Technology

Unlocking secure, private AI with confidential computing

July 12, 2024
All of a sudden, it seems that AI is everywhere, from executive assistant chatbots to AI code assistants. But despite the proliferation of AI in the zeitgeist, many organizations are proceeding with caution. This is due to the perception of the security quagmires AI presents. For the emerging technology to reach its full potential, data…

AI can make you more creative—but it has limits

July 12, 2024
Generative AI models have made it simpler and quicker to produce everything from text passages and images to video clips and audio tracks. Texts and media that might have taken years for humans to create can now be generated in seconds. But while AI’s output can certainly seem creative, do these models actually boost human…

The Download: robot-packed meals, and the looming fertility crisis

July 12, 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. Robot-packed meals are coming to the frozen-food aisle What’s happening: Advances in artificial intelligence are coming to your freezer, in the form of robot-assembled prepared meals. Chef Robotics, a San Francisco-based startup, has…

IVF alone can’t save us from a looming fertility crisis

July 12, 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.  I’ve just learned that July 11 is World Population Day. There are over 8 billion of us on the planet, and there’ll probably be 8.5 billion of us…

Robot-packed meals are coming to the frozen-food aisle

July 11, 2024
Advances in artificial intelligence are coming to your freezer, in the form of robot-assembled prepared meals.  Chef Robotics, a San Francisco–based startup, has launched a system of AI-powered robotic arms that can be quickly programmed with a recipe to dole out accurate portions of everything from tikka masala to pesto tortellini. After experiments with leading…

The Download: automating warehouse tasks, and problems with recycling plastics

July 11, 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. AI is poised to automate today’s most mundane manual warehouse task Before almost any item reaches your door, it traverses the global supply chain on a pallet. More than 2 billion pallets are…

AI is poised to automate today’s most mundane manual warehouse task

July 11, 2024
Before almost any item reaches your door, it traverses the global supply chain on a pallet. More than 2 billion pallets are in circulation in the United States alone, and $400 billion worth of goods are exported on them annually. However, loading boxes onto these pallets is a task stuck in the past: Heavy loads…

Here’s the problem with new plastic recycling methods

July 11, 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. Look on the bottom of a plastic water bottle or takeout container, and you might find a logo there made up of three arrows forming a closed loop shaped like a triangle.…

The Download: defining AI, and China’s driverless ambitions

July 10, 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. What is AI? AI is sexy, AI is cool. AI is entrenching inequality, upending the job market, and wrecking education. The AI boom will boost the economy, the AI bubble is about to…