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. Inside the cozy but creepy world of VR sleep rooms People are gathering in virtual spaces to relax, and even sleep, with their headsets on. VR sleep rooms are becoming popular among people…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. I spent last week in Washington, DC, and when I wasn’t fawning over the cherry blossoms, I was soaking up all the newest and wildest ideas in energy.  The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) funds high-risk,...

Lo-fi chill music was playing in the distance. Shooting stars sliced through the sparkling galaxy overhead. I was defying physics, hovering in space, on my back. Relaxed, I yawned and stretched, my fist punching a pillow that I had forgotten about. I was, of course, not in space. Physically, I was on a chaise in my home. Virtually, I was in one of many “sleep rooms” on the virtual-reality...

As the emergence of radically disruptive technologies over the last decades has created, destroyed, or fundamentally changed many business models, most organizations have undergone some kind of digital transformation in response. Many have been reluctant, however, to acknowledge the degree to which they need to disrupt their standard way of working to succeed in this continuously changing business...

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. Chinese creators use Midjourney’s AI to generate retro urban “photography” Across social media, a number of creators are generating nostalgic photographs of China with the help of AI. Even though these images get…

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. If you saw these images pop up on your timeline, would you be able to tell if they were real photographs of the southwestern city of Chongqing in the 1990s? In fact, none of them…

The industrial metaverse—a metaverse sector that mirrors and simulates real machines, factories, cities, transportation networks, and other highly complex systems—will offer to its participants fully immersive, real-time, interactive, persistent, and synchronous representations and simulations of the real world.  Existing and developing technologies, including digital twins,...

Greater speed and agility are helping organizations address an increasingly competitive marketplace, heightened customer expectations, and the lingering impact of the pandemic. To compete more effectively, companies are gathering and analyzing increasingly large and disparate sets of data. But only with cloud solutions, like Microsoft Azure, can this data provide insight into every corner of the...

When seemingly disparate fields, industries, and ways of thinking merge, a convergence happens, which, has the power to build more intuitive and advanced futures for both organizations and the everyday consumer, says Accenture communications, media and technology industry group chair, Kathleen O’Reilly and Daniela Rus, Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence...

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. Microplastics are messing with the microbiomes of seabirds The news: While we know that tiny pieces of plastic are everywhere, we don’t fully understand what they’re doing to us or other animals. Now,…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Think of a teacher. Close your eyes. What does that person look like? If you ask Stable Diffusion or DALL-E 2, two of the most popular AI image generators, it’s a white man with glasses.  Last week, I published a story about new tools...

Tiny pieces of plastic are everywhere. They’re in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. By one estimate, some people ingest around a credit card’s worth of plastic every week. Microplastics have been found in human blood, placentas, and feces. But we don’t fully understand what all these minuscule bits of plastic are doing to us or other animals. Now, new research...

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. ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like. Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, a gold rush has started over the last several months…

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. Earlier this week, I was chatting with a policy professor in Washington, DC, who told me that students and colleagues alike are asking about GPT-4 and generative AI: What should they be reading? How...

Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an artificial-intelligence gold rush has started over the last several months to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT. App developers, venture-backed startups, and some of the world’s largest corporations are all scrambling to make sense of the sensational text-generating bot released by…

When Lenovo set out to transition into a services-led company, they began by looking internally, says Art Hu, Lenovo’s senior vice president & chief information, technology and delivery officer of the Solutions & Services Group. To offer products and services that provide valuable business outcomes rather than traditional one-off hardware delivery, the company evolved internal…

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. Newly-revealed coronavirus data has reignited a debate over the virus’s origins This week, we’ve seen the resurgence of a debate that has been swirling since the start of the pandemic—where did the virus…

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. This week, coronavirus has been back in the news in a big way. We’ve seen the resurgence of a debate that has been swirling since the start of the pandemic—where did the…

Connected devices have become an expectation: whether at home, in the office, or moving through the city, people rely on smart, interconnected devices and sensors making their lives easier, more productive, and more efficient. Today, technical advances such as lower power chips, better connectivity, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are unlocking new...

Repairing a human liver using lab-grown cells. Using oral antibiotics to treat cystic fibrosis patients. Producing a single-dose treatment for breast cancer that’s proving highly effective. Predicting cancer with AI. All of this innovation came out of the UK life sciences industry. “It’s really the only industry that can both improve the health of your population and, therefore,...

In the United Kingdom, all stars are aligning for the space industry to advance, including an active venture capital community, a government cognizant of space tech’s potential, and close collaboration. Add advancements in emerging technologies, like quantum computing, into the mix, and its potential ignites. Joshua Western, CEO and co-founder of Wales-based space manufacturing startup...

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. Amazon is about to go head to head with SpaceX in a battle for satellite internet dominance  What’s coming: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are about to lock horns once again. Last month,…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. It’s a time to celebrate, reflect, and look forward to what’s next. Setting goals, drinking champagne—what’s not to like?  Before you say anything, I do know…

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are about to lock horns once again. Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission approved the final aspects of Project Kuiper, Amazon’s effort to deliver high-speed internet access from space. In May, the company will launch test versions of the Kuiper communications satellites in an attempt to take on SpaceX’s own venture, Starlink, and tap into a market of...