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

Hyundai-backed Motional buys time with a bridge loan

March 15, 2024

Autonomous vehicle technology startup Motional has secured a bridge loan that provides a temporary financial reprieve as the company searches for a longer term source of funding, TechCrunch has learned. Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma told staff in a companywide email view by TechCrunch that the company’s board of directors approved the bridge financing. “As I’ve […]

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This self-driving startup is using generative AI to predict traffic

March 15, 2024
Self-driving company Waabi is using a generative AI model to help predict the movement of vehicles, it announced today. The new system, called Copilot4D, was trained on troves of data from lidar sensors, which use light to sense how far away objects are. If you prompt the model with a situation, like a driver recklessly…

The Download: Africa’s AI regulation push, and how to fight denge

March 15, 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. Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now In Tanzania, farmers are using an AI-assisted app that works in their native language of Swahili to detect a devastating cassava disease before it spreads. In…

Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now        

March 15, 2024
In the Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania, rural farmers are using an AI-assisted app called Nuru that works in their native language of Swahili to detect a devastating cassava disease before it spreads. In South Africa, computer scientists have built machine learning models to analyze the impact of racial segregation in housing. And in Nairobi, Kenya,…

Brazil is fighting dengue with bacteria-infected mosquitos

March 15, 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. As dengue cases continue to rise in Brazil, the country is facing a massive public health crisis. The viral disease, spread by mosquitoes, has sickened more…

The Download: AI’s gaming prowess, and calculating methane emissions

March 14, 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. An AI that can play Goat Simulator is a step toward more useful machines The news: A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen…

3 Biotech Stocks to Jumpstart Your Portfolio Gains

March 14, 2024
The biotech industry is poised for robust growth due to increasing demand for personalized treatments, rising prevalence of chronic diseases, heightened investments in R&D, and advancements in technology. Therefore, investors…

Why methane emissions are still a mystery

March 14, 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. If you follow papers in climate and energy for long enough, you’re bound to recognize some patterns.  There are a few things I’ll basically always see when I’m sifting through the latest…