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers, in an apparent effort to quell a growing backlash and win back contracts lost amid concerns about mass surveillance and police abuse. Several changes aim directly …
Quantum computing has alternated between breakthrough darling and overhyped promise in technology circles. Its powerful new capabilities come with a threat to break current cryptography, but for business leaders navigating the noise, the signal should be clear: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is a m…
Listen to the session or watch below The “censorship-industrial complex” is an idea that a network of government, tech, and research groups is collaborating to suppress conservative online speech. This was fodder for the right-wing information sphere for years—then it began making its way into US po…
This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice. That’s right: female animals that are genetically identical to males, excep…
Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild travel dreams into reality. Over two decades as co-owner of the luxury lifestyle firm Roman & Erica, he has orchestrated everything from the construction of a client’s superyacht to vacations in the Bahamas at a location so private that guests must sign an NDA. …
In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, just a short walk from her office. A researcher was there to unveil the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious project that aimed to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. As details emerged,…
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. Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash The police-tech giant Flock is changing officers’ access to its nationwide network of…
The AI firm Anthropic has developed a technique that has given it the clearest glimpse yet at what’s really going on inside large language models as they answer questions or carry out tasks. What they found ranges from the mundane to the unnerving. Researchers at the company built a tool called the …
Ties van der Meer doesn’t know how many siblings he has. The 47-year-old was conceived at a private fertility clinic in the Netherlands using sperm provided by an anonymous donor. After the Netherlands banned anonymous donation in 2004, the doctor who ran the clinic destroyed records that might have…
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. Anthropic found a hidden space where Claude puzzles over concepts The AI firm Anthropic has got the clearest glimpse yet at what’s really going on inside large la…
Anthony Agueda, a third-generation California dairy farmer, pulls a rake through a bed of dark, wet wood chips on his family’s land in Hickman, a tiny town in the state’s agricultural heartland. He reaches down with both hands and pulls up a clump of muck, turning it over to reveal a half-dozen squi…
With the rapid progress of AI capabilities and the move to agentic systems, organizations are expanding their use cases as the technology continues to grow. That constant evolution also introduces risk, leaving IT leaders to wonder which investments will prove valuable even six months into the futur…
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. Your family’s $300 stake in OpenAI Sam Altman’s proposal that Americans should share in the wealth created by AI is back in the spotlight, with reports that he is…
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. Why worms (and microbes) are catching on as a manure pollution solution Anthony Agueda, a third-generation California dairy farmer, pulls a rake through a bed of …
I was really looking forward to July 4, and not just because I love a poolside barbecue. This year the American holiday also marked a big symbolic deadline for US nuclear power. Last year the Trump administration set a goal to see three new microreactors achieve criticality, a technical milestone es…
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. Four nuclear reactors hit a big milestone in the US —Casey Crownhart I was really looking forward to July 4, and not just because I love a poolside barbecue. This…
Baek, a 35-year-old manager at the South Korean semiconductor titan SK Hynix, was enrolled in Sunoo, a matchmaking company based in Seoul, a year ago. In a move typical of anxious South Korean parents, his mother signed him up, hoping to find a good wife for her son. Lately, says Baek (who asked to …
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. South Korea’s hottest new bachelors are chip workers Baek, a 35-year-old manager at the South Korean semiconductor titan SK Hynix, was enrolled in a matchmaking c…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s oft-discussed promise that Americans will share in the wealth AI creates was in the news again last week. On Thursday, the Financial Times…
