The US government is still spending big on climate
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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. Friday marks two years since the US signed the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. Now, I’m not usually one to track legislation birthdays. But this particular law is the exception,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/15/1096648/inflation-reduction-act-two-years/
Happy birthday, baby! What the future holds for those born today
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Happy birthday, baby. You have been born into an era of intelligent machines. They have watched over you almost since your conception. They let your parents listen in on your tiny heartbeat, track your gestation on an app, and post your sonogram on social media. Well before you were born, you were known to the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/15/1096178/125-years-predictions-babies-digital-agents/
DHS plans to collect biometric data from migrant children “down to the infant”
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at the border in a bid to improve facial recognition technology, MIT Technology Review can reveal. This includes children “down to the infant,” according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity…
The Download: a new AI risk database, and studying Jupiter’s mysterious moon
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 new public database lists all the ways AI could go wrong What’s new: Adopting AI can be fraught with danger. Systems could be biased, or parrot falsehoods, or even become addictive. And…
The Download: greener steel, and join us for EmTech 2024
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 auto industry could steer the world toward green steel Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, as steel production is currently…
How the auto industry could steer the world toward green steel
Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, since steel production largely relies on polluting fossil fuels. The automotive industry could be a key player in turning things around. Steel production is currently responsible for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a growing array…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/13/1096387/auto-industry-green-steel/
The Download: how we’re using AI, and Trump’s campaign hack
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. Here’s how people are actually using AI When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the…
Here’s how people are actually using AI
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the boring bits of work, and supercharge productivity and…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/12/1096202/how-people-actually-using-ai/
The Download: robotic table tennis, and future space habitats
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 trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis What’s new: Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play table tennis at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has…
Google DeepMind trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis
Do you fancy your chances of beating a robot at a game of table tennis? Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play the game at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has announced. It claims it’s the first time a robot has been taught to play a sport with humans at a…
Advancing to adaptive cloud
For many years now, cloud solutions have helped organizations streamline their operations, increase their scalability, and reduce costs. Yet, enterprise cloud investment has been fragmented, often lacking a coherent organization-wide approach. In fact, it’s not uncommon for various teams across an organization to have spun up their own cloud projects, adopting a wide variety of…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/08/1095619/advancing-to-adaptive-cloud/
The Download: AC habits, and Starliner’s stranded astronauts
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. Your AC habits aren’t unique. Here’s why that’s a problem. —Casey Crownhart When I get home in the evening on a sweltering summer day, the first thing I do is crank up my…
Your AC habits aren’t unique. Here’s why that’s a problem.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. When I get home in the evening on a sweltering summer day, the first thing I do is beeline to my window air-conditioning units and crank them up. People across the city,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/08/1095928/air-conditioning-peak-demand/
The Download: AIDS denialism, and AI safety mechanisms
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 covid conspiracies led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His…
What to know about China’s push for hydrogen-powered transportation
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. There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of hydrogen-powered vehicles but never seen one. Over 18,000 are in the US, almost exclusively in California. On the outside they look just like traditional vehicles,…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/07/1095849/china-hydrogen-truck-bike-coal/
How covid conspiracies led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism
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Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the former evolutionary biology professor turned contrarian podcaster Bret Weinstein, agreed with him: The “evidence” that AIDS is not caused by HIV is, he said, “surprisingly compelling.”…
AI “godfather” Yoshua Bengio has joined a UK project to prevent AI catastrophes
Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award winner who is considered one of the “godfathers” of modern AI, is throwing his weight behind a project funded by the UK government to embed safety mechanisms into AI systems. The project, called Safeguarded AI, aims to build an AI system that can check whether other AI systems deployed in…
The Download: climate-friendlier air conditioners, and fighting explicit deepfakes
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. Your future air conditioner might act like a battery Cooling represents 20% of global electricity demand in buildings, a share that’s expected to rise as the planet warms and more of the world…
Your future air conditioner might act like a battery
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As temperatures climb on hot days, many of us are quick to crank up our fans or air conditioners. These cooling systems can be a major stress on electrical grids, which has inspired some inventors to create versions that can store energy as well as use it. Cooling represents 20% of global electricity demand in…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/06/1095707/air-conditioner-battery/
Google is finally taking action to curb non-consensual deepfakes
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 the Taylor Swifts of the world that are going to save us. In January, nude deepfakes of Taylor Swift went viral on X, which caused public outrage. Nonconsensual explicit deepfakes are one…