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What’s next for generative video

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 them here. When OpenAI revealed its new generative video model, Sora, last month, it invited a handful of filmmakers to try it out. This week the company published…


WEDNESDAY 27. MARCH 2024


The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.

Plug-in hybrids are supposed to be the best of both worlds—the convenience of a gas-powered car with the climate benefits of a battery electric vehicle. But new data suggests that some official figures severely underestimate the emissions they produce.  According to new real-world driving data from the European Commission, plug-in hybrids produce roughly 3.5 times the emissions official...


TUESDAY 26. MARCH 2024


AI could make better beer. Here’s how.

Crafting a good-tasting beer is a difficult task. Big breweries select hundreds of trained tasters from among their employees to test their new products. But running such sensory tasting panels is expensive, and perceptions of what tastes good can be highly subjective.   What if artificial intelligence could help lighten the load? New AI models can accurately identify not only how...

Meet the MIT Technology Review AI team in London

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The UK is home to AI powerhouse Google DeepMind, a slew of exciting AI startups, and some of the world’s best universities. It’s also where I live, along with quite a few of my MIT Technology Review colleagues, including our senior AI editor...

How Adobe’s bet on non-exploitative AI is paying off

Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, there has been a fight over how large AI models are trained. In one camp sit tech companies such as OpenAI that have claimed it is “impossible” to train AI without hoovering the internet of copyrighted data. And in the other camp are artists who argue that AI companies have taken their intellectual property without consent and compensation. ...


MONDAY 25. MARCH 2024


The tech industry can’t agree on what open source AI means. That’s a problem.

Suddenly, “open source” is the latest buzzword in AI circles. Meta has pledged to create open-source artificial general intelligence. And Elon Musk is suing OpenAI over its lack of open-source AI models. Meanwhile, a growing number of tech leaders and companies are setting themselves up as open-source champions.  But there’s a fundamental problem—no one can…


FRIDAY 22. MARCH 2024


Apple researchers explore dropping “Siri” phrase & listening with AI instead

Researchers from Apple are probing whether it’s possible to use artificial intelligence to detect when a user is speaking to a device like an iPhone, thereby eliminating the technical need for a trigger phrase like “Siri,” according to a paper published on Friday. In a study, which was uploaded to Arxiv and has not been peer-reviewed, researchers trained a large language model using both...

How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets

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. This week I have a mystery for you. It’s the story of how a team of researchers traced a covid variant in Wisconsin from a wastewater plant to six toilets at a single company. But it’s also a story about...


THURSDAY 21. MARCH 2024


Roundtables: How China Got Ahead on EVs

Recorded on March 21, 2024 How China Got Ahead on EVs Speakers: Zeyi Yang, China reporter, Amanda Silverman, Features & investigations editor, and Abby Ivory-Ganja, Sr engagement editor In the race to produce and sell more electric vehicles, China has emerged as the unexpected winner. If you visit Shanghai or Shenzhen today, it feels like half of the cars running on the...

This startup wants to fight growing global dengue outbreaks with drones

The world is grappling with dengue epidemics, with 100 to 400 million cases worldwide every year,  an eightfold increase since 20 years ago, according to the World Health Organization. Much of this is driven by the warming climate, which allows mosquitos to thrive in more areas.  A startup in São Paulo,  Brazil, one of the countries being hit the hardest by dengue outbreaks, has a...

Why New York City is testing battery swapping for e-bikes

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Spend enough time in a city and you’ll get to know its unique soundscape. In New York City, it features the echoes of car stereos, the deep grumbles of garbage truck engines, and, increasingly, the high-pitched whirring of electric bikes. E-bikes...


WEDNESDAY 20. MARCH 2024


There is a new most expensive drug in the world. Price tag: $4.25 million

There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime. Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) and was approved in the U.S. on Monday. Its maker, Orchard Therapeutics, said today the $4.25 million wholesale cost reflects the value the treatment...

Building a more reliable supply chain

In 2021, when a massive container ship became wedged in the Suez Canal, you could almost hear the collective sigh of frustration around the globe. It was a here-we-go-again moment in a year full of supply chain hiccups. Every minute the ship remained stuck represented about $6.7 million in paralyzed global trade. The 12 months leading up to the debacle had seen countless manufacturing,...

New York City’s plan to stop e-bike battery fires

Walk just a few blocks in New York City and you’ll likely spot an electric bike zipping by. The vehicles have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among delivery drivers, tens of thousands of whom weave through New York streets. But the e-bike influx has caused a wave of fires sparked by their batteries, some of them deadly. Now, the city wants to fight those fires with...

A wave of drugs dreamed up by AI is on its way

Alex Zhavoronkov has been messing around with artificial intelligence for more than a decade. In 2016, the programmer and physicist was using AI to rank people by looks and sort through pictures of cats. Now he says his company, Insilico Medicine, has created the first “true AI drug” that’s advanced to a test of whether it can cure a fatal lung condition in humans. Zhavoronkov says...


TUESDAY 19. MARCH 2024


Google DeepMind’s new AI assistant helps elite soccer coaches get even better

Soccer teams are always looking to get an edge over their rivals. Whether it’s studying players’ susceptibility to injury, or opponents’ tactics—top clubs look at reams of data to give them the best shot of winning.  They might want to add a new AI assistant developed by Google DeepMind to their arsenal. It can suggest tactics for soccer set-pieces that are even better than those...

The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. It’s official. After three years, the AI Act, the EU’s new sweeping AI law, jumped through its final bureaucratic hoop last week when the European Parliament voted to approve it. (You can catch up on the five main things you need to know about the AI Act...


MONDAY 18. MARCH 2024


How AI taught Cassie the two-legged robot to run and jump

If you’ve watched Boston Dynamics’ slick videos of robots running, jumping and doing parkour, you might have the impression robots have learned to be amazingly agile. In fact, these robots are still coded by hand, and would struggle to deal with new obstacles they haven’t encountered before. However, a new method of teaching robots to move could help to deal with new scenarios, through...

Harvard has halted its long-planned atmospheric geoengineering experiment

Harvard researchers have ceased a long-running effort to conduct a small geoengineering experiment in the stratosphere, following repeated delays and public criticism. In a university statement released on March 18, Frank Keutsch, the principal investigator on the project, said he is “no longer pursuing the experiment.” The basic concept behind solar geoengineering is that the world...