The Download: OpenAI’s top scientist on AGI, and gene therapy to restore hearing
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. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, on his hopes and fears for the future of AI Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s cofounder and chief scientist, is no longer focusing on building the next generation of his…
How scientists are being squeezed to take sides in the conflict between Israel and Palestine
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. We don’t usually delve into war and politics here in The Checkup, but this week is an exception. The spreading human devastation of the Israel-Gaza…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/27/1082524/science-biology-israel-hamas-war/
Some deaf children in China can hear after gene treatment
Here’s the easy game Li Xincheng has been playing at home. Her mother says a few words. Then the six-year-old, nicknamed Yiyi, repeats what she heard. “Clouds, one by one, blossomed in the mountains,” says her mother, Qin Lixue, while covering her mouth so Yiyi can’t read her lips. “Clouds, one, one, blossomed in big…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/27/1082551/gene-treatment-deaf-children-hearing-china/
Exclusive: Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, on his hopes and fears for the future of AI
Ilya Sutskever, head bowed, is deep in thought. His arms are spread wide and his fingers are splayed on the tabletop like a concert pianist about to play his first notes. We sit in silence. I’ve come to meet Sutskever, OpenAI’s cofounder and chief scientist, in his company’s unmarked office building on an unremarkable street in…
The Download: gene-editing HIV, and how to destroy PFAS
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. Three people were gene-edited in an effort to cure their HIV. The result is unknown. The news: The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used to change the genes of human babies, to modify…
AI-powered 6G networks will reshape digital interactions
Sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks, underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI), are poised to combine communication and computing in a hyperconnected world of digital and physical experiences that will transform daily lives, experts predict. “In the past, we talked about internet of things, but with 6G, we talk about intelligent or smart internet of things,” says Qin…
How heat batteries promise a cleaner future in industrial manufacturing
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Welcome back to The Spark! I’m June Kim, a new fellow reporting on climate at Tech Review. Casey is off enjoying a well-deserved break, so this week I will be filling in…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/26/1082387/heat-batteries-the-spark/
The race to destroy PFAS, the forever chemicals
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The PFAS sample slides around the inside of the plastic jar when I swirl it, dark and murky, like thin maple syrup. For many, these toxic so-called “forever chemicals” amount to something of a specter, having crept into our lives—and bodies—quietly for more than half a century. In the environment, PFAS are clear and odorless.…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/26/1082292/the-race-to-destroy-pfas-the-forever-chemicals/
Three people were gene-edited in an effort to cure their HIV. The result is unknown.
The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used to change the genes of human babies, to modify animals, and to treat people with sickle-cell disease. Now scientists are attempting a new trick: using CRISPR to permanently cure people of HIV. In a remarkable experiment, a biotechnology company called Excision BioTherapeutics says it added the gene-editing tool…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/25/1082306/gene-editing-crispr-hiv-experiment/
The Download: introducing the Hard Problems issue
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 Hard Problems issue For all of history we’ve turned to technology, again and again, to help us solve our hardest problems. It has made virtually all of human knowledge available to…
Job titles of the future: carbon accountant
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His official title is vice president of regulated reporting solutions. But really, Billy Scherba is a carbon accountant. At Personifi, a platform for climate management, Scherba works with companies to measure, manage, and disclose their contributions to climate change. Carbon accountants help companies understand what data matters to their carbon footprint, how to collect that…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/25/1081566/carbon-accountant-climate-change-jobs-future/
Shuffling the deck
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When Andy Bloch ’91, SM ’92, graduated from MIT, he fully intended to use his degrees in electrical engineering. He got a job with a New York City startup, working on 3D stereo displays and other projects, until one day he got in an argument with his boss and was fired. It was an early…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/24/1080968/shuffling-the-deck/
The Download: poisoning generative AI, and heat-storing batteries
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 new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI What’s happening: A new tool lets artists make invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online…
How this Turing Award–winning researcher became a legendary academic advisor
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Every academic field has its superstars. But a rare few achieve superstardom not just by demonstrating individual excellence but also by consistently producing future superstars. A notable example of such a legendary doctoral advisor is the Princeton physicist John Archibald Wheeler. A dissertation was once written about his mentorship, and he advised Richard Feynman, Kip…
This new tool could give artists an edge over AI
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The artist-led backlash against AI is well underway. While plenty of people are still enjoying letting their imaginations run wild with popular text-to-image models like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion,…
This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082189/data-poisoning-artists-fight-generative-ai/
Seeking a successful path to core modernization
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082061/seeking-a-successful-path-to-core-modernization/
The power of green computing
When performing radiation therapy treatment, accuracy is key. Typically, the process of targeting cancer-affected areas for treatment is painstakingly done by hand. However, integrating a sustainably optimized AI tool into this process can improve accuracy in targeting cancerous regions, save health care workers time, and consume 20% less power to achieve these improved results. This…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1081969/the-power-of-green-computing/
The Download: teaching girls to build, and fixing government tech
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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 nonprofit that lets girls build the world they want to see Emily Pilloton-Lam didn’t grow up in a particularly handy household, but she did spend hours outside building treehouses out of logs…
How to make government technology better
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. Last week I published a story about government and technology that I spent the better part of this past year reporting, and I think all of you…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082123/how-to-make-government-technology-better/