The Download

What's up in emerging technology

Sept. 11-14, 2018

MIT Media Lab

Stay ahead of where tech, business, and culture converge.

Join the conversation and meet the next wave of disruptors at EmTech MIT.

Register Now

From Our Current Issue

MIT Technology Review: July/August 2018

AI and robots are wreaking economic havoc. We need more of them.

A performance review from the future

MIT Technology Review envisions feedback for future workers.

From rust belt to robot belt: Turning AI into jobs in the US heartland

Artificial intelligence is offering an amazing opportunity to increase prosperity, but whether or not ­we will seize it is our choice.

35 Innovators Under 35

Better gene editing. Smarter AI. Cheaper solar cells. Stretchable electronics. This year’s list of 35 Innovators Under 35 will give you a sense of what’s coming next—and what kinds of people are making it happen.

See the Collection
Intelligent Machines

Why AI researchers shouldn’t turn their backs on the military

The author of a new book on autonomous weapons says scientists working on artificial intelligence need to do more to prevent the technology from being weaponized.
Intelligent Machines

A small team of student AI coders beats Google’s machine-learning code

The success shows that advances in artificial intelligence aren’t the sole domain of elite programmers.

A gridded image collage of thousands of photographs
Connectivity

Why security experts hate that “blockchain voting” will be used in the midterm elections

It’s too dangerous to conduct elections over the internet, they say, and West Virginia’s new plan to put votes on a blockchain doesn’t fix that.
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.
Intelligent Machines

Cybersecurity’s insidious new threat: workforce stress

This week’s Black Hat event will highlight job-related stress and mental health issues in the cyber workforce.
Business Impact

AI can now tell your boss what skills you lack—and how you can get them

Coursera is unveiling a new machine learning tool to show companies what skills their employees are acquiring from its classes and their level of expertise.
Intelligent Machines

The Defense Department has produced the first tools for catching deepfakes

Fake video clips made with artificial intelligence can also be spotted using AI—but this may be the beginning of an arms race.
Connectivity

Meet the guy with four arms, two of which someone else controls in VR

These robotic limbs could someday help people work together when they’re far apart.
Connectivity

This new blockchain-based betting platform could cause Napster-size legal headaches

Augur lets people bet on events and pays whoever gets it right—so of course they’re wagering on the deaths of Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos.
Briefing Paper

How to Unlock the Power of IoT with Real-Time Monitoring

In association with AppDynamics

Executive Briefing

Cloud Development: The Key to Rapid Innovation

In partnership with Oracle

Global Survey Report

Unlock Data Intelligence with AI

In partnership with Pure Storage

Executive Briefing

The Artificial Intelligence Imperative

In partnership with Pure Storage

Watch Video

More videos

3-D printed potato chips 01:15

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

Robots as nurses' assistants 00:36

Communicating with robots 01:35

Intelligent Machines

3-D printed potato chips 01:15

Who knew 3-D printing would be useful for snack company Frito-Lay? At Emtech Next 2018, John Hart discusses the different ways 3-D printing is affecting a product’s life cycle, which can involve 3-D printed potato chips.

More Videos

Business Impact

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

All Topics

  1. AI can now tell your boss what skills you lack—and how you can get them

    Coursera is unveiling a new machine learning tool to show companies what skills their employees are acquiring from its classes and their level of expertise.
    by Elizabeth Woyke

  2. Computational linguistics reveals pervasive gender bias in modern English novels

    Researchers data-mined novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and found that men were described as brilliant and brutal, while the women were young and lovely.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv

  3. How to turn a kitchen microwave into a plasma-etching device

    Plasmas have never been easy to create or exploit. But now you can make them in your own kitchen.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
More from Business Impact

Features

Intelligent Machines

Tim Hwang’s FiscalNote is revolutionizing Washington lobbying with big data

FiscalNote takes the intuition out of politics. Does it take the democracy out, too?

by Andrew Zaleski

Intelligent Machines

Magic Leap’s headset is real, but that may not be enough

It’s taken years of work and billions of dollars in venture funding to build a working mixed-reality headset for developers. Now what?
Intelligent Machines

AI for cybersecurity is a hot new thing—and a dangerous gamble

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can help guard against cyberattacks, but hackers can foil security algorithms by targeting the data they train on and the warning flags they look for.

Image of code overlaid on a photo of hands on a laptop keyboard

SPONSORED COLLECTION

Innovations, Ideas, and Insights

Provided by BBVA

  1. SPONSORED

    From the age of perplexity to the era of opportunities

    Finance for Growth
    by Francisco Gonzalez

  2. 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

  3. 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
More in Innovations, Ideas, and Insights

Connectivity

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

All Topics

  1. How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump

    To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.
    by Zeynep Tufekci

  2. Why security experts hate that “blockchain voting” will be used in the midterm elections

    It’s too dangerous to conduct elections over the internet, they say, and West Virginia’s new plan to put votes on a blockchain doesn’t fix that.
    by Mike Orcutt

  3. Meet the guy with four arms, two of which someone else controls in VR

    These robotic limbs could someday help people work together when they’re far apart.
    by Rachel Metz
More from Connectivity