Within weeks of ChatGPT’s launch, there were fears that students would be using the chatbot to spin up passable essays in seconds. In response to those fears, startups started making products that promise to spot whether text was written by a human or a machine. The problem is that it’s relatively simple to trick these […]
Covid hasn’t entirely gone away—here’s where we stand
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. We’re well into summer here in the Northern Hemisphere. For a parent of two young children, that means ice creams, water fountains, picnics, and—inevitably—coughs and […]
The Download: chipmaking in Syracuse, and making cement greener
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 $100 billion bet that a postindustrial US city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub On a day in late April, a small drilling rig sits at the edge of the scrubby […]
A human-centric approach to adopting AI
From traditional manufacturing companies using AI in robots to build smart factories to tech startups developing automated customer service and chatbots, AI is becoming pervasive across industries. “AI is no longer just in assistant mode, but is now playing autonomous roles in robotics, driving, knowledge generation, simulating our hands, feet, and brains,” says Lan Guan, […]
Inside a high-tech cement laboratory
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. A few weeks ago, I found myself in a room where fluorescent lights reflected off the stainless steel tanks lining the walls. The setup reminded me of an exceedingly high-tech craft brewery. […]
The $100 billion bet that a postindustrial US city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub
For now, the thousand acres that may well portend a more prosperous future for Syracuse, New York, and the surrounding towns are just a nondescript expanse of scrub, overgrown grass, and trees. But on a day in late April, a small drilling rig sits at the edge of the fields, taking soil samples. It’s the […]
Turbo-charging productivity in Asia: the economic benefits of generative AI
When it comes to the ability to generate, arrange, and analyze content, generative AI is a gamechanger—one with transformative social and economic potential. As a technology that is democratized—one that doesn’t simply exist in a faraway lab or tech community in Silicon Valley, for instance—generative AI lowers the barriers to participation. In the age of […]
New AI systems could speed up our ability to create weather forecasts
As climate change makes weather more unpredictable and extreme, we need more reliable forecasts to help us prepare and prevent disasters. Today, meteorologists use massive computer simulations to make their forecasts. They take hours to complete, because scientists have to analyze weather variables such as temperature, precipitation, pressure, wind, humidity, and cloudiness one by one. […]
The Download: how AI is changing science, and limits on White House contact with tech firms
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. This is how AI will transform how science gets done —by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and current co-founder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures With the advent of AI, science is about […]
Eric Schmidt: This is how AI will transform how science gets done
It’s yet another summer of extreme weather, with unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, and floods battering countries around the world. In response to the challenge of accurately predicting such extremes, semiconductor giant Nvidia is building an AI-powered “digital twin” for the entire planet. This digital twin, called Earth-2, will use predictions from FourCastNet, an AI model […]