Cover Story

Inside Vicarious, the Secretive AI Startup Bringing Imagination to Computers

By reinventing the neural network, the company hopes to help computers make the leap from processing words and symbols to comprehending the real world.

by Will Knight

The Daily

Your guide to what matters today

05.19

  1. Google Thinks You’re Ready to Converse with Computers

    Google’s new virtual assistant will be the biggest test yet of the theory that people want to talk to software to get things done.

    by Tom Simonite

  2. Facebook Has a Lot to Lose by Appearing Biased

    The social media giant may reap more than $500 million in political ad revenue, but it trades on its image as an unbiased platform for information.

    by David Talbot

  3. It’s an Evolutionary Arms Race, and the Superbugs are Winning

    An exhaustive new report on the state of drug-resistance in microbes has found that by 2050, infections could kill more people a year than cancer.

    by Michael Reilly

  4. Amgen Finds Anti-Heart Attack Gene

    Massive gene studies are letting biotechnology companies learn from nature, and imitate it.

    by Antonio Regalado

  5. Google’s Plan to Use Android Phones to Dominate Virtual Reality

    Google’s Daydream platform is its answer to the Oculus and Gear VR headsets.

    by Rachel Metz

  6. How to Create a Malevolent Artificial Intelligence

    If cybersecurity experts are to combat malevolent artificial intelligence, they will need to know how such a system can emerge, say computer scientists.

    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv

  7. Chinese Bid for Kuka Shows How Serious It Is About Robots

    A Chinese company’s attempt to buy the German robotics giant is the latest sign of the country’s ambitions to lead a revolution in advanced manufacturing.

    by Will Knight

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Clean power

Floating Wind Farms: Great Concept, Implausible Economics

There are much stronger winds the further offshore you go, but capturing them and turning them into electricity has proved uneconomical.

Big Data, Big Business

Big data is transforming business today. Here’s how Oracle is mining its cutting-edge strategies.

Presented in partnership with Oracle

Security and privacy

Largest Study of Online Tracking Proves Google Really Is Watching Us All

Google’s Web trackers are present on the majority of the Web’s top million sites.
3-D Printing

Can HP Make 3-D Printing into a Mass Manufacturing Technique?

The tech giant says its new $130,000 printers will produce plastic parts quickly and inexpensively.
Tomorrow's machines

China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers

Can China reboot its manufacturing industry—and the global economy—by replacing millions of workers with machines?
Big data

How Political Candidates Know If You’re Neurotic

The latest data-driven campaign pitches target you based on your personality, not just your demographics. But does such profiling work?
Internet access

Remaking Social Media for the Next Revolution

A hero of the Egyptian revolution laments the limits of social media and hopes to improve online dialogue.
View from the Marketplace

How Data Capital Creates Competitive Advantage

Data-capital tools are available to established companies and startups alike. The real trick: Determining which business activities generate the most valuable data.

Produced in partnership with Oracle

Tomorrow's machines

EmTech Digital Preview: What Does AI Mean for Your Enterprise?

Executives from Facebook, Google, and other technology giants will share artificial intelligence strategies in San Francisco this month.

Features

Innovation strategies

Rising Seas Lift an Industry

For the Dutch masters of water management, climate change is a boon.

by Russ Juskalian

Machine learning

Robots Learn How to Make Friends and Influence People

If robots can learn to respect human social norms, they will become much better at navigating busy spaces like airports, malls, or city sidewalks.
Internet access

Wireless, Super-Fast Internet Access Is Coming to Your Home

The Supreme Court shut down his last venture, Aereo, after it riled TV broadcasters. Now Chet Kanojia wants to overturn how broadband is delivered.
Web

What Facebook Knows

The company’s social scientists are hunting for insights about human behavior. What they find could give Facebook new ways to cash in on our data—and remake our view of society.

Tom Simonite

Taking on the Cybersecurity Challenge

Produced by MIT Technology Review Custom, in partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and FireEye

  1. Once More Unto the Breach: What It Takes to Defeat Cyberattackers

    Cyberattacks are a fact of life across the world, as intruders breach more and more organizations each day. Why are we so vulnerable? And what can we do to make our systems more secure?
    by MIT Technology Review Custom

  2. Crisis Communication After an Attack

    If there’s one area where organizations stumble when responding to breaches, it’s in keeping stakeholders informed. Doing that job well starts well before cybercriminals come calling.
    by MIT Technology Review Custom
More in Taking on the Cybersecurity Challenge

Computing

From the latest smartphones to advances in quantum computing, the hardware behind today's digital age is rapidly changing.

All Topics

  1. How to Create a Malevolent Artificial Intelligence

    If cybersecurity experts are to combat malevolent artificial intelligence, they will need to know how such a system can emerge, say computer scientists.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv

  2. Can HP Make 3-D Printing into a Mass Manufacturing Technique?

    The tech giant says its new $130,000 printers will produce plastic parts quickly and inexpensively.
    by Mike Orcutt

  3. Wireless, Super-Fast Internet Access Is Coming to Your Home

    The Supreme Court shut down his last venture, Aereo, after it riled TV broadcasters. Now Chet Kanojia wants to overturn how broadband is delivered.
    by David Talbot
More from Computing

05. 2016

Business Reports

AI Takes Off

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Features

Beyond silicon

Moore’s Law Is Dead. Now What?

Shrinking transistors have powered 50 years of advances in computing—but now other ways must be found to make computers more capable.

by Tom Simonite

Innovation strategies

The Unbelievable Reality of the Impossible Hyperloop

Startup Hyperloop Technologies has started shooting magnetically levitated capsules along a track in Las Vegas to show off a radical idea for the future of freight and mass transit.
Novel therapeutics

Gene Therapy’s First Out-and-Out Cure Is Here

A gene therapy for an inherited immune disease completes a 27-year journey.

Mobile

How ubiquitous information and communication are transforming our lives.

All Topics

  1. Facebook Has a Lot to Lose by Appearing Biased

    The social media giant may reap more than $500 million in political ad revenue, but it trades on its image as an unbiased platform for information.
    by David Talbot

  2. How to Make Passwords That Cannot Be Compromised by Torture or Coercion

    Your state of mind can reveal whether you are being forced to give up your password. So researchers are using this to build a coercion-resistant system of authentication.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv

  3. Oculus Says Over a Million People Used Gear VR Headsets in April

    People are watching lots of video with the mobile virtual-reality headset.
    by Rachel Metz
More from Mobile

Innovations, Ideas, and Insights

Provided by BBVA

  1. Striving for Innovation Success in the 21st Century

    Open innovation bridges the gap between business and academia. It encourages participation on both sides, through a distributed and decentralized approach.
    by Henry Chesbrough, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley

  2. Reinventing Marketing in the Digital Era
    by George Day, Wharton Business School

  3. Business Models, Information Technology, and the Company of the Future
    by Haim Mendelson, Stanford University
More in Innovations, Ideas, and Insights