The Download: how to break up with coal, and AI’s false climate promises 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 UK is done with coal. How’s the rest of the world doing? The UK is shutting down its final coal-fired power plant today, marking the end of an era for the country’s…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: how to break up with coal, and AI’s false climate promises

Plus: California's governor has vetoed the AI safety bill

The UK is done with coal. How’s the rest of the world doing? The UK is shutting down its final coal-fired power plant today, marking the end of an era for the country’s energy system. Once the backbone of the grid, coal has been steadily replaced with other, less polluting energy sources. Coal is the most emissions-intensive fuel powering the grid today, and moving away from it, even…

MIT Technology Review

The UK is done with coal. How’s the rest of the world doing?

The country’s final coal-fired power plant just shut down, marking a major milestone for the notoriously polluting fossil fuel.

Sorry, AI won’t “fix” climate change In an essay last week, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, argued that the accelerating capabilities of AI will usher in an idyllic “Intelligence Age,” unleashing “unimaginable” prosperity and “astounding triumphs” like “fixing the climate.” It’s a promise that no one is in a position to make—and one that, when it comes to the topic…

MIT Technology Review

Sorry, AI won’t “fix” climate change

OpenAI’s Sam Altman claims AI will deliver an "Intelligence Age," but tech breakthroughs alone can't solve global warming.

The Download: safer space travel, and generative AI in video games 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. Space travel is dangerous. Could genetic testing and gene editing make it safer? Long-distance space travel can wreak havoc on human health. There’s radiation and microgravity to contend with, as well as the…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: safer space travel, and generative AI in video games

Plus: Sam Altman says he isn't on course for a massive equity stake in OpenAI

Space travel is dangerous. Could genetic testing and gene editing make it safer? 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. Recently, global news has been pretty bleak. So this week, I’ve decided to focus my thoughts beyond Earth’s stratosphere and well into space. A couple of weeks ago,…

MIT Technology Review

Space travel is dangerous. Could genetic testing and gene editing make it safer?

Astronauts and commercial space travelers are subject to damaging radiation and microgravity, along with other potential injuries. We need better w...

The Download: a CRISPR patent battle, and the promise of tiny AI https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWkgyTaHSGnt0AiaoWIJoilupKbkZsbp64xeVbzOLOdqdSxDI6H3TyxP-1Logb9JeN4YlXMcAJtWIoc6HIaa4td1wIO_pk4VOuGuJs2jOYvFdQDIWpq_0VX0m_vhfNI8yR0wLi9DSIOpRlbsEhD6t-Zb7Q?key=gCNhILsdNB1wAjQR_ojbJw 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. Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it’s been common for lawyers to try to…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: a CRISPR patent battle, and the promise of tiny AI

Plus: OpenAI wants to become a for-profit

The Download: a CRISPR patent battle, and the promise of tiny AI https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWkgyTaHSGnt0AiaoWIJoilupKbkZsbp64xeVbzOLOdqdSxDI6H3TyxP-1Logb9JeN4YlXMcAJtWIoc6HIaa4td1wIO_pk4VOuGuJs2jOYvFdQDIWpq_0VX0m_vhfNI8yR0wLi9DSIOpRlbsEhD6t-Zb7Q?key=gCNhILsdNB1wAjQR_ojbJw 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. Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it’s been common for lawyers to try to…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: a CRISPR patent battle, and the promise of tiny AI

Plus: OpenAI wants to become a for-profit

Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Nuclear power is coming back to Three Mile Island. That nuclear power plant is typically associated with a very specific event. One of its reactors, Unit 2, suffered a partial meltdown in…

MIT Technology Review

Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island

A once-shuttered nuclear plant could soon return to the grid.

Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it. Humane Intelligence, an organization focused on evaluating AI systems, is launching a competition that challenges developers to create a computer vision model that can track hateful image-based propaganda online. In partnership with Nordic counterterrorism group Revontulet, the bounty program opens September 26, is open to anyone who wants to compete, and promises $10,000 in prizes…

MIT Technology Review

Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it.

A new competition promises $10,000 in prizes to anyone who can track hateful images online.

