Pure Science

MIT Technology Review

Technology is changing the way we make babies. The pioneering work of the scientists who invented IVF led to the birth of the first “test tube baby” in 1978. We’ve come a long, long way since then. This week, I’ve been working on a piece...

MIT Technology Review

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’s next for IVF IVF has brought millions of babies into the world over the last four decades. But...

MIT Technology Review

Dozens of US states are considering legislation to allow people to install plug-in solar systems, often called balcony solar. These small arrays require little to no setup and could help cut emissions and power bills. Balcony solar is...

MIT Technology Review

Forty-eight years ago this July, Louise Joy Brown became the world’s first person born with the help of in vitro fertilization. Millions more IVF babies have entered the world since then. And that’s partly thanks to advances in technology...

MIT Technology Review

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. Inexpensive seafloor-hopping submersibles could stoke deep-sea science—and mining Last week, two...

MIT Technology Review

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. Week one of the Musk v. Altman trial: what it was like in the room Two of the most powerful figures...

MIT Technology Review

Every few centuries, changes in how information moves reshape how societies govern themselves. The printing press spread vernacular literacy, helping give rise to the Reformation and, eventually, representative government. The telegraph...

MIT Technology Review

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Two of the most powerful people in AI—Sam Altman and Elon Musk—began their face-off in court in...

MIT Technology Review

The AI market is full of big promises of grand transformation. Health care is a prime target for those promises, beset as it is by financial pressures, labor shortages, and the growing burden of caring for an aging population. AI...

MIT Technology Review

In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into bankrolling the company. Along...

MIT Technology Review

Cybersecurity was already under strain before AI entered the stack. Now, as AI expands the attack surface and adds new complexity, the limits of legacy approaches are becoming harder to ignore. This session from MIT Technology Review’s...

MIT Technology Review

Companies are taking control of their own data to tailor AI for their needs. The challenge lies in balancing ownership with the safe, trusted flow of high‑quality data needed to power reliable insights. This conversation from MIT...

MIT Technology Review

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. A new US phone network for Christians aims to block porn and gender-related content A new US-wide...

MIT Technology Review

Smack dab between Australia and South America, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Rainier is currently on a mission to map more than 8,000 square nautical miles of the Pacific seafloor in search...

MIT Technology Review

This past week delivered another gut punch for science in the US. This time, the target was the National Science Foundation—a federal agency that funds major research projects to the tune of around $9 billion. The foundation’s efforts were...

MIT Technology Review

A new US-wide cell phone network marketed to Christians is set to launch next week. It blocks porn, which experts in network security say marks the first time a US cell plan has used network-level blocking for such content that can’t be...

MIT Technology Review

The ultimate plan to live forever is a brand new body. This subscriber-only eBook explores R3 Bio, a small startup that has pitched a startling and ethically charged vision for “brainless clones” to serve the role of backup human bodies....

MIT Technology Review

The San Francisco–based startup Goodfire just released a new tool, called Silico, that lets researchers and engineers peer inside an AI model and adjust its parameters—the settings that determine a model’s behavior—during training. This...

MIT Technology Review

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. Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past In the past, getting to the North Pole involved a...

MIT Technology Review

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. It’s time to make a plan for nuclear waste Today, nuclear energy enjoys rare support across the...

MIT Technology Review

Today, nuclear energy enjoys a rare moment of support across the political spectrum in the US. Interest from tech companies that are scrambling to meet demand for massive data centers has sparked a resurgence of money and attention in the...

MIT Technology Review

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. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman...

MIT Technology Review

After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on...

MIT Technology Review

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In February, I picked up a flyer at an anti-AI march in London. I can’t say for sure whether or...

MIT Technology Review

Artificial intelligence may be dominating boardroom agendas, but many enterprises are discovering that the biggest obstacle to meaningful adoption is the state of their data. While consumer-facing AI tools have dazzled users with speed and...

MIT Technology Review

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. Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model matters On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview...

MIT Technology Review

On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of...

MIT Technology Review

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. We’re in a new era of AI-driven scams When ChatGPT was released in late 2022, it showed how easily...

