The effort to make a breakthrough cancer therapy cheaper

December 20, 2024

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs

A live agent spends hours each week manually documenting routine interactions. Another combs through multiple knowledge bases to find the right solution, scrambling to piece it together while the customer waits on hold. A third types out the same response they’ve written dozens of times before. These repetitive tasks can be draining, leaving less time…

April 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. CAR-T therapies, created by engineering a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, are typically reserved for people who have exhausted other treatment options. But last week, the FDA…

A brief, weird history of brainwashing

April 12, 2024

On an early spring day in 1959, Edward Hunter testified before a US Senate subcommittee investigating “the effect of Red China Communes on the United States.” It was the kind of opportunity he relished. A war correspondent who had spent considerable time in Asia, Hunter had achieved brief media stardom in 1951 after his book…

India’s Exponent Energy brings 15-minute charging to passenger three-wheelers

April 12, 2024

India is getting an electric three-wheeler passenger vehicle that charges from 0 to 100% in 15 minutes. The launch of the new EV — a collaboration between auto manufacturer Omega Seiki Mobility and battery-tech startup Exponent Energy — comes amid India’s ambition to electrify 80% of all its three-wheelers by 2030 in an effort to […]

WhatsApp trials Meta AI chatbot in India, more markets

April 12, 2024

WhatsApp is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with users in India and some other markets, signalling its intentions to tap the massive user base to scale its AI offerings. The company recently began testing the AI chatbot, until now available in limited markets including the U.S., with some users in India, many […]

X is removing ability to hide checkmarks for premium users

April 12, 2024

Last year, Elon Musk-owned social network X rolled out a feature for paid users to hide their checkmarks from others. Now, the company is sending notifications to users saying that the feature will go away soon. Just like a lot of decisions taken by X, there is no definite timeline as to when the hide […]

OpenAI makes ChatGPT ‘more direct, less verbose’

April 12, 2024

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral AI-powered chatbot, just got a big upgrade. OpenAI announced today that premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now leveraged an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo, one of the models that powers the conversational ChatGPT experience. This new model (“gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09”) brings with it […]

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs