The Download

What's up in emerging technology

Intelligent Machines

Alibaba Aims to “Master the Laws” of AI and Put Virtual Helpers Everywhere

CTO of the e-commerce giant says its new $15 billion research academy will explore AI, fintech, and quantum computing.
Rewriting Life

FDA Vote Sets Stage for Gene Therapy’s Future

The pioneering treatment fixes a mutated gene and could soon be available in the U.S.
Collection

EmTech 2017 Required Reading: Computer-Brain Interfaces

At EmTech we’ll hear how emerging interfaces are going to change computing.

Register now.

Sponsored by EmTech MIT

Sustainable Energy

Ceramic Pump That Takes the Heat Promises Cheap, Efficient Grid Storage

It can operate at a record 1,400 ˚C, enabling the use of liquid metals for thermal storage.
Rewriting Life

Scientists Can Read a Bird’s Brain and Predict Its Next Song

Next up, predicting human speech with a brain-computer interface.
Intelligent Machines

Quantum Inside: Intel Manufactures an Exotic New Chip

Manufacturing will be key to quantum computing, but don’t throw out your current processor just yet.
Rewriting Life

GM Apples That Don’t Brown to Reach U.S. Shelves This Fall

Can genetic modification appeal to consumers? A new apple will test the market.
Rewriting Life

Arming Bodies with CRISPR to Fight Huntington’s Disease and ALS

The editing tool normally targets DNA, but scientists are aiming it at a different molecule.
Connectivity

Hijacking Computers to Mine Cryptocurrency Is All the Rage

Hackers are using old tricks and new cryptocurrencies to turn stolen computing power into digital coins.
Content Hub

The Bridge to Digital Transformation: The Move to a Software-Based Network Strategy

Presented in partnership with VMware

Custom White Paper

Modern Storage Accelerates Data Insights, Speeding Innovation

In partnership with Pure Storage

Custom Research Report

Finance and HR: The Cloud’s New Power Partnership

In partnership with Oracle

View from the Marketplace

The Customer Engagement Revolution

Great experiences require a new approach to data management.

In partnership with Couchbase

Features

Rewriting Life

Inside the Moonshot Effort to Finally Figure Out the Brain

AI is only loosely modeled on the brain. So what if you wanted to do it right? You’d need to do what has been impossible until now: map what actually happens in neurons and nerve fibers.

by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Intelligent Machines

China’s AI Awakening
中国 人工智能 的崛起

The West shouldn’t fear China’s artificial-intelligence revolution. It should copy it.
Connectivity

How Blockchain Could Give Us a Smarter Energy Grid

Energy experts believe that blockchain technology can solve a maze of red tape and data management problems.

Watch Video

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Turning Flood Water into Drinking Water 03:27

Are Hurricane Risk Models Dangerously Out of Date? 25:32

We Tried 23andMe's Pain Tolerance Test 04:13

CRISPR Decoded 02:22

Blockchain Decoded 01:58

This Is How You'll Actually Use AR at Home 00:46

Q&A with Tim Cook 02:24

Blood-Delivering Drones 04:23

Why I Left the Hospital System and Started Working in Telemedicine 04:03

Sustainable Energy

Turning Flood Water into Drinking Water 03:27

A Thai government agency has developed a mobile unit called SOS that can purify contaminated water in the aftermath of a flood.

More Videos

Features

Intelligent Machines

The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions

Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.

by Rodney Brooks

Business Impact

This Chinese Startup Wants to Know Everything about Your Body

The goal is to use AI to keep you healthy. But are computers really smart enough to make sense of all that data?
Intelligent Machines

Put Humans at the Center of AI

At Stanford and Google, Fei-Fei Li is leading the development of artificial intelligence—and working to diversify the field.

From Our Current Issue

September/October 2017

Meet 35 people whose ideas will shape the future.

A New Way to Reproduce

Scientists are trying to manufacture eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Will it end reproduction as we know it?

Growing Up with Alexa

What will it do to kids to have digital butlers they can boss around?

