February 6, 2025

The Download: AI companion dangers, and supersonic planes

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. An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, “Erin,” on…

Technology

Unlocking the trillion-dollar potential of generative AI

May 16, 2024
Generative AI is poised to unlock trillions in annual economic value across industries. This rapidly evolving field is changing the way we approach everything from content creation to software development, promising never-before-seen efficiency and productivity gains. In this session, experts from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, discuss the drivers fueling the massive…

Agora raises $34B Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate

May 16, 2024

Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up construction to managing residential, commercial and retail properties. But unlike his parents, Mor also had a passion for technology. His interest in tech was reinforced […]

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The Download: rapid DNA analysis for disasters, and supercharged AI assistants

May 16, 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. This grim but revolutionary DNA technology is changing how we respond to mass disasters Last August, a wildfire tore through the Hawaiian island of Maui. The list of missing residents climbed into the…

Cannabis and gaming payments startup Aeropay is now offering an alternative to Mastercard and Visa

May 16, 2024

The key to taking on legacy players in the financial technology industry may be to go where they have not gone before. That’s what Chicago-based Aeropay is doing. The provider of pay-by-bank solutions for businesses started out helping cannabis retailers and gaming companies with their payments and is now entering into Visa and Mastercard’s territory […]

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This grim but revolutionary DNA technology is changing how we respond to mass disasters

May 16, 2024
Seven days No matter who he called—his mother, his father, his brother, his cousins—the phone would just go to voicemail. Cell service was out around Maui as devastating wildfires swept through the Hawaiian island. But as Raven Imperial kept hoping for someone to answer, he couldn’t keep a terrifying thought from sneaking into his mind:…

Last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years. Here’s how we know.

May 16, 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. I’m ready for summer, but if this year is anything like last year, it’s going to be a doozy. In fact, the summer of 2023 in the Northern Hemisphere was the hottest…

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

May 15, 2024
Recent highly publicized scandals have gotten the physics community worried about its reputation—and its future. Over the last five years, several claims of major breakthroughs in quantum computing and superconducting research, published in prestigious journals, have disintegrated as other researchers found they could not reproduce the blockbuster results.  Last week, around 50 physicists, scientific journal…

Google’s call-scanning AI could dial up censorship by default, privacy experts warn

May 15, 2024

A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real-time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent a collective shiver down the spines of privacy and security experts who are warning the feature represents the thin end of the wedge. They warn that, […]

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Optimizing the supply chain with a data lakehouse

May 15, 2024
When a commercial ship travels from the port of Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia to Tokyo Bay, it’s not only carrying cargo; it’s also transporting millions of data points across a wide array of partners and complex technology systems. Consider, for example, Maersk. The global shipping container and logistics company has more than 100,000 employees,…