5 things we didn’t put on our 2024 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies
No one can predict the future, but here at MIT Technology Review we spend much of our time thinking about what it might hold. One thing we know is that it’s especially hard to make predictions about technology. Most emerging technologies fizzle or flame out. Some start out as consumer devices but wind up finding…
The Download: inside the first CRISPR treatment, and smarter robots
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 lucky break behind the first CRISPR treatment The world’s first commercial gene-editing treatment is set to start changing the lives of people with sickle-cell disease. It’s called Casgevy, and it was approved…
Here’s a sneak peek at what made our 2024 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies
Our new 2024 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies won’t come out until January. But I recently gave attendees at EmTech MIT a sneak peek at one item that made the list—weight-loss drugs. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, then joined me on stage…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/08/1084724/sneak-peek-2024-10-breakthrough-technologies/
Medical microrobots that can travel inside your body are (still) on their way
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. The human body is a labyrinth of vessels and tubing, full of barriers that are difficult to break through. That poses a serious hurdle for doctors.…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/08/1084696/medical-microrobots-are-still-on-their-way/
These robots know when to ask for help
There are two bowls on the kitchen table: one made of plastic, the other metal. You ask the robot to pick up the bowl and put it in the microwave. Which one will it choose? A human might ask for clarification, but given the vague command, the robot may place the metal bowl in the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/08/1084672/these-robots-know-when-to-ask-for-help/
The lucky break behind the first CRISPR treatment
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The world’s first commercial gene-editing treatment is set to start changing the lives of people with sickle-cell disease. It’s called Casgevy, and it was approved last month in the UK. US approval is pending this week. The treatment, which will be sold in the US by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, employs CRISPR, the Nobel-winning molecular scissors that have…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/07/1084629/lucky-break-crispr-vertex/
The Download: Google’s Gemini is here, and Sundar Pichai talks AI
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’s new Gemini model looks amazing—but could signal peak AI hype Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind’s long-rumored response to OpenAI’s GPT-4, has been building for months. Now, the company has finally revealed…
How carbon removal technology is like a time machine
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. If you could go back in time, what would you change about your life, or the world? The idea of giving myself some much-needed advice is appealing (don’t cut your own bangs…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/07/1084606/carbon-removal-technology-time-machine/
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Gemini and the coming age of AI
Google released the first phase of its next-generation AI model, Gemini, today. Gemini reflects years of efforts from inside Google, overseen and driven by its CEO Sundar Pichai. (You can read all about Gemini in our report from Melissa Heikkila and Will Douglas Heaven here.) Pichai, who previously oversaw Chrome and Android, is famously product-obsessed.…
Google DeepMind’s new Gemini model looks amazing—but could signal peak AI hype
Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind’s long-rumored response to OpenAI’s GPT-4, has been building for months. Today the company finally revealed what it has been working on in secret all this time. Was the hype justified? Yes—and no. Gemini is Google’s biggest AI launch yet, its push to take on competitors OpenAI and Microsoft in the…
The Download: AI coding assistants, and China’s app disputes
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. Millions of coders are now using AI assistants. How will that change software? Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told…
How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made
Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told his students to throw out the course materials he’d given them. Instead of working with Python, one of the most popular entry-level programming languages, the students would now be using Rust, a language that was…
Chinese apps are letting public juries settle customer disputes
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. Have you ordered food delivery lately? If you have, you probably know that particular feeling of frustration when you have to wait too long for your order or, when you finally receive…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/06/1084444/alibaba-meituan-public-jury-experiment/
The Download: Big Tech’s AI stranglehold, and gene-editing treatments
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. Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech —By Amba Kak, Sarah Myers West and Meredith Whittaker, members of the AI Now Institute Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board…
AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. World leaders are currently in Dubai for the UN COP28 climate talks. As 2023 is set to become the hottest year on record, this year’s meeting is a moment of reckoning for oil…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084417/ais-carbon-footprint-is-bigger-than-you-think/
Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech
Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the industry around generative AI was a vibrant competitive ecosystem. But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084393/make-no-mistake-ai-is-owned-by-big-tech/
Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison. Worldwide, those emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/04/1084381/fossil-fuel-emissions-carbon-removal-efforts/
Capitalizing on machine learning with collaborative, structured enterprise tooling teams
Advances in machine learning (ML) and AI are emerging on a near-daily basis—meaning that industry, academia, government, and society writ large are evolving their understanding of the associated risks and capabilities in real time. As enterprises seek to capitalize on the potential of AI, it’s critical that they develop, maintain, and advance state-of-the-art ML practices…
I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.
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On a picturesque fall day a few years ago, I opened the mailbox and took out an envelope as thick as a Bible that would change my life. The package was from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and it contained a consent form to participate in a clinical trial for a new gene-editing drug to treat sickle cell…
The Download: cleantech 2.0, and ‘jury duty’ on Chinese delivery apps
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. Climate tech is back—and this time, it can’t afford to fail A cleantech bust in 2011 left almost all the renewable-energy startups in the US either dead or struggling to survive. Over a…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/04/1084321/the-download-cleantech-jury-duty-chinese-apps/