Business Impact

How technology advances are changing the economy and providing new opportunities in many industries.

All Topics

  1. Why 500 Million People in China Are Talking to This AI

    iFlytek’s voice recognition technology is everywhere in China, and that’s what’s making it smarter every day.
    by Yiting Sun

  2. Colleges Are Marketing Drone Pilot Courses, but the Career Opportunities Are Murky

    At least 15 community colleges offer them, but it’s not clear how many students parlay their new skills into jobs.
    by Elizabeth Woyke

  3. This Chinese Startup Wants to Know Everything about Your Body

    The goal is to use AI to keep you healthy. But are computers really smart enough to make sense of all that data?
    by David Ewing Duncan
More from Business Impact

50 Smartest Companies 2017

Explore the 50 smartest companies in depth, including the full list and stories that examine how this group is combining important technologies and smart business strategies to best the competition.

See the Collection

Connectivity

What it means to be constantly connected with each other and vast sources of information.

All Topics

  1. How Close Are You Really?

    A diagram of your social network reveals the strength of your individual relationships, network scientists say.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv

  2. How Blockchain Could Give Us a Smarter Energy Grid

    Energy experts believe that blockchain technology can solve a maze of red tape and data management problems.
    by Mike Orcutt

  3. Oculus Chief Scientist Speaks about Virtual Reality in the Lab and on Your Face

    Michael Abrash says he’s looking at “specific aspects” of how VR affects us over time.
    by Rachel Metz
More from Connectivity

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

These breakthrough technologies will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are here now; others will take a decade to develop. But you should know about all of them right now.

See the List

Internet of Things: A World on the Move

Sponsored by Siemens

  1. If Only a Simple Gadget Rating Could Save Us from Cyberattack

    Suggestions that a security score be awarded to connected devices is a lovely idea that would be almost impossible to implement.
    by Jamie Condliffe

  2. Botnets of Things: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

    The relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.
    by Bruce Schneier

  3. Personal AI Privacy Watchdog Could Help You Regain Control of Your Data

    If regulators aren’t going to help consumers make sense of what companies are doing with their data, maybe artificial intelligence can.
    by Mike Orcutt
More in Internet of Things: A World on the Move

November 6-9, 2017

Cambridge, MA

Discover the emerging technologies that will change the world.

Meet the people and companies shaping our future. From next-generation brain interfaces to the impact of social media on society and much more, this is the tech conference you must not miss.

Register Now

AI Meets CRM: Transforming Customer Experiences

Sponsored by Salesforce

  1. Transform Customer Experiences by Harnessing the Power of AI in CRM

    Companies are using AI to build personalized and dynamic experiences to engage both internal and external audiences.
    by MIT Technology Review Custom

  2. Artificial Intelligence for Everyone: A Next-Generation Experience

    Organizations today are challenged with mining, analyzing and putting to good use the vast amounts of data now flooding in from multiple checkpoints. How to utilize that data to get closer to internal and external customers?
    by MIT Technology Review Custom

  3. Customer Data Meets AI

    A new day is dawning for the customer experience, driven by the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automated technologies to CRM data. The potential exists to transform the customer’s experience by providing service in a more predictive and intuitive way than ever before.
    by MIT Technology Review Custom
More in AI Meets CRM: Transforming Customer Experiences

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Innovations, Ideas, and Insights

Provided by BBVA

  1. Human Legacies When Robots Rule the Earth

    Machines have been displacing humans on job tasks for several centuries, and for seventy years many of these machines have been controlled by computers.
    by Robin Hanson

  2. Our Extended Sensoria. How Humans Will Connect with the Internet of Things

    Mark Weiser predicted the Internet of Things in a seminal article in 1991 about how people would interact with networked computation distributed into the environments and artifacts around them.
    by Joseph A. Paradiso

  3. Interstellar travel and post-humans

    The stupendous time-spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture.
    by Martin Rees
More in Innovations, Ideas, and Insights