Google DeepMind used a large language model to solve an unsolvable math problem
Google DeepMind has used a large language model to crack a famous unsolved problem in pure mathematics. In a paper published in Nature today, the researchers say it is the first time a large language model has been used to discover a solution to a long-standing scientific puzzle—producing verifiable and valuable new information that did not previously exist. “It’s not in the training data—it wasn’t even known,” says coauthor Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind. Large language models have a reputation for making things up, not for providing new facts. Google DeepMind’s new tool, called FunSearch, could […]
The Download: what we learned from COP28, and an advance for household robots
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. The two words that pushed international climate talks into overtime The annual UN climate negotiations at COP28 in Dubai have officially come to a close. Delegates scrambled to get a deal together in the early morning hours, and the meetings ended a day past their scheduled conclusion (as these things tend to). It’s understandable if you’ve tuned out news from the summit. The quibbles over wording—“urges” vs. “notes” vs. “emphasizes”—can all start to sound like noise. But these […]
This new system can teach a robot a simple household task within 20 minutes
A new system that teaches robots a domestic task in around 20 minutes could help the field of robotics overcome one of its biggest challenges: a lack of training data. The open-source system, called Dobb-E, was trained using data collected from real homes. It can help to teach a robot how to open an air fryer, close a door, or straighten a cushion, among other tasks. While other types of AI, such as large language models, are trained on huge repositories of data scraped from the internet, the same can’t be done with robots, because the data needs to be […]
The two words that pushed international climate talks into overtime
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The annual UN climate negotiations at COP28 in Dubai have officially come to a close. Delegates scrambled to get a deal together in the early morning hours, and the meetings ended a day past their scheduled conclusion (as these things tend to). If you’ve tuned out news from the summit, I don’t really blame you. The quibbles over wording—“urges” vs. “notes” vs. “emphasizes”—can all start to sound like noise. But these talks are the biggest climate event […]
Vertex will pay tens of millions to license a controversial CRISPR patent
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a dominant CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease. The agreement allows Vertex to start selling its treatment, approved last Friday, without fear of patent infringement claims. The one-time treatment will be among the most expensive ever sold, with a price tag of $2.2 million. The patent on CRISPR has been the fulcrum off a decade-long legal fight after the Broad Institute, a research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, snatched rights to the most important uses […]
The Download: carbon removal concerns, and Yahoo’s China controversy
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. Two former Department of Energy staffers warn we’re doing carbon removal all wrong The carbon removal industry is just starting to take off, but some experts are warning that it’s already headed in the wrong direction. Two former staffers of the US agency responsible for advancing the technology argue that the profit-driven industry’s focus on cleaning up corporate emissions will come at the expense of helping to pull the planet back from dangerous levels of warming. They warn […]
Yahoo’s decades-long China controversy and the responsibility of tech companies
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. It’s a perennial debate: whether American tech companies are contributing to government control of the internet in China. But long before Apple ceded control of local user data to the state or Microsoft was found to have partnered with a Chinese military-run university on artificial-intelligence research, there was Yahoo. Back in the early 2000s, Yahoo was operating a popular search engine and email service in China, and it was one of the first tech companies to be […]
Two former Department of Energy staffers warn we’re doing carbon removal all wrong
The carbon removal industry is just starting to take off, but some experts are warning that it’s already headed in the wrong direction. Two former staffers of the US agency responsible for advancing the technology argue that the profit-driven industry’s focus on cleaning up corporate emissions will come at the expense of helping to pull the planet back from dangerous levels of warming. Numerous studies have found that the world may have to remove tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year by around mid-century to keep global warming in check. These findings have spawned […]
Mapping the micro and macro of biology with spatial omics and AI
37 trillion. That is the number or cells that form a human being. How they all work together to sustain life is possibly the biggest unsolved puzzle in biology. A group of up-and-coming technologies for spatially resolved multi omics, here collectively called “spatial omics,” may provide researchers with the solution. Over the last 20 years, the omics revolution has enabled us to understand cell and tissue biology at ever increasing resolutions. Bulk sequencing techniques that emerged in the mid 2000s allowed the study of mixed populations of cells. A decade later, single-cell omics methods became commercially available, revolutionizing our understanding […]
The Download: Yahoo’s misdeeds in China, and AI Act takeaways
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. Inside the decades-long fight over Yahoo’s misdeeds in China When you think of Big Tech these days, Yahoo is probably not top of mind. But for Chinese dissident Xu Wanping, the company still looms large—and has for nearly two decades. In 2005, Xu was arrested for signing online petitions relating to anti-Japanese protests. He didn’t use his real name, but he did use his Yahoo email address. Yahoo China violated its users’ trust—providing information on certain email accounts […]