Technology

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. This week, I’ve been working on a big story about a controversial treatment that creates babies with three genetic parents. The “three-parent baby” technique was thought to help parents avoid passing diseases…

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, with zero fanfare, in late November 2022, the San Francisco–based artificial-intelligence company had few expectations. Certainly, nobody inside OpenAI was prepared for a viral mega-hit. The firm has been scrambling to catch up—and capitalize on its success—ever since. It was viewed in-house as a “research preview,” says Sandhini Agarwal, who works…

A government watchdog has found that the Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit repeatedly failed to obtain the correct legal paperwork when carrying out invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings were published last week by Homeland Security’s inspector general, tasked with oversight of the U.S. federal department and its many law enforcement […]

Secret Service and ICE conducted warrantless stingray surveillance, says watchdog by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

Developing cutting-edge AI systems like ChatGPT requires massive technical resources, in part because they’re costly to develop and run. While several open source efforts have attempted to reverse-engineer proprietary, closed-source systems created by commercial labs such as Alphabet’s DeepMind and OpenAI, they’ve often run into roadblocks — mainly due to a lack of capital and […]

Stability AI, Hugging Face and Canva back new AI research nonprofit by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

I want to talk about weird tech for a minute. A lot of strange and wonderful pieces of technology have come across our desks over the years. More often that not, they’re the purview of the startup. Small companies are more nimble and willing to take risks. That’s a big part of the reason the […]

An ode to big tech cos putting earbuds in smartwatches and other weird crap by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

The technology would need approval from lawmakers first.

February wrapped up as a big month for the NFT market as non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed $1.5 billion in volume for the first time since May 2022.

Are NFT marketplaces becoming an open sea for creator royalties? by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Founders and investors have a growing appreciation for the ocean’s potential to help solve the climate problem.

To fix the climate, these 10 investors are betting the house on the ocean by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Neuralink’s ambition to provide a brain-computer interface orders of magnitude better than what’s out there now has hit headwinds with the FDA, Reuters reports. The agency reportedly rejected the company’s application to begin human testing last year, a somewhat expected obstacle that seems nevertheless to have frustrated backer Elon Musk. The well-sourced report explains that […]

Neuralink human testing has reportedly received one FDA rejection already by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch