This classic game is taking on climate change
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. There are two things I love to do at social gatherings: play board games and talk about climate change. Don’t I sound like someone you should invite to your next dinner party?…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/06/1093305/classic-game-climate-change-catan/
The Download: more energy-efficient AI, and the problem with QWERTY keyboards
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 a simple circuit could offer an alternative to energy-intensive GPUs On a table in his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, physicist Sam Dillavou has connected an array of breadboards via a…
How QWERTY keyboards show the English dominance of tech
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 ever thought about the miraculous fact that despite the myriad differences between languages, virtually everyone uses the same QWERTY keyboards? Many languages have more or fewer than 26 letters in…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/05/1093252/qwerty-keyboard-english-dominance-chinese/
How a simple circuit could offer an alternative to energy-intensive GPUs
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On a table in his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, physicist Sam Dillavou has connected an array of breadboards via a web of brightly colored wires. The setup looks like a DIY home electronics project—and not a particularly elegant one. But this unassuming assembly, which contains 32 variable resistors, can learn to sort data…
The Download: AI for good, and China’s shrinking internet
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. What I learned from the UN’s “AI for Good” summit —Melissa Heikkilä Last week, Geneva played host to the UN’s AI for Good Summit. The summit’s big focus was how AI can be…
What I learned from the UN’s “AI for Good” summit
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Greetings from Switzerland! I’ve just come back from Geneva, which last week hosted the UN’s AI for Good Summit, organized by the International Telecommunication Union. The summit’s big focus was how AI can…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/04/1093123/what-i-learned-from-the-uns-ai-for-good-summit/
The Download: MDMA for PTSD, and Boeing’s rearranged space flight
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. What’s next for MDMA MDMA has been banned in the United States for more than three decades. But now, this potent mind-altering drug is poised to become a badly needed therapy for PTSD.…
What’s next for MDMA
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. MDMA, sometimes called Molly or ecstasy, has been banned in the United States for more than three decades. Now this potent mind-altering drug is poised to become…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/03/1093056/whats-next-for-mdma/
The Download: Google’s AI Overviews nightmare, and improving search and rescue drones
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 Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong When Google announced it was rolling out its artificial intelligence-powered search feature earlier this month, the company promised that “Google will do the googling for you.”The…
Why are Google’s AI Overviews results so bad?
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more here. When Google announced it was rolling out its artificial intelligence-powered search feature earlier this month, the company promised that “Google will do the googling for you.” The new feature,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/31/1093019/why-are-googles-ai-overviews-results-so-bad/
AI-directed drones could help find lost hikers faster
If a hiker gets lost in the rugged Scottish Highlands, rescue teams sometimes send up a drone to search for clues of the individual’s route—trampled vegetation, dropped clothing, food wrappers. But with vast terrain to cover and limited battery life, picking the right area to search is critical. Traditionally, expert drone pilots use a combination…
The Download: the future of electroceuticals, and bigger EVs
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 messy quest to replace drugs with electricity In the early 2010s, electricity seemed poised for a hostile takeover of your doctor’s office. Research into how the nervous system—the highway that carries electrical…
Why bigger EVs aren’t always better
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. SUVs are taking over the world—larger vehicle models made up nearly half of new car sales globally in 2023, a new record for the segment. There are a lot of reasons to…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/30/1092967/why-bigger-evs-arent-always-better/
The messy quest to replace drugs with electricity
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In the early 2010s, electricity seemed poised for a hostile takeover of your doctor’s office. Research into how the nervous system controls the immune response was gaining traction. And that had opened the door to the possibility of hacking into the body’s circuitry and thereby controlling a host of chronic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma,…
Industry- and AI-focused cloud transformation
For years, cloud technology has demonstrated its ability to cut costs, improve efficiencies, and boost productivity. But today’s organizations are looking to cloud for more than simply operational gains. Faced with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape, a complex business environment, and rapid technological change, organizations are increasingly recognizing cloud’s potential to catalyze business transformation. Cloud can…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/29/1092342/industry-and-ai-focused-cloud-transformation/
AI-readiness for C-suite leaders
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Generative AI, like predictive AI before it, has rightly seized the attention of business executives. The technology has the potential to add trillions of dollars to annual global economic activity, and its adoption for business applications is expected to improve the top or bottom lines—or both—at many organizations. While generative AI offers an impressive and…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/29/1092235/ai-readiness-for-c-suite-leaders/
The Download: the minerals powering our economy, and Chinese companies’ identity crisis
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. Quartz, cobalt, and the waste we leave behind It is easy to convince ourselves that we now live in a dematerialized ethereal world, ruled by digital startups, artificial intelligence, and financial services. Yet…
The Download: autocorrect’s surprising origins, and how to pre-bunk electoral misinformation
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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. How the quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete —This is an excerpt from The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney, published on…
The quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete
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This is an excerpt from The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney, published on May 28 by The MIT Press. It has been lightly edited. ymiw2 klt4 pwyy1 wdy6 o1 dfb2 wdv2 fypw3 uet5 dm2 dlu1 … A young Chinese man sat down at his QWERTY keyboard and…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/27/1092876/type-chinese-computer-qwerty-keyboard/
The Download: head transplants, and filtering sounds with 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. That viral video showing a head transplant is a fake. But it might be real someday. An animated video posted this week has a voice-over that sounds like a late-night TV ad, but…