Technology

Tapping the wisdom of human-centered fields

December 23, 2024
When I last wrote to you in this magazine, I told you a bit about the MIT Collaboratives, an effort to spark new ideas and modes of inquiry and help the people of MIT solve global problems. Since then, we’ve launched the first collaborative, grounding it in the human-centered fields represented by our School of…

The Download: trustworthy humanoid robots, and Anduril’s latest project

December 23, 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. Will we ever trust robots? The world might seem to be on the brink of a humanoid-robot heyday. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence promise the type of capable, general-purpose robots previously seen only…

Will we ever trust robots?

December 23, 2024
The world might seem to be on the brink of a humanoid-robot heyday. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence promise the type of capable, general-purpose robots previously seen only in science fiction—robots that can do things like assemble cars, care for patients, or tidy our homes, all without being given specialized instructions.  It’s an idea that…

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs

December 20, 2024
A live agent spends hours each week manually documenting routine interactions. Another combs through multiple knowledge bases to find the right solution, scrambling to piece it together while the customer waits on hold. A third types out the same response they’ve written dozens of times before. These repetitive tasks can be draining, leaving less time…

Enabling human-centric support with generative AI

December 20, 2024
It’s a stormy holiday weekend, and you’ve just received the last notification you want in the busiest travel week of the year: The first leg of your flight is significantly delayed. You might expect this means you’ll be sitting on hold with airline customer service for half an hour. But this time, the process looks…

Puzzle Corner

December 20, 2024
Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the January/February Puzzle Corner, brought to you with a special Mystery Hunt twist by guest editor Dan Katz ’03. This column includes solutions to three September/October 24 problems. Find solutions to the other three problems here.

Puzzle Corner September/October 2024 bonus solutions

December 20, 2024
Here are solutions for the three bonus problems that appeared in the September/October 2024 Puzzle Corner column we guest edited. Solutions for S/O2, S/O4, and S/O6 are below; those for S/O1, S/O3, and S/O5 can be found here. S/O2. Frank notes that a repunit Rk is a decimal integer consisting of the digit 1 repeated…

The Download: shaking up neural networks, and the rise of weight-loss drugs

December 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. The next generation of neural networks could live in hardware Networks programmed directly into computer chip hardware can identify images faster, and use much less energy, than the traditional neural networks that underpin…

Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story

December 20, 2024
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. Later today, around 10 minutes after this email lands in your inbox, I’ll be holding my four-year-old daughter tight as she receives her booster dose of the MMR…