Roundtables: Putting AI’s Climate Impact Into Perspective Recorded on September 25, 2024 Putting AI’s Climate Impact Into Perspective Speakers: David Rotman, Editor-at-large, Melissa Heikkilä, Senior AI Reporter, and James Temple, Sr Editor for Energy The rise of AI comes with a growing carbon footprint and an increased demand for electricity. Analysts project that AI could drive up data centers’ energy consumption by 160% this…

MIT Technology Review

Roundtables: Putting AI’s Climate Impact Into Perspective

Watch the on-demand video of the Roundtables session, Putting AI’s Climate Impact Into Perspective. Available only to MIT Alumni and subscribers....

Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it’s been common for lawyers to try to overturn patents held by competitors by pointing out errors or inconsistencies. But now, in a surprise twist, the team that earned the Nobel Prize for developing CRISPR is asking to cancel two of their own…

MIT Technology Review

Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe

There’s a surprise twist in the battle to control genome editing.

A tiny new open-source AI model performs as well as powerful big ones The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2), a research nonprofit, is releasing a family of open-source multimodal language models, called Molmo, that it says perform as well as top proprietary models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.  The organization claims that its biggest Molmo model, which has 72 billion parameters, outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4o, which is estimated…

MIT Technology Review

A tiny new open-source AI model performs as well as powerful big ones

The results suggest that training models on less, but higher-quality, data can lower computing costs.

The Download: how to connect the US’s grids, and OpenAI’s new voice mode 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 one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the energy entrepreneur has worked…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: how to connect the US’s grids, and OpenAI’s new voice mode

Plus: Caroline Ellison has received a two-year prison sentence

Why one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the Houston-based energy entrepreneur has worked to develop long-haul transmission lines to carry wind power across the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southwest, delivering clean electricity to cities like Albuquerque, Chicago, and Memphis. But so far, he has little…

MIT Technology Review

Why one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids

Michael Skelly's last transmission company failed. But has the US finally caught up with his vision?

OpenAI released its advanced voice mode to more people. Here’s how to get it. OpenAI is broadening access to Advanced Voice Mode, a feature of ChatGPT that allows you to speak more naturally with the AI model. It allows you to interrupt its responses mid-sentence, and can also sense and interpret your emotions based on your tone of voice and adjust its responses accordingly.  These features were teased back…

MIT Technology Review

OpenAI released its advanced voice mode to more people. Here’s how to get it.

The company says the updated version responds to your emotions and tone of voice and allows you to interrupt it midsentence.

An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood Every day across Hollywood, scores of film school graduates and production assistants work as script readers. Their job is to find the diamonds in the rough from the 50,000 or so screenplays pitched each year and flag any worth pursuing further. Each script runs anywhere from 100 to 150 pages, and it can take half…

MIT Technology Review

An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood

Callaia provides analysis and feedback on scripts in seconds. But, as AI models are trained to be, it might be too nice to be truly useful.

An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood Every day across Hollywood, scores of film school graduates and production assistants work as script readers. Their job is to find the diamonds in the rough from the 50,000 or so screenplays pitched each year and flag any worth pursuing further. Each script runs anywhere from 100 to 150 pages, and it can take half…

MIT Technology Review

An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood

Callaia provides analysis and feedback on scripts in seconds. But, as AI models are trained to be, it might be too nice to be truly useful.

The Download: AI lessons for the US election, and our climate tech list is coming 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 US can learn from the role of AI in other elections When the generative AI boom kicked off, one of the biggest concerns was that hyperrealistic deepfakes could be used to…

MIT Technology Review

The Download: AI lessons for the US election, and our climate tech list is coming

Plus: the US is considering banning China and Russia-made tech from connected cars

Coming soon: Our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch MIT Technology Review set out last year to recognize 15 companies from around the world that demonstrated they have a real shot at meaningfully driving down greenhouse-gas emissions and safeguarding society from the worst impacts of climate change. We’re excited to announce that we took up the task again this year and will publish our…

MIT Technology Review

Coming soon: Our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch

The new global list will feature firms tackling the climate pollution in agriculture, mining, transportation, and more.

What the US can learn from the role of AI in other elections This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. That’s the approach bad state actors seem to have taken when it comes to how they mess with elections around the world. When the…

MIT Technology Review

What the US can learn from the role of AI in other elections

The biggest risk with deepfakes is not disinformation.