Why methane emissions are still a mystery
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. If you follow papers in climate and energy for long enough, you’re bound to recognize some patterns. There are a few things I’ll basically always see when I’m sifting through the latest climate and energy research: one study finding that perovskite solar cells are getting even more efficient; another showing that climate change is damaging an ecosystem in some strange and unexpected way. And there’s always some new paper finding that we’re still underestimating methane emissions. That […]
Decarbonizing production of energy is a quick win
Debate around the pace and nature of decarbonization continues to dominate the global news agenda, from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change warning that the EU must double annual emissions cuts, to forecasts that it could cost more than $1 trillion to decarbonize the global shipping industry. Despite differing opinions on the right path to net zero, all agree that every sector needs to reduce emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Oil and gas production accounts for 15% of the world’s emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Some of the largest global companies have […]
Methane leaks in the US are worse than we thought
Methane emissions in the US are worse than scientists previously estimated, a new study has found. The study, published today in Nature, represents one of the most comprehensive surveys yet of methane emissions from US oil- and gas-producing regions. Using measurements taken from planes, the researchers found that emissions from many of the targeted areas were significantly higher than government estimates had found. The undercounting highlights the urgent need for new and better ways of tracking the powerful greenhouse gas. Methane emissions are responsible for nearly a third of the total warming the planet has experienced so far. While there […]
An AI that can play Goat Simulator is a step toward more useful AI
Fly, goat, fly! A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen before such as Goat Simulator 3, a fun action game with exaggerated physics. Researchers were able to get it to follow text commands to play seven different games and move around in three different 3D research environments. It’s a step toward more generalized AI that can transfer skills across multiple environments. Google DeepMind has had huge success developing game-playing AI systems. Its system AlphaGo, which beat top professional player Lee Sedol at the game Go in 2016, was a major […]
The Download: what social media can teach us about AI
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. Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media —Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, […]
Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening of our political discourse, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in partisan polarization. Today, tech’s darling is artificial intelligence. Like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favorable to democracy. But at the same time, it has […]
The Download: hacking VR headsets, and contrails to cool the planet
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 VR headsets can be hacked with an Inception-style attack In the Christoper Nolan movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character uses technology to enter his targets’ dreams to steal information and insert false details into their subconscious. A new “inception attack” in virtual reality works in a similar way. Researchers at the University of Chicago exploited a security vulnerability in Meta’s Quest VR system that allows hackers to hijack users’ headsets, steal sensitive information, and—with the help of generative AI—manipulate […]
Building a data-driven health-care ecosystem
The application of AI to health-care data has promise to align the U.S. health-care system to quality care and positive health outcomes. But AI for health care hasn’t reached its full capacity. One reason is the inconsistent quality and integrity of the data that AI depends on. The industry—hospitals, providers, insurers, and administrators—uses diverse systems. The resulting data can be difficult to share because of incompatibility, privacy regulations, and the unstructured nature of much of the data. The data can carry errors, omissions, and duplications, making it difficult to access, analyze, and use. Even the best data can cause data […]
How rerouting planes to produce fewer contrails could help cool the planet
A handful of studies have concluded that making minor adjustments to the routes of a small fraction of airplane flights could meaningfully reduce global warming. Now a new paper finds that these changes could be pretty cheap to pull off as well. The common climate concern when it comes to airlines is that planes produce a lot of carbon dioxide emissions as they burn fuel. But jets also release heat, water vapor, and particulate matter that can produce thin clouds in the sky, known as “contrails,” in particularly cold, humid, icy parts of the atmosphere. When numerous flights pass through […]
Why we need better defenses against VR cyberattacks
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I remember the first time I tried on a VR headset. It was the first Oculus Rift, and I nearly fainted after experiencing an intense but visually clumsy VR roller-coaster. But that was a decade ago, and the experience has gotten a lot smoother and more realistic since. That impressive level of immersiveness could be a problem, though: it makes us particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks in VR. I just published a story about a new kind of security vulnerability […]