The Download: how China plans to regulate 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. Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now The way China regulates its tech industry can seem highly unpredictable. The government can celebrate the achievements of Chinese tech companies one…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/09/1091010/the-download-how-china-plans-to-regulate-ai/
Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now
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The way China regulates its tech industry can seem highly unpredictable. The government can celebrate the achievements of Chinese tech companies one day and then turn against them the next. But there are patterns in how China approaches regulating tech, argues Angela Huyue Zhang, a law professor at Hong Kong University and author of the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/09/1091004/china-tech-regulation-harsh-zhang/
Tackling AI risks: Your reputation is at stake
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Forget Skynet: One of the biggest risks of AI is your organization’s reputation. That means it’s time to put science-fiction catastrophizing to one side and begin thinking seriously about what AI actually means for us in our day-to-day work. This isn’t to advocate for navel-gazing at the expense of the bigger picture: It’s to urge…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/08/1090492/tackling-ai-risks-your-reputation-is-at-stake/
The Download: chatting with the politician behind the AI Act, and how to watch the eclipse
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 conversation with Dragoș Tudorache, the politician behind the AI Act Dragoș Tudorache is one of the most important players in European AI policy. He is one of the two lead negotiators of…
A conversation with Dragoș Tudorache, the politician behind the AI Act
Dragoș Tudorache is feeling pretty damn good. We’re sitting in a conference room in a chateau overlooking a lake outside Brussels, sipping glasses of cava. The Romanian liberal member of the European Parliament has spent the day hosting a conference on AI, defense and geopolitics attended by nearly 400 VIP guests. The day is almost…
The Download: our eclipse guide, and what you need to know about bird flu
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 safely watch and photograph the total solar eclipse On April 8, the moon will pass directly between Earth and the sun, creating a total solar eclipse across much of the United…
New bird flu infections: Here’s what you need to know
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 dairy worker in Texas tested positive for avian influenza this week. This new human case of bird flu—the second ever reported in the United…
How to safely watch and photograph the total solar eclipse
On April 8, the moon will pass directly between Earth and the sun, creating a total solar eclipse across much of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Although total solar eclipses occur somewhere in the world every 18 months or so, this one is unusual because tens of millions of people in North America will…
The Download: Harvard’s geoengineering failure, and extending nuclear plants’ lifetimes
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 hard lessons of Harvard’s failed geoengineering experiment In March 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would…
Why the lifetime of nuclear plants is getting longer
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Aging can be scary. As you get older, you might not be able to do everything you used to, and it can be hard to keep up with the changing times. Just…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/04/1090630/old-nuclear-plants/
The hard lessons of Harvard’s failed geoengineering experiment
In late March of 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would have been the first solar geoengineering experiment in the stratosphere. Instead, it became the focal point of a fierce public debate over whether it’s okay to research such…
The Download: fixing space weather-forecasting, and reopening a nuclear power plant
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 race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits As the number of satellites in space grows, and as we rely on them for increasing numbers of vital tasks on…
How to reopen a nuclear power plant
A shut-down nuclear power plant in Michigan could get a second life thanks to a $1.52 billion loan from the US Department of Energy. If successful, it will be the first time a shuttered nuclear power plant reopens in the US. Palisades Power Plant shut down on May 20, 2022, after 50 years of generating…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/03/1090603/how-to-reopen-a-nuclear-power-plant/
Threads is giving Taiwanese users a safe space to talk about politics
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. Like most reporters, I have accounts on every social media platform you can think of. But for the longest time, I was not on Threads, the rival to X (formerly Twitter) released…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/03/1090601/threads-taiwanese-users-talk-politics/
The race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits
Tzu-Wei Fang will always remember February 3, 2022. It was a Thursday just after Groundhog Day, and Fang, a physicist born in Taiwan, was analyzing satellite images of a cloud of charged particles that had erupted from the sun. The incoming cloud was a coronal mass ejection, or CME—essentially a massive burst of magnetized plasma…
Purpose-built AI builds better customer experiences
In the bygone era of contact centers, the customer experience was tethered to a singular channel—the phone call. The journey began with a pre-recorded message prompting the customer to press a number corresponding to their query. Today’s contact centers have evolved from the confines of just traditional phone calls to multiple channels from emails to…
The Download: inside chipmaking giant ASML, and why Taiwan loves Threads
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 ASML took over the chipmaking chessboard On a drab Monday February morning in California, at the drab San Jose Convention Center, attendees of the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference gathered to…
Why Threads is suddenly popular in Taiwan
For most people around the world, Meta’s text-based social network Threads is a platform that they haven’t thought of for months. But for Liu, a design professional in Taipei, it’s where she’s receiving unprecedented attention. “My casual posts often receive a large number of reposts now. It used to only happen every few months on…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/02/1090518/threads-taiwan-election-politics-popular/
Scaling customer experiences with data and AI
Today, interactions matter more than ever. According to data compiled by NICE, once a consumer makes a buying decision for a product or service, 80% of their decision to keep doing business with that brand hinges on the quality of their customer service experience, according to NICE research. Enter AI. “I think AI is becoming…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/01/1090076/scaling-customer-experiences-with-data-and-ai/
How ASML took over the chipmaking chessboard
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On a drab Monday morning in San Jose, California, at the drab San Jose Convention Center, attendees of the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference filed into the main ballroom until all the seats were taken and the crowd began to line the walls along the back and sides of the room. The convention brings…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/01/1090393/how-asml-took-over-the-chipmaking-chessboard/