Three things we learned about AI from EmTech Digital London
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week, MIT Technology Review held its inaugural EmTech Digital conference in London. It was a great success! I loved seeing so many of you there asking excellent questions, and it was a couple of days full of brain-tickling insights about where AI is going next. Here are the three main things I took away from the conference. 1. AI avatars are getting really, really good UK-based AI unicorn Synthesia teased its next generation of AI avatars, which […]
Why new proposals to restrict geoengineering are misguided
The public debate over whether we should consider intentionally altering the climate system is heating up, as the dangers of climate instability rise and more groups look to study technologies that could cool the planet. Such interventions, commonly known as solar geoengineering, may include releasing sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere to cast away more sunlight, or spraying salt particles along coastlines to create denser, more reflective marine clouds. The growing interest in studying the potential of these tools, particularly through small-scale outdoor experiments, has triggered corresponding calls to shut down the research field, or at least to restrict it more […]
This architect is cutting up materials to make them stronger and lighter
As a child, Emily Baker loved to make paper versions of things: cameras, a spaceship cockpit, buildings for a town in outer space. It was a habit that stuck. Years later, studying architecture in graduate school at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, she was playing around with some paper and scissors. It was 2010, and the school was about to buy a CNC plasma cutter, a computer-controlled machine capable of cutting lines into sheets of steel. As she thought about how she might experiment with it, she made a striking discovery. To develop Spin-Valence, a novel structural system, […]
A Grammy for Miguel Zenón
Nobel Prizes and other scientific honors are nearly routine at MIT, but a Grammy Award is something we don’t see every year. That’s what Miguel Zenón, an assistant professor of music and theater arts, has won: El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 2, which he recorded with the pianist and composer Luis Perdomo, received the Grammy for best Latin jazz album in February. MAARTEN DE BOER “I’m incredibly happy and honored with this Grammy win,” says Zenón, a renowned saxophonist. “We’ve been making albums for a long time, so it’s extremely rewarding to earn this recognition.” “The Latin American Songbook is […]
The Download: saving seals with artificial snow, and AI’s effects on politics
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. These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change For millennia, during Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks along Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, offering prime real estate from which seals carved cave-like dens to shelter from the elements and raise newborns. But in recent decades, these snowdrifts have failed to form in sufficient numbers, as climate change has brought warming temperatures and rain in place of snow, decimating the seal population. For the last 11 years, […]
These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change
Just before 10 a.m., hydrobiologist Jari Ilmonen and his team of six step out across a flat, half-mile-wide disk of snow and ice. For half the year this vast clearing is open water, the tip of one arm of the labyrinthine Lake Saimaa, Finland’s biggest lake, which reaches almost to Russia’s western border. As each snow boot lands, there’s a burst of static, like the spine-tingling scrape of a freezer drawer closing. “It’s a poor amount of snow,” complains Ilmonen, who sees less than half the 20 centimeters (eight inches) he’d hope for in mid-January. To reach their destination, one […]
The Download: Neuralink’s biggest rivals, and the case for phasing out the term “user”
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. Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink posted a video to X showing the first human subject to receive its brain implant, which will be named Telepathy. The recipient, a 29-year-old man who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, played computer chess, moving the cursor around with his mind. Neuralink’s announcement of […]
Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink posted a video to X showing the first human subject to receive its brain implant, which will be named Telepathy. The recipient, a 29-year-old man who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, played computer chess, moving the cursor around with his mind. Learning to control it was “like using […]
Three ways the US could help universities compete with tech companies on AI innovation
The ongoing revolution in artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically improve our lives—from the way we work to what we do to stay healthy. Yet ensuring that America and other democracies can help shape the trajectory of this technology requires going beyond the tech development taking place at private companies. Research at universities drove the AI advances that laid the groundwork for the commercial boom we are experiencing today. Importantly, academia also produced the leaders of pioneering AI companies. But today, large foundational models, or LFMs, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini require such vast computational power and such extensive data sets […]
It’s time to retire the term “user”
Every Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri speaks to the people. He has made a habit of hosting weekly “ask me anything” sessions on Instagram, in which followers send him questions about the app, its parent company Meta, and his own (extremely public-facing) job. When I started watching these AMA videos years ago, I liked them. He answered technical questions like “Why can’t we put links in posts?” and “My explore page is wack, how to fix?” with genuine enthusiasm. But the more I tuned in, the more Mosseri’s seemingly off-the-cuff authenticity started to feel measured, like a corporate by-product of […]