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MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

Magazine | United States | Centre
www.technologyreview.com/

Oldest technology magazine, covering emerging technologies and their commercial and social impact.

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Discussions from MIT Technology Review

Technology

Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts.

If you’re following AI news, you’re probably getting whiplash. AI is a gold rush. AI is a bubble. AI is taking your job. AI can’t even read a clock. The 2026 AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, AI’s annual report card, comes out today and cuts through some of that noise. …

United States
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Technology

Why opinion on AI is so divided

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In an industry that doesn’t stand still, Stanford’s AI Index, an annual roundup of key results and trends, is a chance to take a breath. (It’s a marathon, not a sprint, after…

United States
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Technology

The Download: an exclusive Jeff VanderMeer story and AI models too scary to release

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. Constellations —Constellations is a short story by Jeff VanderMeer, the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling Southern Reach series. A spacecraft has crash-landed on a hostile planet. The only survivors…

United States
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Healthcare

What’s in a name? Moderna’s “vaccine” vs. “therapy” dilemma

Is it the Department of Defense or the Department of War? The Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America? A vaccine—or an “individualized neoantigen treatment”? That’s the Trump-era vocabulary paradox facing Moderna, the covid-19 shot maker whose plans for next-generation mRNA vaccines against flus and emerging pathogens have been dashed by vaccine skeptics in…

United States
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Technology

Desalination technology, by the numbers

When I started digging into desalination technology for a new story, I couldn’t help but obsess over the numbers. I’d known on some level that desalination—pulling salt out of seawater to produce fresh water—was an increasingly important technology, especially in water-stressed regions including the Middle East. But just how much some countries rely on desalination,…

Global
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Environment

Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over.

A rare warm spell in January melted enough snow to uncover Cornell University’s newest athletic field, built for field hockey. Months before, it was a meadow teeming with birds and bugs; now it’s more than an acre of synthetic turf roughly the color of the felt on a pool table, almost digital in its saturation.…

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Technology

The Download: AstroTurf wars and exponential AI growth

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. Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over. In 2001, Americans installed just over 7 million square meters of synthetic turf. By 2024, that number was 79 million square meters—enough to carpet all of Manhattan and then some. The…

United States
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Technology

Four things we’d need to put data centers in space

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 from the series here. In January, Elon Musk’s SpaceX filed an application with the US Federal Communications Commission to launch up to one million data centers into Earth’s orbit. The…

Global
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Business

AI is changing how small online sellers decide what to make

For years Mike McClary sold the Guardian LTE Flashlight, a heavy-duty black model, online through his small outdoor brand. The product, designed for brightness and durability, became one of his most popular items ever. Even after he stopped offering it around 2017, customers kept sending him emails asking where they could buy it. When McClary…

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Technology

The one piece of data that could actually shed light on your job and AI

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Within Silicon Valley’s orbit, an AI-fueled jobs apocalypse is spoken about as a given. The mood is so grim that a societal impacts researcher at Anthropic, responding Wednesday to a call for…

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Technology

The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home

When Zeus, a medical student living in a hilltop city in central Nigeria, returns to his studio apartment from a long day at the hospital, he turns on his ring light, straps his iPhone to his forehead, and starts recording himself. He raises his hands in front of him like a sleepwalker and puts a…

Nigeria
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