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

The Download: Apple Vision Pro, and how AI judges gymnastics

January 16, 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. Apple Vision Pro: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 History is littered with doomed face computers. Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, and even Meta’s Quest line all flopped. Now, it’s Apple’s turn to try.  At the…

How AI is changing gymnastics judging 

January 16, 2024
There was one individual Olympic spot left. According to the intricate set of rules governing who gets slots for the games, it would come down to who placed highest in the high bar final: Croatia’s Tin Srbić or Brazil’s Arthur Nory Mariano. They were at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, last October. Mariano…

Why everyone’s excited about household robots again

January 16, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Welcome back to The Algorithm!  I have a chair of shame at home. By that I mean a chair in my bedroom onto which I pile used clothes that aren’t quite…

Outperforming competitors as a data-driven organization

January 15, 2024
In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby said, “data is the new oil.” While the phrase is almost a cliché, the advent of generative AI is breathing new life into this idea. A global study on the Future of Enterprise Data & AI by WNS Triange and Corinium Intelligence shows 76% of C-suite leaders and decision-makers are planning or…

The Download: super-efficient solar cells, and helpful robots

January 15, 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. Super-efficient solar cells: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 In November 2023, a buzzy solar technology broke yet another world record for efficiency. The previous record had existed for only about five months—and it likely…

The FTC’s unprecedented move against data brokers, explained

January 15, 2024
This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review‘s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. We’re only a few weeks into 2024, and violations of people’s privacy are already making some big headlines! First we had the continued drama with…

Watch this robot cook shrimp and clean autonomously

January 15, 2024
Sophisticated robots don’t have to cost a fortune. Even relatively cheap robots can do complex manipulation tasks and learn new skills quickly using AI, a new study has shown. With just $32,000, researchers from Stanford University managed to build a wheeled robot that can cook a three-course Cantonese meal with human supervision. Then they used…

The race to get next-generation solar technology on the market

January 15, 2024
In Swift Solar’s lab, more than a dozen pairs of elbow-length rubber gloves hover horizontally in midair, inflated like arms. The gloves are animated by gaseous nitrogen and jut out of waist-high, glass-walled enclosures, designed to keep the workspaces dry and airtight to protect the delicate solar materials inside.  In a corner, technician Roger Thompson…