The nonprofit that lets girls build the world they want to see
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Emily Pilloton-Lam didn’t grow up in a particularly handy household, but she did spend hours and hours outside building treehouses out of logs and sticks: “I was more a spatial and physical thinker,” she says. “And making spaces and changing my environment was one of the earliest ways I began to make sense of the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1081400/girls-garage-nonprofit-arts-building-stem/
Ketamine is easier to prescribe than ever, and the FDA is not happy about it
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. A year or so ago, I talked with a man who said ketamine saved his life. He had been depressed, contemplating suicide, and then found a…
The Download: babies in space, and the FDA’s ketamine crackdown
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 startup wants to find out if humans can have babies in space Despite the burgeoning interest in deep space exploration and settlement, prompted in part by billionaires such as Elon Musk and…
This startup wants to find out if humans can have babies in space
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Egbert Edelbroek was acting as a sperm donor when he first wondered whether it’s possible to have babies in space. Curious about the various ways that donated sperm can be used, Edelbroek, a Dutch entrepreneur, began to speculate on whether in vitro fertilization technology was possible beyond Earth—or could even be improved by the conditions…
Enabling enterprise growth with data intelligence
Data — how it’s stored and managed — has become a key competitive differentiator. As global data continues to grow exponentially, organizations face many hurdles between piling up historical data, real-time data streams from IoT sensors, and building data-driven supply chains. Senior vice president of product engineering at Hitachi Vantara, Bharti Patel sees these challenges…
The Download: striking actors training AI, and breaking ‘unbreakable’ encryption
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 Meta and AI companies recruited striking actors to train AI Between July and September this year, actors in the US were invited to participate in an unusual research project, designed to capture…
Plastic is a climate change problem. There are ways to fix it.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Plastic is a huge problem. There, I found it: the most uncontroversial thing I could possibly say to start a newsletter. We’ve all seen the images that illustrate the scale of the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/19/1081856/plastic-climate/
Inside the quest for unbreakable encryption
When we check email, log in to our bank accounts, or exchange messages on Signal, our passwords and credentials are protected through encryption, a locking scheme that uses secrets to disguise our data. It works like a cyber padlock: with the right key someone can unlock the data. Without it, they’ll have to resort to…
Decarbonizing your data strategy
Posting just a six-second video on social media uses the same amount of power as boiling 22 gallons of water. This staggering statistic encapsulates just how intertwined data management is with sustainability. And as companies look to become data-driven and to gain insights from vast data streams, it’s also crucial to keep an eye on…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/18/1081657/decarbonizing-your-data-strategy/
The Download: how NYC tackles tough problems, and China’s AI standards
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 New York City is embracing low-tech solutions to hard problems It’s a reality of politics that is often overlooked: once a law is passed, it needs to evolve from an idea into…
China has a new plan for judging the safety of generative AI—and it’s packed with details
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Ever since the Chinese government passed a law on generative AI back in July, I’ve been wondering how exactly China’s censorship machine would adapt for the AI era. The content produced by…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/18/1081846/generative-ai-safety-censorship-china/
Why New York City is embracing low-tech solutions to hard problems
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Every Tuesday, Jessica Ramgoolam heads down to the New Amsterdam branch of the New York City Public Library, sets up a small folding table, and takes a seat with her laptop. She lays out piles of paper flyers, and it’s clear she has information to share, like a fortune teller awaiting a passing seeker. Just…
The Download: fixing the internet, and detecting AI consciousness
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 fix the internet We’re in a very strange moment for the internet. We all know it’s broken. But there’s a sense that things are about to change. The stranglehold that the…
Why it’ll be hard to tell if AI ever becomes conscious
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Many people in AI will be familiar with the story of the Mechanical Turk. It was a chess-playing machine built in 1770, and it was so good its opponents were tricked…
Using data, AI, and cloud to transform real estate
Many industries have reached an inflection point with hybrid and remote work, emerging advanced technologies like AI and cloud computing, and increased demands for sustainable frameworks to mitigate emissions. According to Sandeep Davé, chief digital and technology officer at global firm CBRE, the commercial real estate industry is no stranger to these changes and challenges.…
The Download: a new kind of IVF, and the AI consciousness debate
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 biotech CEO decided to take her own (fertility) medicine When Dina Radenkovic, CEO of Gameto, a startup engineering stem cells to craft a lightweight version of IVF, injected herself with a needle…
The fight over the future of encryption, explained
This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. On October 9, I moderated a panel on encryption, privacy policy, and human rights at the United Nations’s annual Internet Governance Forum. I shared the stage with…
This biotech CEO decided to take her own (fertility) medicine
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To be a great company founder, they say you should use your own product. Eat your own dog food. But what if you are running a biotech company developing an experimental fertility treatment? You might be excused. Not Dina Radenkovic, CEO of Gameto, a New York startup engineering stem cells to craft a lightweight version…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/16/1081670/gameto-biotech-ceo-fertility-experiment/
Minds of machines: The great AI consciousness conundrum
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David Chalmers was not expecting the invitation he received in September of last year. As a leading authority on consciousness, Chalmers regularly circles the world delivering talks at universities and academic meetings to rapt audiences of philosophers—the sort of people who might spend hours debating whether the world outside their own heads is real and…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/16/1081149/ai-consciousness-conundrum/
The Download: a new brain atlas, and using maths to make sense of nature
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. Scientists just drafted an incredibly detailed map of the human brain Scientists have unveiled the most compete atlas of the human brain ever created. The work, part of the National Institutes of Health…