This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. What China’s critical mineral ban means for the US This week, China banned exports of several critical minerals to the US, marking the latest move in an escalating series of tit-for-tat trade restrictions…

6 December 2024

Next month, MIT Technology Review will unveil the 2025 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Every year, our newsroom looks across the fields we cover for technologies that are having a true breakthrough moment. This annual package highlights the technologies that we think matter most right now.  We define ‘breakthrough’ in a few ways—perhaps there’s been…

6 December 2024

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. There’s a new film about IVF out on Netflix. And “everyone in the field [of reproductive medicine] has watched it,” according to one embryologist I spoke to recently.…

6 December 2024

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. This week, China banned exports of several critical minerals to the US, marking the latest move in an escalating series of tit-for-tat trade restrictions between the…

6 December 2024

The US Department of Defense has invested $2.4 million over two years in deepfake detection technology from a startup called Hive AI. It’s the first contract of its kind for the DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit, which accelerates the adoption of new technologies for the US defense sector. Hive AI’s models are capable of detecting AI-generated…

5 December 2024

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. OpenAI’s new defense contract completes its military pivot At the start of 2024, OpenAI’s rules for how armed forces might use its AI models were unambiguous: it prohibited anyone from using them for…

5 December 2024

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Last week, we celebrated Thanksgiving here in the US, and I had hearty helpings of ham and turkey alongside my mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Meat is often the star on…

5 December 2024

At the start of 2024, OpenAI’s rules for how armed forces might use its technology were unambiguous.  The company prohibited anyone from using its models for “weapons development” or “military and warfare.” That changed on January 10, when The Intercept reported that OpenAI had softened those restrictions, forbidding anyone from using the technology to “harm…

4 December 2024

A company best known for sucking up industrial waste gases is turning its attention to food. LanzaTech, a rising star in the fuel and chemical industries, is joining a growing group of businesses producing microbe-based food as an alternative to plant and animal products. Using microbes to make food is hardly new—beer, yogurt, cheese, and…

4 December 2024

Google DeepMind has unveiled an AI model that’s better at predicting the weather than the current best systems. The new model, dubbed GenCast, is published in Nature today. This is the second AI weather model that Google has launched in just the past few months. In July, it published details of NeuralGCM, a model that…

4 December 2024