This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. In January 2023, Tara Sweeney’s plane landed on Thwaites Glacier, a 74,000-square-mile mass of frozen water in West Antarctica. She arrived with an international research team to study the glacier’s geology and ice fabric, and how its ice melt might contribute to sea level…

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 inverse vaccines might tackle diseases like multiple sclerosis On the whole, typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But scientists are also working on “inverse vaccines” that teach the immune system…

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. I’ve written about vaccines for years, but recently I stumbled across a concept I had never heard of before. Typical vaccines prime the immune system to respond. But scientists are also...

Consider a supply chain where delivery vehicles, shipping containers, and individual products are sensor-equipped. Real-time insights enable workers to optimize routes, reduce delays, and efficiently manage inventory. This smart orchestration boosts efficiency, minimizes waste, and lowers costs. Many industries are rapidly integrating sensors, creating vast data streams that can be leveraged to...

Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), will play a crucial role in the future of customer and employee experiences, software development, and more. Building a solid foundation in machine learning operations (MLOps) will be critical for companies to effectively deploy and scale LLMs, and generative AI capabilities broadly. In this uncharted territory, improper management can lead...

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’s next for the world’s fastest supercomputers When the Frontier supercomputer came online last year, it marked the dawn of so-called exascale computing, with machines that can execute an exaflop—or a quintillion (1018)…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Have you ever repeated a word so many times it started to sound like gibberish? Try saying “peanut butter,” “roughhousing,” or “warbler” about 50 times, and you’ll be wondering whether the words meant anything to begin with. ...

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of our series here. It can be difficult to wrap your brain around the number-crunching capability of the world’s fastest supercomputer. But computer scientist Jack Dongarra, of the University of Tennessee, puts it this way: “If...

We live in a tech-enabled world, but for organizations to advance world-changing innovations, they need skilled people who can build, install, and maintain the systems that underlie them. Finding that talent is one of the biggest ongoing problems — and opportunities — in tech. The IT staffing shortages brought on by covid-19 and the Great Resignation are still affecting companies...

The enthusiasm for AI and its applications is reaching a nadir, according to an August 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle press release, where generative AI is nearly perched atop the category of technologies at their “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” ready to plunge into the “Trough of Disillusionment.” A quick look at social media agrees, with some pages filled with targeted advertisements about...

Product information is a powerful commodity in today’s digital economy. Making it accessible can let consumers know if an item contains allergens, help retailers respond swiftly to product recalls, and enable suppliers to track real-time inventory levels. But data can become siloed and inaccessible if organizations fail to make it easy to connect with. This means shifting away from legacy...

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. A Disney director tried—and failed—to use an AI Hans Zimmer to create a soundtrack When Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was thinking about the soundtrack for his…

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Writing about China, a question I always get is: What technology is ubiquitous there but hasn’t caught on in the West? One of my go-to answers is livestream e-commerce.  If you…

Google DeepMind says it’s trained an artificial intelligence that can predict which DNA variations in our genomes are likely to cause disease—predictions that could speed diagnosis of rare disorders and possibly yield clues for drug development. DeepMind, founded in London and acquired by Google 10 years ago, is known for artificial-intelligence programs that play video games and have...