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Our in-depth reporting on innovation reveals and explains what’s really happening now to help you know what’s coming next. RSS Feed.
The Download: preserving our digital lives, and X exits Brazil image 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 race to save our online lives from a digital dark age There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands…
The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age image There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands grabbing at the cool grass. It was taken in 2013, when she was almost one, on an aging Samsung digital camera. I originally stored it on a laptop before transferring it to a chunky…
The Download: what tomorrow holds for today’s babies, and replacing the brain https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcQbsX9c-iVW60rXFcImtY02ZPkoRk8ynK0WvOj4nP-RuFFDQgHacMPPscQR0yQoq7WZFgyNxCH9eQl3aFk85eRHuBM67GqDPQfWoe_QU81SR-k9R6-msBcfns7R4JlfVoHGYLk7CSmD8k_BpFJbNw_Ap43?key=XmtcYjMcqyPRDI6rTLINpg 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 the future holds for those born today Happy birthday, baby. You have been born into an era of intelligent machines. They have watched over you almost since your conception. They let your…
Escaping Spotify’s algorithm image Since the heyday of radio, records, cassette tapes, and MP3 players, the branding of sound has evolved from broad genres like rock and hip-hop to “paranormal dark cabaret afternoon” and “synth space,” and streaming has become the default. Radio DJs have been replaced by artificial intelligence, and the ritual of discovering something new is neatly…
What’s next for drones MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Drones have been a mainstay technology among militaries, hobbyists, and first responders alike for more than a decade, and in that time the range available has skyrocketed.…
This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little A US agency pursuing moonshot health breakthroughs has hired a researcher advocating an extremely radical plan for defeating death. His idea? Replace your body parts. All of them. Even your brain.  Jean Hébert, a new hire with the US Advanced Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), is expected to lead a major new initiative around “functional…
Aging hits us in our 40s and 60s. But well-being doesn’t have to fall off a cliff. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I came across research that suggests aging hits us in waves. You might feel like you’re on a slow, gradual decline, but, at the molecular level,…
The Download: facial recognition for migrant children, and Japan’s megaquake image 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. DHS plans to collect biometric data from migrant children “down to the infant” The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at…
What Japan’s “megaquake” warning really tells us MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. On August 8, at 16:42 local time, a magnitude-7.1 earthquake shook southern Japan. The temblor, originating off the shores of mainland island of Kyūshū, was felt…
The US government is still spending big on climate image This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Friday marks two years since the US signed the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. Now, I’m not usually one to track legislation birthdays. But this particular law is the exception,…
Happy birthday, baby! What the future holds for those born today image Happy birthday, baby. You have been born into an era of intelligent machines. They have watched over you almost since your conception. They let your parents listen in on your tiny heartbeat, track your gestation on an app, and post your sonogram on social media. Well before you were born, you were known to the…
DHS plans to collect biometric data from migrant children “down to the infant” The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at the border in a bid to improve facial recognition technology, MIT Technology Review can reveal. This includes children “down to the infant,” according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity…
The Download: a new AI risk database, and studying Jupiter’s mysterious moon image 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. A new public database lists all the ways AI could go wrong What’s new: Adopting AI can be fraught with danger. Systems could be biased, or parrot falsehoods, or even become addictive. And…
The Download: greener steel, and join us for EmTech 2024 image 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 the auto industry could steer the world toward green steel Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, as steel production is currently…
How the auto industry could steer the world toward green steel Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, since steel production largely relies on polluting fossil fuels. The automotive industry could be a key player in turning things around. Steel production is currently responsible for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a growing array…
The Download: how we’re using AI, and Trump’s campaign hack image 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. Here’s how people are actually using AI When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the…
Here’s how people are actually using AI This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the boring bits of work, and supercharge productivity and…
The Download: robotic table tennis, and future space habitats https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcuA67jQkt00jqE8S0jbIsNUuTDHexR0b7m5tUa5tCztH6ai32laLqXo7T3gj1brm3AsBqtRFdv0pVoGlxYp5kjI-nSDRJnyFbmiANUYcYjH4kHpTuWqxzAmYXljMdiP_LYMUZjsYn-dROmFW5winuap_Id?key=9W_gufbPRLuNMuxSqV6Rnw 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. Google DeepMind trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis What’s new: Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play table tennis at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has…
Google DeepMind trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis Do you fancy your chances of beating a robot at a game of table tennis? Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play the game at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has announced. It claims it’s the first time a robot has been taught to play a sport with humans at a…
Advancing to adaptive cloud image For many years now, cloud solutions have helped organizations streamline their operations, increase their scalability, and reduce costs. Yet, enterprise cloud investment has been fragmented, often lacking a coherent organization-wide approach. In fact, it’s not uncommon for various teams across an organization to have spun up their own cloud projects, adopting a wide variety of…