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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I tried lab-grown chicken at a Michelin-starred restaurant
Consumers are getting their first samplings of meat made in the lab.
Scientists just drafted an incredibly detailed map of the human brain
A massive suite of papers offers a high-res view of the human and non-human primate brain.
How to fix the internet
If we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms.
Minds of machines: The great AI consciousness conundrum
Philosophers, cognitive scientists, and engineers are grappling with what it would take for AI to become conscious.
Three people were gene-edited in an effort to cure their HIV. The result is unknown.
CRISPR is being used in an experimental effort to eliminate the virus that causes AIDS.
MIT Technology Review on Artificial Intelligence
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.
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 Future
Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready?
Digital clones of the people we love could forever change how we grieve.
«AI large language models (LLMs), which can ingest a few “prompt” sentences and spit out convincing text in response, promise to unlock even more powerful ways for humans to communicate with machines.»
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?
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 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
Eric Schmidt: This is how AI will transform the way science gets done
Science is about to become much more exciting—and that will affect us all, argues Google's former CEO.
«Moving on to the experimentation step, AI will be able to conduct experiments faster, cheaper, and at greater scale. For example, we can build AI-powered machines with hundreds of micropipettes running day and night to create samples at a rate no human could match. Instead of limiting themselves to just six experiments, scientists can use AI tools to run a thousand.»
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…
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.
Biotech labs are using AI inspired by DALL-E to invent new drugs
Two groups have announced powerful new generative models that can design new proteins on demand not seen in nature.
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.
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
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.
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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