This startup wants to fight growing global dengue outbreaks with drones
The world is grappling with dengue epidemics, with 100 to 400 million cases worldwide every year, an eightfold increase since 20 years ago, according to the World Health Organization. Much of this is driven by the warming climate, which allows mosquitos to thrive in more areas. A startup in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/21/1090033/startup-fight-dengue-drones/
The Download: the world’s most expensive drug, and New York City’s e-bike plan
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. There is a new most expensive drug in the world. Price tag: $4.25 million The news: There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn…
Why New York City is testing battery swapping for e-bikes
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This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Spend enough time in a city and you’ll get to know its unique soundscape. In New York City, it features the echoes of car stereos, the deep grumbles of garbage truck engines,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/21/1089976/battery-swapping-ebikes/
There is a new most expensive drug in the world. Price tag: $4.25 million
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime. Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) and was approved in the U.S. on Monday. Its maker, Orchard Therapeutics, said…
Building a more reliable supply chain
In 2021, when a massive container ship became wedged in the Suez Canal, you could almost hear the collective sigh of frustration around the globe. It was a here-we-go-again moment in a year full of supply chain hiccups. Every minute the ship remained stuck represented about $6.7 million in paralyzed global trade. The 12 months…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/20/1089970/building-a-more-reliable-supply-chain/
New York City’s plan to stop e-bike battery fires
Walk just a few blocks in New York City and you’ll likely spot an electric bike zipping by. The vehicles have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among delivery drivers, tens of thousands of whom weave through New York streets. But the e-bike influx has caused a wave of fires sparked by their batteries,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/20/1089960/battery-swap-ebike-fires/
The Download: AI drugs, and how AI is improving soccer tactics
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. A wave of drugs dreamed up by AI is on its way Alex Zhavoronkov has been messing around with artificial intelligence for more than a decade. In 2016, the programmer and physicist was…
A wave of drugs dreamed up by AI is on its way
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Alex Zhavoronkov has been messing around with artificial intelligence for more than a decade. In 2016, the programmer and physicist was using AI to rank people by looks and sort through pictures of cats. Now he says his company, Insilico Medicine, has created the first “true AI drug” that’s advanced to a test of whether…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/20/1089939/a-wave-of-drugs-dreamed-up-by-ai-is-on-its-way/
Chinese platforms are cracking down on influencers selling AI lessons
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. Over the last year, a few Chinese influencers have made millions of dollars peddling short video lessons on AI, profiting off people’s fears about the as-yet-unclear impact of the new technology on…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/20/1089950/ai-influencer-douyin-wechat-suspension/
Google DeepMind’s new AI assistant helps elite soccer coaches get even better
Soccer teams are always looking to get an edge over their rivals. Whether it’s studying players’ susceptibility to injury, or opponents’ tactics—top clubs look at reams of data to give them the best shot of winning. They might want to add a new AI assistant developed by Google DeepMind to their arsenal. It can suggest…
The Download: new AI regulations, and a running robot
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 AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change After three years, the AI Act, the EU’s new sweeping AI law, jumped through its final bureaucratic hoop last week when the…
The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. It’s official. After three years, the AI Act, the EU’s new sweeping AI law, jumped through its final bureaucratic hoop last week when the European Parliament voted to approve it. (You…
How AI taught Cassie the two-legged robot to run and jump
If you’ve watched Boston Dynamics’ slick videos of robots running, jumping and doing parkour, you might have the impression robots have learned to be amazingly agile. In fact, these robots are still coded by hand, and would struggle to deal with new obstacles they haven’t encountered before. However, a new method of teaching robots to…
The Download: legitimizing longevity science, and Harvard’s geoengineering U-turn
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 quest to legitimize longevity medicine On a bright chilly day last December, a crowd of doctors and scientists gathered at a research institute atop a hill in Novato, California. Their goal is…
The quest to legitimize longevity medicine
On a bright chilly day last December, a crowd of doctors and scientists gathered at a research institute atop a hill in Novato, California. It was the first time this particular group of healthy longevity specialists had met in person, and they had a lot to share. The group’s goal is to help people add…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/18/1089888/the-quest-to-legitimize-longevity-medicine/
This self-driving startup is using generative AI to predict traffic
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Self-driving company Waabi is using a generative AI model to help predict the movement of vehicles, it announced today. The new system, called Copilot4D, was trained on troves of data from lidar sensors, which use light to sense how far away objects are. If you prompt the model with a situation, like a driver recklessly…
The Download: Africa’s AI regulation push, and how to fight denge
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. Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now In Tanzania, farmers are using an AI-assisted app that works in their native language of Swahili to detect a devastating cassava disease before it spreads. In…
Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now
In the Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania, rural farmers are using an AI-assisted app called Nuru that works in their native language of Swahili to detect a devastating cassava disease before it spreads. In South Africa, computer scientists have built machine learning models to analyze the impact of racial segregation in housing. And in Nairobi, Kenya,…
Brazil is fighting dengue with bacteria-infected mosquitos
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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. As dengue cases continue to rise in Brazil, the country is facing a massive public health crisis. The viral disease, spread by mosquitoes, has sickened more…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/15/1089845/brazil-dengue-wolbachia-mosquitos/
The Download: AI’s gaming prowess, and calculating methane emissions
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. An AI that can play Goat Simulator is a step toward more useful machines The news: A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen…