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The Download: Google’s Gemini is here, and Sundar Pichai talks AI

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. Google DeepMind’s new Gemini model looks amazing—but could signal peak AI hype Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind’s long-rumored response to OpenAI’s GPT-4, has been building for months. Now, the company has finally revealed…

How carbon removal technology is like a time machine

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 could go back in time, what would you change about your life, or the world? The idea of giving myself some much-needed advice is appealing (don’t cut your own bangs in high school, seriously). But we can think bigger. What about winding the...


WEDNESDAY 6. DECEMBER 2023


Google DeepMind’s new Gemini model looks amazing—but could signal peak AI hype

Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind’s long-rumored response to OpenAI’s GPT-4, has been building for months. Today the company finally revealed what it has been working on in secret all this time. Was the hype justified? Yes—and no.  Gemini is Google’s biggest AI launch yet—its push to take on competitors OpenAI and Microsoft in the race for AI supremacy. There is no doubt that the...

Chinese apps are letting public juries settle customer disputes

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Have you ordered food delivery lately?  If you have, you probably know that particular feeling of frustration when you have to wait too long for your order or, when you finally receive it, the food isn’t what you asked for. These...


TUESDAY 5. DECEMBER 2023


AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. World leaders are currently in Dubai for the UN COP28 climate talks. As 2023 is set to become the hottest year on record, this year’s meeting is a moment of reckoning for oil and gas companies. There is also renewed focus and enthusiasm on boosting...

Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech

Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the industry around generative AI was a vibrant competitive ecosystem.  But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it poses. Put simply, in the context of the current...

Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison.  Worldwide, those emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase from 2022 levels, according to this year’s Global Carbon Budget...


MONDAY 4. DECEMBER 2023


Capitalizing on machine learning with collaborative, structured enterprise tooling teams

Advances in machine learning (ML) and AI are emerging on a near-daily basis—meaning that industry, academia, government, and society writ large are evolving their understanding of the associated risks and capabilities in real time. As enterprises seek to capitalize on the potential of AI, it’s critical that they develop, maintain, and advance state-of-the-art ML practices and processes that...

I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.

On a picturesque fall day a few years ago, I opened the mailbox and took out an envelope as thick as a Bible that would change my life. The package was from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and it contained a consent form to participate in a clinical trial for a new gene-editing drug to treat sickle cell disease. A week prior, my wife and I had talked on the phone with Haydar Frangoul, an oncologist and...

Users are doling out justice on a Chinese food delivery app

There are no jury trials in Chinese courts—but if you think the noodles you just got delivered were too hot, a jury of your peers will quickly determine guilt in the app where you ordered it.  Jury trials, in fact, are plentiful on Chinese apps—especially Meituan, the country’s most popular food delivery service, where millions of users have volunteered to arbitrate complaints...


SATURDAY 2. DECEMBER 2023



FRIDAY 1. DECEMBER 2023


A high school’s deepfake porn scandal is pushing US lawmakers into action

On October 20, Francesca Mani was called to the counselor’s office at her New Jersey high school. A 14-year-old sophomore and a competitive fencer, Francesca wasn’t one for getting in trouble. That day, a rumor had been circulating the halls: over the summer, boys in the school had used artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit and even pornographic photos of some of their...

The first CRISPR cure might kickstart the next big patent battle

That’s a real nice CRISPR cure you have there. It would be a pity if anything happened to it.  Okay. Drop the tough-guy accent and toss the black fedora aside. But I do believe that similar conversations could be occurring now that a historic gene-editing cure is coming to market, as soon as this year. By the middle of December, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, based in Boston, is expected to...

Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone

Each time you use AI to generate an image, write an email, or ask a chatbot a question, it comes at a cost to the planet. In fact, generating an image using a powerful AI model takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone, according to a new study by researchers at the AI startup Hugging Face and Carnegie Mellon University. However, they found that using an AI model to generate text...


THURSDAY 30. NOVEMBER 2023


Sustainability starts with the data center

When asked why he targeted banks, notorious criminal Willie Sutton reportedly answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” Similarly, when thoughtful organizations target sustainability, they look to their data centers—because that’s where the carbon emissions are. The International Energy Agency (IEA) attributes about 1.5% of total global electricity use to data centers and...

The University of California has all but dropped carbon offsets—and thinks you should, too

In the fall of 2018, the University of California (UC) tasked a team of researchers with identifying tree planting or similar projects from which it could confidently purchase carbon offsets that would reliably cancel out greenhouse gas emissions across its campuses.  The researchers found next to nothing. “We took a look across the whole market…


WEDNESDAY 29. NOVEMBER 2023


Google DeepMind’s new AI tool helped create more than 700 new materials

From EV batteries to solar cells to microchips, new materials can supercharge technological breakthroughs. But discovering them usually takes months or even years of trial-and-error research.  Google DeepMind hopes to change that with a new tool that uses deep learning to dramatically speed up the process of discovering new materials. Called graphical networks for material exploration...

Augmenting the realities of work

Imagine an integrated workplace with 3D visualizations that augment presentations, interactive and accelerated onboarding, and controlled training simulations. This is the future of immersive technology that global head of Immersive Technology Research at JPMorgan Chase, Blair MacIntyre is working to build. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies can blend physical and digital...

The X Prize is taking aim at aging with a new $101 million award

Money can’t buy happiness, but X Prize founder Peter Diamandis hopes it might be able to buy better health. Today the X Prize Foundation, which funds global competitions to spark development of breakthrough technologies, announced a new $101 million prize—the largest yet—to address the mental and physical decline that comes with aging. The winners will have to prove by 2030 that their...


TUESDAY 28. NOVEMBER 2023


Procurement in the age of AI

Procurement professionals face challenges more daunting than ever. Recent years’ supply chain disruptions and rising costs, deeply familiar to consumers, have had an outsize impact on business buying. At the same time, procurement teams are under increasing pressure to supply their businesses while also contributing to business growth and profitability. Deloitte’s 2023 Global Chief...

Why the UN climate talks are a moment of reckoning for oil and gas companies

The United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s largest oil producers. It’s also the site of this year’s UN COP28 climate summit, which kicks off later this week in Dubai.  It’s certainly a controversial location choice, but the truth is that there’s massive potential for oil and gas companies to help address climate change, both by cleaning up their operations and by investing...


MONDAY 27. NOVEMBER 2023


Unpacking the hype around OpenAI’s rumored new Q* model

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Ever since last week’s dramatic events at OpenAI, the rumor mill has been in overdrive about why the company’s chief scientific officer Ilya Sutskever and its board decided to oust CEO Sam Altman. While we still don’t know all the details, there have been reports...

Finding value in generative AI for financial services

With tools such as ChatGPT, DALLE-2, and CodeStarter, generative AI has captured the public imagination in 2023. Unlike past technologies that have come and gone—think metaverse—this latest one looks set to stay. OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, is perhaps the best-known generative AI tool. It reached 100 million monthly active users in just two months after launch, surpassing even TikTok and...


FRIDAY 24. NOVEMBER 2023



THURSDAY 23. NOVEMBER 2023



WEDNESDAY 22. NOVEMBER 2023


This Chinese map app wants to be a super app for everything outdoors

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Thanksgiving is almost here. This year, when you get together with your family, may I suggest a fun little game that reinvents hide-and-seek for the digital age? When I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, I went to a park with...

Four ways AI is making the power grid faster and more resilient

The power grid is growing increasingly complex as more renewable energy sources come online. Where once a small number of large power plants supplied most homes at a consistent flow, now millions of solar panels generate variable electricity. Increasingly unpredictable weather adds to the challenge of balancing demand with supply. To manage the chaos, grid operators are increasingly turning to...


TUESDAY 21. NOVEMBER 2023


The 2024 35 Innovators Under 35 competition is now open for nominations

We like to think of the annual 35 Innovators Under 35 competition as the flip side of our popular 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. With 10 Breakthrough Technologies we ask: What groundbreaking innovations will affect our lives over the next few years? With Innovators Under 35, we ask: Which young people are doing the most promising work in technology today, and what does that tell us about...

Meta responds to calls for greater transparency with a new research database

Meta is releasing a new transparency product called the Meta Content Library and API, according to an announcement from the company today. The new tool will allow select researchers to access publicly available data on Facebook and Instagram in an effort to give a more overarching view of what’s happening on the platforms.  The move comes as social media companies are facing public and...


MONDAY 20. NOVEMBER 2023


What’s next for OpenAI

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. OpenAI, are you okay, babe? This past weekend has been a fever dream in the AI world. The board of OpenAI, the world’s hottest AI company, shocked everyone by firing CEO…

A controversial US surveillance program is up for renewal. Critics are speaking out.

This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. For the past week my social feeds have been filled with a pretty important tech policy debate that I want to key you in on: the renewal of a controversial program of American surveillance.The program,...

This viral game in China reinvents hide-and-seek for the digital age

On a late October evening, I found myself hiding in the shadows of a tree in a Hong Kong park. I was on high alert, warily eyeing everyone walking toward me. I was checking my phone every few seconds, watching the locations of dozens of people who were trying to hunt me down. I wasn’t actually in danger. I was playing a game of hide-and-seek with 40 strangers in a seven-acre park built on the...


FRIDAY 17. NOVEMBER 2023


This company is building AI for African languages

Inside a co-working space in the Rosebank neighborhood of Johannesburg, Jade Abbott popped open a tab on her computer and prompted ChatGPT to count from 1 to 10 in isiZulu, a language spoken by more than 10 million people in her native South Africa. The results were “mixed and hilarious,” says Abbott, a computer scientist and researcher.  Then she typed in a few sentences in isiZulu...