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MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

Magazine | United States | Centre

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

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Total Votes
418
Articles

Discussions from MIT Technology Review

Technology

AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all

The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight. LLMs can already write code, generate synthetic data for training, and optimize the computer chips they run on. Forecasts of explosive AI progress predict that what researchers call recursive self-improvement is on the horizon. …

Global
Technology

We still don’t know how people are really using AI

AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using products like Claude and ChatGPT, but they only release the data they want us to see, AI researchers say. “There is no independent source to corroborate it,” says Anka Reuel, a Computer Science PhD candidate at the Stanford Trustworthy AI Research…

United States
Technology

The Download: how people really use AI, and Flock’s design choices

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. We still don’t know how people are really using AI AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using their products. But they only release the…

Global
Environment

How much hydrogen awaits us underground?

In the 1990s, Barbara Sherwood Lollar descended into the Kidd Creek mine in northern Ontario, which cuts more than three kilometers into the ancient root of North America. There her team of geochemists found water that had been confined underground for more than a billion years. This ancient brine turned out to be a habitat…

Canada
Technology

What Flock’s defenders are missing

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Flock, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, announced some changes to its platform last Thursday. The updates are meant to prevent…

United States
Technology

Cloning could be used to save species—or make human “organ sacks”

This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice. That’s right: female animals that are genetically identical to males, except for the missing Y chromosome.…

United States
Healthcare

This scientist is helping build a missing map of childhood

In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, just a short walk from her office. A researcher was there to unveil the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious project that aimed to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. As details emerged, she discovered that the…

United States
Business

Job titles of the future: Space travel agent

Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild travel dreams into reality. Over two decades as co-owner of the luxury lifestyle firm Roman & Erica, he has orchestrated everything from the construction of a client’s superyacht to vacations in the Bahamas at a location so private that guests must sign an NDA. The experiences earned him “the…

Global
Technology

The Download: Flock’s new rules, cloning’s future, and children’s cells

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. Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash The police-tech giant Flock is changing officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers. The move comes…

United States
Technology

Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash

The police-tech giant Flock is announcing today that it will change officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers, in an apparent effort to quell a growing backlash and win back contracts lost amid concerns about mass surveillance and police abuse. Several changes aim directly at a problem that has made recent headlines:…

United States