November 21, 2024

China’s complicated role in climate change

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. “Well, what about China?” This is a comment I get all the time on the topic of climate change, both in conversations and on whatever social media site is currently en vogue.…

Technology

Cultivating the next generation of AI innovators in a global tech hub

October 29, 2024
A few years ago, I had to make one of the biggest decisions of my life: continue as a professor at the University of Melbourne or move to another part of the world to help build a brand new university focused entirely on artificial intelligence. With the rapid development we have seen in AI over…

The Download: mysterious exosomes, and AI’s e-waste issue

October 29, 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. Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work. There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews…

Palmer Luckey’s vision for the future of mixed reality

October 29, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. War is a catalyst for change, an expert in AI and warfare told me in 2022. At the time, the war in Ukraine had just started, and the military AI business was…

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

October 29, 2024
There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews in beauty magazines. Exosomes are being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you…

AI will add to the e-waste problem. Here’s what we can do about it.

October 28, 2024
Generative AI could account for up to 5 million metric tons of e-waste by 2030, according to a new study. That’s a relatively small fraction of the current global total of over 60 million metric tons of e-waste each year. However, it’s still a significant part of a growing problem, experts warn.  E-waste is the…

The Download: an interview with Palmer Luckey, and AI-assisted math tutors

October 28, 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. Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality Palmer Luckey has, in some ways, come full circle.  His first experience with virtual-reality headsets was as a teenage lab technician at a defense…

Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality

October 28, 2024
Palmer Luckey has, in some ways, come full circle.  His first experience with virtual-reality headsets was as a teenage lab technician at a defense research center in Southern California, studying their potential to curb PTSD symptoms in veterans. He then built Oculus, sold it to Facebook for $2 billion, left Facebook after a highly public…

This AI system makes human tutors better at teaching children math

October 28, 2024
The US has a major problem with education inequality. Children from low-income families are less likely to receive high-quality education, partly because poorer districts struggle to retain experienced teachers.  Artificial intelligence could help, by improving the one-on-one tutoring sometimes used to supplement class instruction in these schools. With help from an AI tool, tutors could…

The Download: Wayve’s driverless ambitions, and AI models built by kids

October 25, 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 Wayve’s driverless cars will meet one of their biggest challenges yet The UK driverless-car startup Wayve is headed west. The firm’s cars learned to drive on the streets of London. But Wayve…