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 does GPT-3 “know” about me? One of the biggest stories in tech this year has been the rise of large language models (LLMs). These are AI models that produce text a human…

For a reporter who covers AI, one of the biggest stories this year has been the rise of large language models. These are AI models that produce text a human might have written—sometimes so convincingly they have tricked people into thinking they are sentient.  These models’ power comes from troves of publicly available human-created text…

Ammonia might seem like an unlikely fuel to help cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Best known for its odor, the gas can be dangerous and toxic. But it could also play a key role in decarbonizing global shipping, providing an efficient way to store the energy needed to power large ships on long journeys. The American Bureau of Shipping, which sets safety standards for global shipping, recently...

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. China’s heat wave is creating havoc for electric vehicle drivers As a globally unprecedented heat wave continues to hold its grip on southern China, with the highest temperature as much as 113°F (45°C),…

Roger Nichols remembers sending his first e-mail using wireless networks in the early 1990s, from the back of a bus during his daily commute. That was 30 years ago, on a 1G network—at a data rate about fifteen thousand times slower than today. Now the 6G program manager at Keysight Technologies, Nichols sees the rapid growth of the current mobile wireless standard and knows that there is much...

As the covid pandemic raged in late 2020, all eyes turned briefly from our troubled planet to our planetary neighbor Venus. Astronomers had made a startling detection in its cloud tops: a gas called phosphine that on Earth is created through biological processes. Speculation ran wild as scientists struggled to understand what they were seeing.  Now, a mission due to be launched next year...

I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of the In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed moments in artificial intelligence and computing happened, as told by the people who witnessed them. In this episode we meet Dave Johnson, the chief data and artificial intelligence officer at Moderna. Credits: This project was produced...

As a globally unprecedented 70-day heat wave continues to hold its grip on southern China, with the highest temperature as much as 113°F (45°C), severe droughts and shortages in the hydropower supply are wreaking havoc on the lives of residents. Electric vehicle owners are one group particularly feeling the heat. Since public charging posts are temporarily closed or restricted and many...

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 company is about to grow new organs in a person for the first time In the coming weeks, a volunteer in Boston, Massachusetts, will be the first to trial a new treatment…

The most viewed post on Facebook last quarter was a sixty-nine joke, featuring reposted footage from an episode of the TV show Family Feud. The post, originally an Instagram Reel, had more than 52 million views on Facebook, according to Meta’s quarterly report on the most widely-viewed content on the platform in the U.S. It was just one of many spammy meme reposts to feature in Meta’s own list...

In the coming weeks, a volunteer in Boston, Massachusetts, will be the first to trial a new treatment that could end up creating a second liver in their body. And that’s just the start—in the months that follow, other volunteers will test doses that could leave them with up to six livers in their bodies. The company behind the treatment, LyGenesis, hopes to save people with devastating...

Mouse embryos recently generated from stem cells in a lab show more brain development than any synthetic mouse embryos created previously.   While other researchers had created mouse embryos from stem cells, none reached the point where the entire brain, including the anterior portion at the front, began to develop, according to the researchers from the University of Cambridge and the...

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. Why the carbon capture subsidies in the climate bill are good news The Inflation Reduction Act, which US President Joe Biden signed into law last week, will plow tens of billions of dollars…

The Inflation Reduction Act, which US President Joe Biden signed into law last week, will steer tens of billions of dollars into projects designed to capture carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released from power plants and industrial facilities. That provision is proving to be one of the more controversial climate items in the sweeping…

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. Introducing: The Gender Issue Our first ever gender issue tackles a topic this magazine and the wider tech sector has given too little thought to for too many decades. When we started planning…

...

...

In 2019, Amazon committed to achieving “net-zero carbon” across its businesses by 2040. The online retail behemoth’s company-wide emissions have soared by 40% since then, topping 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year. It’s a glaring example of the gulf between corporate pledges and climate progress, but far from the only one. Numerous…

Doctors can’t tell a person’s race from medical images such as x-rays and CT scans. But a team including MIT researchers was able to train a deep-learning model to identify patients as white, Black, or Asian (according to their own description) just by analyzing such images—and they still can’t figure out how the computer does it.  After looking at variables including differences...

The MIT inventors of tiny artificial muscles that flap the wings of robotic insects have now added electroluminescent particles that enable them to emit colored light during flight, similar to fireflies. The artificial muscles, called actuators, are made by alternating ultrathin layers of elastomer and carbon nanotube electrode material and then rolling the stack of layers into a squishy...

In April, design major Karyn Nakamura ’23 transformed Simmons Hall into an interactive art project. Her piece, titled “116 x 31” after the number of squares in Simmons’s façade, converted audio into dynamically projected color patterns evocative of vintage video games.

After two years of virtual celebrations, MIT welcomed back more than 9,800 alumni and guests to celebrate the anniversaries of their graduation from the Institute. The festivities included an on-campus graduation celebration featuring a key-note address from Kealoha Wong ’99 for the classes of 2020 and 2021, whose commencement ceremonies were held online. In addition to milestone reunion year...

A signature MIT quality is the drive to make a positive impact. It’s the essence of Mind and Hand. It’s central to our mission statement: “to bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges.” And it’s obvious across the Institute, from the palpable intensity in the Infinite to the Climate Grand Challenges flagship projects featured in this issue to the startups that stream out...

When people think about Kentucky, they often picture bluegrass, horses, and bourbon—not necessarily a vibrant ecosystem of entrepreneurs and startups. As executive director of the nonprofit AccelerateKY, Sam Ford is aiming to change that. “Everyone’s always excited to talk about bourbon, but Kentucky’s also a major leader in electric batteries,” says Ford, a graduate of MIT’s...