The Best of MIT Technology Review
20+ most popular MIT Technology Review articles, as voted by our community.
Our in-depth reporting on innovation reveals and explains what’s really happening now to help you know what’s coming next. http://technologyreview.com/newsletters
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How Russia killed its tech industry
The invasion of Ukraine supercharged the decline of the country’s already struggling tech sector—and undercut its biggest success story, Yandex.
Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build
“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”
«GPT-4 knows hundreds of times more than any one person does. So maybe it’s actually got a much better learning algorithm than us»
AI might not steal your job, but it could change it
AI is already being used in the legal field. Is it really ready to be a lawyer?
Bacteria can be engineered to fight cancer in mice. Human trials are coming.
We’re crawling with microbes, and scientists want to use them to treat disease.
The complex math of counterfactuals could help Spotify pick your next favorite song
A new kind of machine-learning model is set to improve automated decision making in finance, health care, ad targeting, and more.
MIT Technology Review on Artificial Intelligence
Our weird behavior during the pandemic is screwing with AI models
Anyone looking for an illustration of how rapidly shopping habits changed when covid-19 hit needed only to glance at the top 10 search terms on Amazon in the week of April 12 to 18. In place of former…
ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.
New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.
MIT Technology Review on Biotech
A biotech startup is making cow-free ice cream. Would you eat it?
Perfect Day says it’s figured out how to make ice cream that’s creamy without any animal protein.
MIT Technology Review on China
China just announced a new social credit law. Here’s what it means.
The West has largely gotten China’s social credit system wrong. But draft legislation introduced in November offers a more accurate picture of the reality.
«In just one example, the province of Liaoning said in August that it’s exploring how to reward blood donation in the financial credit system.)»
Who needs democracy when you have data?
Here’s how China rules using data, AI, and internet surveillance.
MIT Technology Review on Deepfakes
Memers are making deepfakes, and things are getting weird
Grace Windheim had heard of deepfakes before. But she had never considered how to make one. It was a viral meme using the technology that led her to research the possibility—and discover that it was…
The year deepfakes went mainstream
In 2020, AI-synthetic media started moving away from the darker corners of the internet.
MIT Technology Review on Genetics
EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies
A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.
Has this scientist finally found the fountain of youth?
Editing the epigenome, which turns our genes on and off, could be the “elixir of life”.
MIT Technology Review on Machine Learning
Machine learning could vastly speed up the search for new metals
It’s a development that could be useful for applications from outer space to the deep sea.
Why Meta’s latest large language model only survived three days online
Galactica was supposed to help scientists. Instead, it mindlessly spat out biased and incorrect nonsense.
MIT Technology Review on Quantum Computing
Machine learning, meet quantum computing
A quantum version of the building block behind neural networks could be exponentially more powerful.
«The big advantage of quantum computing is that it allows an exponential increase in the number of dimensions it can process.»
A startup uses quantum computing to boost machine learning
If it fulfills its promise, quantum machine learning could transform AI.
MIT Technology Review on Science
AI has cracked a key mathematical puzzle for understanding our world
Unless you’re a physicist or an engineer, there really isn’t much reason for you to know about partial differential equations. I know. After years of poring over them in undergrad while studying…
AI is wrestling with a replication crisis
Last month Nature published a damning response written by 31 scientists to a study from Google Health that had appeared in the journal earlier this year. Google was describing successful trials of an…
MIT Technology Review on Techbio
Inside the billion-dollar meeting for the mega-rich who want to live forever
Hope, hype, and self-experimentation collided at an exclusive conference for ultra-rich investors who want to extend their lives past 100. I went along for the ride.
A bionic pancreas could solve one of the biggest challenges of diabetes
The device uses an algorithm to calculate a meal’s carbohydrates, then automatically releases insulin, taking those burdens off the patient.
MIT Technology Review on Technology
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2022
This list represents a glimpse into our collective future.
The coming war on the hidden algorithms that trap people in poverty
A growing group of lawyers are uncovering, navigating, and fighting the automated systems that deny the poor from housing, jobs, and basic services.
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Social media is polluting society. Moderation alone won’t fix the problem
Companies already have the systems in place that are needed to evaluate their deeper impacts on the social fabric.
«Facebook’s 2012 “emotional contagion” experiment, which showed that users’ affect (their mood as measured by their behavior on the platform) shifted measurably depending on which version of the product they were exposed to»
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2020
MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2020 outlines scientific discoveries, available now or in the very near future, that could most profoundly change people’s lives. Included this year: unhackable internet service; individual designer drugs; the proliferation of digital currency; anti-aging treatments; AI molecule searches for better medicines; satellite constellations boosting remote internet access; new uses for quantum computers, tiny, powerful AI apps for phones; bolstering Census privacy; and more accurate climate change forecasts.
Yann LeCun has a bold new vision for the future of AI
One of the godfathers of deep learning pulls together old ideas to sketch out a fresh path for AI, but raises as many questions as he answers.
Meta has built a massive new language AI—and it’s giving it away for free
Facebook’s parent company is inviting researchers to pore over and pick apart the flaws in its version of GPT-3
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.
The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.
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