The Download
What's up in emerging technology
Walmart wants us to believe it’s turning into a tech company
Google’s just been hit with a $5 billion antitrust fine, Europe’s biggest ever
This company is giving away face recognition software to K-12 schools
Coinbase is starting to look a lot like a traditional big tech company
A new report says AI will replace as many jobs as it kills—but take that with a huge grain of salt
Sept. 11-14, 2018
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From Our Current Issue
Intelligent Machines
Google wants to make programming quantum computers easier
Its new open-source software will help developers experiment with the machines, including Google’s own super-powerful quantum processor.
Intelligent Machines
Facebook’s AI tourist finds its way around New York City by asking for help from another algorithm
AI algorithms can learn to navigate in the real world using language—and that might help make chatbots and voice assistants smarter.
Intelligent Machines
The US may have just pulled even with China in the race to build supercomputing’s next big thing
The two countries are vying to create an exascale computer that could lead to significant advances in many scientific fields.
Sustainable Energy
We still have no idea how to eliminate more than a quarter of energy emissions
Air travel, shipping, and manufacturing are huge sources of carbon that we lack good options for addressing.
Rewriting Life
Inside the effort to print lungs and breathe life into them with stem cells
Martine Rothblatt wants to end transplant shortages with 3-D-printed lungs.
Business Impact
MIT Technology Review’s new design—and new mission
Tech journalism shouldn’t just explain technology, but seek to make it more of a force for good.
Business Impact
A performance review from the future
MIT Technology Review envisions feedback for future workers.
Watch Video
More videos
Robots as nurses' assistants 00:36
Next-Generation Robots Need Your Help 27:36
Access to broadband is as important as access to water and electricity 01:15
We shouldn't preserve "willy nilly" the cost of production 01:00
Coffee-fetching robots 02:08
Automating things on wheels 00:50
Humans versus machines: Chopin edition 02:06
Teaching systems to dance 01:44
3-D printed potato chips 01:15
Communicating with robots 01:35
Intelligent Machines
Robots as nurses' assistants 00:36
These robots are trained to work with nurses to help make decisions in the best interests of patients. Julie Shah, Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, demonstrates.
Rewriting Life
Reprogramming our bodies to make us healthier.
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Inside the effort to print lungs and breathe life into them with stem cells
Martine Rothblatt wants to end transplant shortages with 3-D-printed lungs.
by Antonio Regalado
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A better way to measure magnetic fields could make fetal heart problems easier to detect
Nobody had been able to build a practical device that worked at room temperature–until now.
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
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The citizen scientist who finds killers from her couch
How CeCe Moore is using her genetic knowledge to expose murderers.
by Antonio Regalado and Brian Alexander
Features
Connectivity
This man’s quest to understand memory starts with obsessive bodycam recording and brain-wave tracking
By-products include striking short films that speed up and slow down along in response to body signals.
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SPONSORED
From the age of perplexity to the era of opportunities
Finance for Growth
by Francisco Gonzalez
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SPONSORED
Undoing Aging with Molecular and Cellular Damage Repair
Since the dawn of medicine, aging has been doctors’ foremost challenge.
by Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey
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SPONSORED
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
Sustainable Energy
Can we sustainably provide food, water, and energy to a growing population during a climate crisis?
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California’s plan to integrate the West Coast grid is a great idea—that could easily backfire
The state leading the clean-energy charge could wind up importing coal power from Wyoming.
by James Temple
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We still have no idea how to eliminate more than a quarter of energy emissions
Air travel, shipping, and manufacturing are huge sources of carbon that we lack good options for addressing.
by James Temple
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An advanced civilization could resist the accelerating expansion of the universe
And Earth-bound astronomers should be able to tell if someone is out there doing it, a physicist says.
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
