July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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 India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

Technology

She was a semi-pro Go player but learned that biology is even harder

September 12, 2023
Julia Joung is one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Innovators Under 35.  When an AI beat one of the world’s best Go players in 2017, Julia Joung felt relief. She’d spent her childhood in Taiwan mastering the ancient game and once aspired to become a professional player, representing her country. “I felt like part of…

This startup plans to power a tugboat with ammonia later this year

September 12, 2023
Young Suk Jo is one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Innovators Under 35.  Transportation is one of the world’s most polluting industries, accounting for roughly 15% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Electric vehicles will make a dent in those emissions in the coming decades, but batteries can’t hold enough energy to power vehicles used in other…

Andrew Ng: How to be an innovator

September 12, 2023
This essay is part of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Innovators Under 35 package. Meet this year’s honorees. Innovation is a powerful engine for uplifting society and fueling economic growth. Antibiotics, electric lights, refrigerators, airplanes, smartphones—we have these things because innovators created something that didn’t exist before. MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list celebrates individuals who have…

Robots that learn as they fail could unlock a new era of AI

September 12, 2023
Lerrel Pinto is one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Innovators Under 35.  Asked to explain his work, Lerrel Pinto, 31, likes to shoot back another question: When did you last see a cool robot in your home? The answer typically depends on whether the person asking owns a robot vacuum cleaner: yesterday or never. Pinto’s…

How software that tracks covid variants could protect us against future outbreaks

September 12, 2023
Yatish Turakhia is one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Innovators Under 35.  When covid-19 started spreading in early 2020, scientists quickly realized that tracking how the virus was mutating would be essential for public health as new strains emerged that put people at greater risk. Yatish Turakhia, then a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz’s Genomics…

There’s never been a more important time in AI policy

September 12, 2023
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Before we get started I wanted to flag two great talks this week.  ⚖️ On Tuesday, September 12, at 12 p.m. US Eastern time, we will be hosting a subscriber-only roundtable conversation about…

Square says daylong outage caused by DNS error

September 11, 2023
Square said there was “no evidence” a cyberattack caused an outage that left customers and small businesses unable to use the payment giant’s technology on Thursday through early-Friday. The payments technology giant said in a post-mortem of the daylong outage that the issue was caused by a DNS issue. DNS, or domain name system, is […]

The Download: what to expect from US Congress’s first AI meeting

September 11, 2023
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. What to know about Congress’s inaugural AI meeting The US Congress is heading back into session, and they’re hitting the ground running on AI. We’re going to be hearing a lot about various…

What to know about Congress’s inaugural AI meeting

September 11, 2023
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. The US Congress is heading back into session, and they are hitting the ground running on AI. We’re going to be hearing a lot about…