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Adobe has announced a new tool to help creators watermark their artwork and opt out of having it used to train generative AI models. The web app, called Adobe Content Authenticity, allows artists to signal that they do not consent for their work to be used by AI models, which are generally trained on vast…

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. Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer and figurehead of doomerism, wins Nobel Prize Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose pioneering work on deep learning in the 1980s and 90s underpins all of the most powerful…

Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose pioneering work on deep learning in the 1980s and ’90s underpins all of the most powerful AI models in the world today, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Speaking on the phone to the Academy minutes after the announcement,…

We are in the early stages of a geopolitical competition for the future of artificial intelligence. The winners will dominate the global economy in the 21st century. But what’s been too often left out of the conversation is that AI’s huge demand for concentrated and consistent amounts of power represents a chance to scale the…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Chatting with an AI chatbot is so 2022. The latest hot AI toys take advantage of multimodal models, which can handle several things at the same time, such as images, audio, 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. How to break free of Spotify’s algorithm Since the heyday of radio, records, cassette tapes, and MP3 players, the branding of sound has evolved from broad genres like rock and hip-hop to “paranormal…

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. People are using Google study software to make AI podcasts—and they’re weird and amazing Google’s new AI podcasting tool, called Audio Overview, has become a surprise viral hit. The podcasting feature was launched…

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. On September 28, California became the second US state to officially recognize the importance of mental privacy in state law. That pink, jelly-like, throbbing mass under your skull—a.k.a.…

“All right, so today we are going to dive deep into some cutting-edge tech,” a chatty American male voice says. But this voice does not belong to a human. It belongs to Google’s new AI podcasting tool, called Audio Overview, which has become a surprise viral hit.  The podcasting feature was launched in mid-September as…

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. AI-generated images can teach robots how to act Generative AI models can produce images in response to prompts within seconds, and they’ve recently been used for everything from highlighting their own inherent bias…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. It’s finally here! We’ve just unveiled our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. This annual project is one the climate team at MIT Technology Review pours a lot of…

Generative AI models can produce images in response to prompts within seconds, and they’ve recently been used for everything from highlighting their own inherent bias to preserving precious memories. Now, researchers from Stephen James’s Robot Learning Lab in London are using image-generating AI models for a new purpose: creating training data for robots. They’ve developed…

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. Introducing: 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch The urgency of addressing climate change has never been clearer. Emissions of planet-warming gases are at record highs, as are global temperatures.  All that extra heat…

NASA is poised to launch Europa Clipper, a $5.2 billion mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, as early as October 10. The spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It will study Europa, a possible home for extraterrestrial life, through a series of flybys after reaching Jupiter…

First Solar is expanding production of its thin-film solar cells and opening new factories to meet a surge of demand. Meanwhile, it’s investing in perovskites—tiny crystalline materials that many view as a key solar technology of the future.  The world needs more electricity than ever, as the AI boom puts intense demand on data centers…

Sun King is helping poor households across Asia and Africa access reliable, clean power and healthier ways of cooking.  Accessing clean sources of energy has always been a challenge for low-income communities worldwide, given the high up-front costs. At least hundreds of millions of people around the world have unreliable or no access to the…

Ceibo seeks to eliminate a major potential speed bump for the clean-energy transition: the looming global copper shortage. The firm’s low-impact extraction technology targets ores that aren’t economical to mine today but could help meet the copper demands of an electrified world. Copper wires form the backbone of the clean-energy economy, connecting cars, buildings, and…

Rondo Energy is supplying cheap, zero-emissions heat to factories to replace fossil-fuel-powered boilers, furnaces, and kilns. Its approach of using bricks and iron wire to provide a steady supply of hot air or steam stands out for its simplicity and potential to scale. Finding a clean way to produce the large amounts of heat required…

LanzaJet is making next-generation aviation fuel without fossil fuels. The company recently opened the world’s first commercial-scale production facility that turns alcohol into jet fuel and plans to produce up to 9 million gallons each year. LanzaJet wants to cut aviation’s climate impact by rethinking where jet fuel comes from.  Today, hopping on a plane…

It may not yet be a household name, but BYD is gaining recognition outside China for its affordable and accessible EVs. Despite regulatory scrutiny in the West, it’s determined to lower the boundaries to manufacturing and transporting its vehicles across the globe. Five years ago, BYD was just another Chinese carmaker in a crowded field.…

Pivot Bio is using genetically edited microbes to deliver just the right amount of nitrogen to crops, cutting climate emissions without reducing agricultural yields. The development of synthetic fertilizer was one of the great achievements of the last century, providing an abundant source of nitrogen that boosted crop yields and helped feed a growing global…

Large swaths of the global economy are nearly impossible to electrify but could run on low-emissions hydrogen, helping the world transition away from fossil fuels. Electric Hydrogen is working toward more efficient, affordable production of green hydrogen. Electric Hydrogen is striving to develop production methods that make it easier and more affordable to generate huge…

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 UK is done with coal. How’s the rest of the world doing? The UK is shutting down its final coal-fired power plant today, marking the end of an era for the country’s…

The UK is shutting down its final coal-fired power plant today, marking the end of an era for the country’s energy system. Once the backbone of the grid, coal has been steadily replaced with other, less polluting energy sources. Coal is the most emissions-intensive fuel powering the grid today, and moving away from it, even…