Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending December 6, 2014)

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.

December 5, 2014

Google’s Intelligence Designer
The man behind a startup acquired by Google for $628 million plans to build a revolutionary new artificial intelligence.
Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights On
Millions of batteries discarded with computers have more than enough life to power home lighting for one year, researchers in India say.
3-D-Printing Bio-Electronic Parts
With new “inks” containing semiconductors, researchers have been able to print LEDs for the first time.
Your Online Journal, Built from Heartbeats, Sleep Patterns, and Hikes
A startup called Gyroscope wants to build you a personal website that’s automatically updated with your own data.
Material Cools Buildings by Sending Heat into Space
A new material that requires no electricity uses the universe as a heat sink—even when the sun is shining.
Cheap Oil Could Kill Off Cellulosic Ethanol
Inexpensive oil could increase the pressure to reduce mandates for biofuels.
How Google “Translates” Pictures into Words Using Vector Space Mathematics
Google engineers have trained a machine-learning algorithm to write picture captions using the same techniques it developed for language translation.

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.

We got a first look at the much-anticipated big new language model from OpenAI. But this time how it works is even more deeply under wraps.

Illustration by Rose Wong

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