February 6, 2025

The Download: AI companion dangers, and supersonic planes

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. An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, “Erin,” on…

Technology

Three frequently asked questions about EVs, answered

February 22, 2024
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. For someone who does not own or drive a car, I sure do have a lot of thoughts about them. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about transportation in general,…

US health tech giant Change Healthcare hit by cyberattack

February 21, 2024

U.S. healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems. In a brief statement, the company said it was “experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue.” “Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect […]

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Data at the center of business

February 21, 2024
With more than 5,000 branches across 48 states and 80 million customers, each with its own unique requirements to satisfy its customers’ financial needs, a clear data strategy is key for JPMorgan Chase. According to Mark Birkhead, firm-wide chief data officer at JPMorgan Chase, data analytics is the oxygen that breathes life into the firm…

Apple readies iMessage for when quantum computers could break encryption

February 21, 2024

Apple announced today it is upgrading iMessage’s security layer to post-quantum cryptography, starting in iOS and iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, and watchOS 10.4. The technology giant said that in the coming years, quantum computers will be able to break today’s cryptography standards. That’s why Apple said it is changing how end-to-end encryption works with iMessage […]

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The Download: deep diving, and virtual power plants in China

February 21, 2024
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. Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go Two hundred thirty meters into one of the deepest underwater caves on Earth, Richard “Harry” Harris knew that not far ahead…

Why China’s EV ambitions need virtual power plants

February 21, 2024
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. The first time I heard the term “virtual power plants,” I was reporting on how extreme heat waves in 2022 had overwhelmed the Chinese grid and led the government to restrict electric-vehicle…

Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go

February 21, 2024
Two hundred thirty meters into one of the deepest underwater caves on Earth, Richard “Harry” Harris knew that not far ahead of him was a 15-meter drop leading to a place no human being had seen before.  Getting there had taken two helicopters, three weeks of test dives, two tons of equipment, and hard work…

Transforming document understanding and insights with generative AI

February 20, 2024
At some point over the last two decades, productivity applications enabled humans (and machines!) to create information at the speed of digital—faster than any person could possibly consume or understand it. Modern inboxes and document folders are filled with information: digital haystacks with needles of insight that too often remain undiscovered. Generative AI is an…

Bluestein Ventures raises $45M for third food tech fund

February 20, 2024

Bluestein Ventures targets consumer-facing technology across the food supply chain like health and wellness, proprietary foodtech, commerce and digital technology. 

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The Download: hunting for new matter, and Gary Marcus’ AI critiques

February 20, 2024
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 hunt for new physics at the world’s largest particle collider In 2012, using data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, researchers discovered a particle called the Higgs boson. In the process, they…