February 5, 2025

XOi raises $230M, acquires Specifx to expand its tech for field service technicians

Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers that come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology. But that same blind spot speaks of the opportunity in the space for those who are stepping up and targeting “the job site.” One of the players in that space, XOi  […]

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Technology

How the largest gathering of US police chiefs is talking about AI

November 19, 2024
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. It can be tricky for reporters to get past certain doors, and the door to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference is one that’s almost perpetually shut to the media. Thus, I was…

The Download: Bluesky’s rapid rise, and harmful fertility stereotypes

November 18, 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 rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of social You may have read that it was a big week for Bluesky. If you’re not familiar, Bluesky is, essentially, a Twitter clone that publishes…

The rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of social

November 18, 2024
You may have read that it was a big week for Bluesky.  If you’re not familiar, Bluesky is, essentially, a Twitter clone that publishes short-form status updates. It gained more than 2 million users this week. On Wednesday, The Verge reported it had crossed 15 million users. By Thursday, it was at 16 million. By Friday? 17 million and counting.…

Why the term “women of childbearing age” is problematic

November 15, 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. Every journalist has favorite topics. Regular Checkup readers might already know some of mine, which include the quest to delay or reverse human aging, and new technologies for…

The Download: diversifying AI voices, and a science-fiction glimpse into the future

November 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. How this grassroots effort could make AI voices more diverse We are on the cusp of a voice AI boom, as tech companies roll out the next generation of artificial-intelligence-powered assistants. But the…

How this grassroots effort could make AI voices more diverse

November 15, 2024
We are on the cusp of a voice AI boom, with tech companies such as Apple and OpenAI rolling out the next generation of artificial-intelligence-powered assistants. But the default voices for these assistants are often white American—British, if you’re lucky—and most definitely speak English. They represent only a tiny proportion of the many dialects and…

What’s on the table at this year’s UN climate conference

November 14, 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. It’s time for a party—the Conference of the Parties, that is. Talks kicked off this week at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Running for a couple of weeks each year, the global summit…

Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI’s “mind”

November 14, 2024
AI has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery and robotics and is in the process of entirely revolutionizing how we interact with machines and the web. The only problem is we don’t know exactly how it works, or why it works so well. We have a fair idea, but the details are too complex to…

Unlocking the mysteries of complex biological systems with agentic AI

November 13, 2024
The complexity of biology has long been a double-edged sword for scientific and medical progress. On one hand, the intricacy of systems (like the human immune response) offers countless opportunities for breakthroughs in medicine and healthcare. On the other hand, that very complexity has often stymied researchers, leaving some of the most significant medical challenges—like…