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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.
A new way to build neural networks could make AI more understandable A tweak to the way artificial neurons work in neural networks could make AIs easier to decipher. Artificial neurons—the fundamental building blocks of deep neural networks—have survived almost unchanged for decades. While these networks give modern artificial intelligence its power, they are also inscrutable.  Existing artificial neurons, used in large language models like GPT4, work…
A new smart mask analyzes your breath to monitor your health Your breath can give away a lot about you. Each exhalation contains all sorts of compounds, including possible biomarkers for disease or lung conditions, that could give doctors a valuable insight into your health. Now a new smart mask, developed by a team at the California Institute of Technology, could help doctors check your breath…
A prosthetic leg that feels like a real body part When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. Now a new neural interface developed by MIT researchers and colleagues connects a bionic lower limb to nerve endings in the thigh, allowing it to be controlled by the…
Architecting cloud data resilience image Cloud has become a given for most organizations: according to PwC’s 2023 cloud business survey, 78% of companies have adopted cloud in most or all parts of the business. These companies have migrated on-premises systems to the cloud seeking faster time to market, greater scalability, cost savings, and improved collaboration. Yet while cloud adoption is…
The Download: protecting tech workers, and Canada’s wildfire emissions https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf1LtWGbsYLr8B70wxm9h4gxi6hjJ2KPaPCGmIkXlGltdDNLOS7KuwJC-6XfYkO6FNlZdy9I6gO-xYCiWANu-tMv4zXKb6DsFK92Nq1eoOHY9WLDCVlOgbMFX04VwC61X0DSVN32E5YixiMDdgqPmzkqDO7?key=3psKeS5VZzuCuMUXe-2kbw 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. Kamala Harris should stand with tech workers, not their bosses —Stephen McMurtry is a Google Software Engineer and Communications Chair of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Tangled up in the contest to be the…
Kamala Harris should stand with tech workers, not their bosses Tangled up in the contest to be the next US president, there is another battle brewing: Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Valley. In Donald Trump’s corner are venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, along with executives like Elon Musk. In the other are execs like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and SV Angel investing mogul…
Canada’s 2023 wildfires produced more emissions than fossil fuels in most countries This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Last year’s Canadian wildfires smashed records, burning about seven times more land in Canada’s forests than the annual average over the previous four decades. Eight firefighters were killed and 180,000 people displaced. …
The Download: introducing: the 125th Anniversary issue 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. Introducing: the 125th Anniversary issue With this issue, we wanted to celebrate our milestone as a publication without dwelling too much on our own past. Victory laps are for race cars, not magazines.…
From the publisher The magazine you now hold in your hands is 125 years old. Not this actual issue, of course, but the publication itself, which launched in 1899. Few other titles can claim this kind of heritage—the Atlantic, Harper’s, Audubon (which is also turning 125 this year), National Geographic, and Popular Science among them. MIT Technology Review…
Job title of the future: Weather maker Much of the western United States relies on winter snowpack to supply its rivers and reservoirs through the summer months. But with warming temperatures, less and less snow is falling—a recent study showed a 23% decline in annual snowpack since 1955. By some estimates, runoff from snowmelt in the western US could decrease by a…
AI’s growth needs the right interface If you took a walk in Hayes Valley, San Francisco’s epicenter of AI froth, and asked the first dude-bro you saw wearing a puffer vest about the future of the interface, he’d probably say something about the movie Her, about chatty virtual assistants that will help you do everything from organize your email to book…
A hundred years of curiosity image Any facet of Josef Eisinger’s remarkably wide-ranging century of life would be enough to shape the entire identity of another person. If you were to ask how his experience has intersected with history, for example, he might tell you about escaping the Nazis’ reign of terror in his native Austria by fleeing to Britain by…
The power of purpose-built cloud infrastructure image While AI is accelerating cloud adoption, organizations’ reasons for migrating their systems and applications to the cloud remain relatively consistent: a desire to lower capital expenditures, increase agility in a fast-paced business environment, and improve availability of business-critical resources. Flexera’s 2024 State of the Cloud Report underscores organizations’ consistent desire to make the most of…
The Download: living for longer, and sex in the age of AI https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4i6V6TkuxP-YMTmvLbHqdmz2XG46qgEmFWQ9enPgChbNit-8EUoDfrm_bRxsA87tBJVvynjnlvbBw3fNQrXpdv6a4RuXsVTMnugktFl1K5fRd7sXeumd8IqA2JCZ_jStVFZx4yN5Cf5iuIkQDEz5uOQZz?key=SzQj15uJid-dy0XVYwQTiA 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. Maybe you will be able to live past 122 How long can humans live? This is a good time to ask the question. The longevity scene is having a moment, thanks to a…
The Download: living for longer, and sex in the age of AI https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4i6V6TkuxP-YMTmvLbHqdmz2XG46qgEmFWQ9enPgChbNit-8EUoDfrm_bRxsA87tBJVvynjnlvbBw3fNQrXpdv6a4RuXsVTMnugktFl1K5fRd7sXeumd8IqA2JCZ_jStVFZx4yN5Cf5iuIkQDEz5uOQZz?key=SzQj15uJid-dy0XVYwQTiA 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. Maybe you will be able to live past 122 How long can humans live? This is a good time to ask the question. The longevity scene is having a moment, thanks to a…
Ray Kurzweil: Technology will let us fully realize our humanity By the end of this decade, AI will likely surpass humans at all cognitive tasks, igniting the scientific revolution that futurists have long imagined. Digital scientists will have perfect memory of every research paper ever published and think a million times faster than we can. Our plodding progress in fields like robotics, nanotechnology, and genomics…
What will AI mean for economic inequality? Prominent AI researchers expect the arrival of artificial general intelligence anywhere between “the next couple of years” and “possibly never.” At the same time, leading economists disagree about the potential impact of AI: Some anticipate a future of perpetually accelerating productivity, while others project more modest gains. But most experts agree that technological advancement, however…
A skeptic’s guide to humanoid-robot videos This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. We are living in “humanoid summer” right now, if you didn’t know. Or at least it feels that way to Ken Goldberg, a roboticist extraordinaire who leads research in the field at the University of…
Readying business for the age of AI image Rapid advancements in AI technology offer unprecedented opportunities to enhance business operations, customer and employee engagement, and decision-making. Executives are eager to see the potential of AI realized. Among 100 c-suite respondents polled in WNS Analytics’ “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI” report, 76% say they are already implementing or planning to implement generative…
Inside the long quest to advance Chinese writing technology image Every second of every day, someone is typing in Chinese. In a park in Hong Kong, at a desk in Taiwan, in the checkout line at a Family Mart in Shanghai, the automatic doors chiming a song each time they open. Though the mechanics look a little different from typing in English or French—people usually…