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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. DHS plans to collect biometric data from migrant children “down to the infant” The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at…

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. On August 8, at 16:42 local time, a magnitude-7.1 earthquake shook southern Japan. The temblor, originating off the shores of mainland island of Kyūshū, was felt…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Friday marks two years since the US signed the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. Now, I’m not usually one to track legislation birthdays. But this particular law is the exception,…

Happy birthday, baby. You have been born into an era of intelligent machines. They have watched over you almost since your conception. They let your parents listen in on your tiny heartbeat, track your gestation on an app, and post your sonogram on social media. Well before you were born, you were known to the…

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at the border in a bid to improve facial recognition technology, MIT Technology Review can reveal. This includes children “down to the infant,” according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity…

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. A new public database lists all the ways AI could go wrong What’s new: Adopting AI can be fraught with danger. Systems could be biased, or parrot falsehoods, or even become addictive. And…

Adopting AI can be fraught with danger. Systems could be biased, or parrot falsehoods, or even become addictive. And that’s before you consider the possibility AI could be used to create new biological or chemical weapons, or even one day somehow spin out of our control.  To manage these potential risks, we first need to…

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. How the auto industry could steer the world toward green steel Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, as steel production is currently…

Steel scaffolds our world, undergirding buildings and machines. It also presents a major challenge for climate change, since steel production largely relies on polluting fossil fuels. The automotive industry could be a key player in turning things around. Steel production is currently responsible for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a growing array…

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. Here’s how people are actually using AI When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the…

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. When the generative AI boom started with ChatGPT in late 2022, we were sold a vision of superintelligent AI tools that know everything, can replace the boring bits of work, and supercharge productivity and…

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. Google DeepMind trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis What’s new: Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play table tennis at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has…

Do you fancy your chances of beating a robot at a game of table tennis? Google DeepMind has trained a robot to play the game at the equivalent of amateur-level competitive performance, the company has announced. It claims it’s the first time a robot has been taught to play a sport with humans at a…

More people are traveling to space, but the International Space Station can only hold 11 people at a time. Aurelia Institute, a nonprofit space architecture lab based in Cambridge, MA, has an approach that may help: a habitat that can be launched in compact stacks of flat tiles and self-assemble in orbit. Building large space…

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. What does a thought look like? We can think about thoughts resulting from shared signals between some of the billions of neurons in our brains. Various chemicals are…

For many years now, cloud solutions have helped organizations streamline their operations, increase their scalability, and reduce costs. Yet, enterprise cloud investment has been fragmented, often lacking a coherent organization-wide approach. In fact, it’s not uncommon for various teams across an organization to have spun up their own cloud projects, adopting a wide variety of…

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. Your AC habits aren’t unique. Here’s why that’s a problem. —Casey Crownhart When I get home in the evening on a sweltering summer day, the first thing I do is crank up my…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. When I get home in the evening on a sweltering summer day, the first thing I do is beeline to my window air-conditioning units and crank them up. People across the city,…

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. How covid conspiracies led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His…

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. There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of hydrogen-powered vehicles but never seen one. Over 18,000 are in the US, almost exclusively in California. On the outside they look just like traditional vehicles,…

Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the former evolutionary biology professor turned contrarian podcaster Bret Weinstein, agreed with him: The “evidence” that AIDS is not caused by HIV is, he said, “surprisingly compelling.”…

Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award winner who is considered one of the “godfathers” of modern AI, is throwing his weight behind a project funded by the UK government to embed safety mechanisms into AI systems. The project, called Safeguarded AI, aims to build an AI system that can check whether other AI systems deployed in…

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. Your future air conditioner might act like a battery Cooling represents 20% of global electricity demand in buildings, a share that’s expected to rise as the planet warms and more of the world…

As temperatures climb on hot days, many of us are quick to crank up our fans or air conditioners. These cooling systems can be a major stress on electrical grids, which has inspired some inventors to create versions that can store energy as well as use it.  Cooling represents 20% of global electricity demand in…