MIT Technology Review

I don’t need to tell you that AI is everywhere. Or that it is being used, increasingly, in hospitals. Doctors are using AI to help them with notetaking. AI-based tools are trawling through patient records, flagging people who may...

MIT Technology Review

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. Introducing: the Nature issue When we talk about “nature,” we usually mean something untouched by...

MIT Technology Review

Fusion power could provide a steady, zero-emissions source of electricity in the future—if companies can get plants built and running. But a new study suggests that even if that future arrives, it might not come cheap. Technologies tend to...

MIT Technology Review

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. Introducing: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now What actually matters in AI right now? It’s...

MIT Technology Review

Artificial intelligence is moving quickly in the enterprise, from experimentation to everyday use. Organizations are deploying copilots, agents, and predictive systems across finance, supply chains, human resources, and customer...

MIT Technology Review

When people talk about “nature,” they’re generally talking about things that aren’t made by human beings. Rocks. Reefs. Red wolves. But while there is plenty of God’s creation to go around, it is hard to think of anything on Earth that...

MIT Technology Review

“Pull over!” I order my brother one sunny February afternoon. Our target is in sight: a gaggle of Canada geese, pecking at grass near the dog park. As I approach, tiptoeing over their grayish-white poop, I notice that one bird wears a...

MIT Technology Review

Los Angeles deserves its reputation as the quintessential car city—the rhythms of its 2,200 square miles are dictated by wide boulevards and concrete arcs of freeways. But it once had a world-class rail transit system, and for the last...

MIT Technology Review

Isegye Idol If you thought K-pop was weird, virtual idols—humans who perform as anime-style digital characters via motion capture—will blow your mind. My favorite is a girl group called Isegye Idol, created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber...

MIT Technology Review

Heat generated by electronic devices is usually a problem, but a team led by Giuseppe Romano, a research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, has found a way to use it for data processing that doesn’t rely on...

MIT Technology Review

A long stretch of humid heat followed by a powerful thunderstorm is a familiar weather pattern in the tropics, but it’s also becoming more common in midlatitude regions such as the US Midwest. A recent study by two MIT scientists...

MIT Technology Review

If you’ve been to an eye doctor and had an image taken of the inside of your eye, chances are good it was done with optical coherence tomography (OCT)—a technology invented by clinician-scientist David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93, and now...

MIT Technology Review

Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity Edited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning and former executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future ...

MIT Technology Review

At MIT, AI has become so pervasive that you can almost find your way into it without meaning to. Take Sili Deng, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Deng says she still doesn’t know whether she’d have gone all in on...

MIT Technology Review

Brenda Schafer Kennedy, SM ’93, knows that sometimes the best medicine comes with four legs and fur. Kennedy is the chief veterinary and research officer for Canine Companions, a California-based, nationwide organization that provides...

MIT Technology Review

Around 2.3 billion years ago, a pivotal period known as the Great Oxidation Event set the evolutionary course for oxygen-breathing life on Earth. But MIT geobiologists and colleagues have found evidence that some early forms of life...

MIT Technology Review

Single-use plastics are a persistent source of environmental pollution, and the need to house a growing global population puts increasing pressure on resources such as timber. MIT engineers have an idea that could make a dent in both...

MIT Technology Review

How does the physical matter in our brains translate into thoughts, sensations, and emotions? It’s hard to explore that question without neurosurgery. But in a recent paper, MIT philosopher Matthias Michel, Lincoln Lab researcher Daniel...

MIT Technology Review

Embedded in the body’s mucosal surfaces, proteins called lectins bind to sugars found on cell surfaces. A team led by MIT chemistry professor Laura Kiessling has found that one such protein, intelectin-2, both helps fortify the mucosal...

MIT Technology Review

AI companies frequently invoke the possibility of AI-enabled scientific discovery as a justification for their existence: If the technology eventually cures cancer and solves climate change, then all the carbon emissions and slop videos...

MIT Technology Review

Turns out not everyone wants to live in the future that AI companies are building. People from all walks of life are speaking out against rising electricity bills from data centers, disappearing jobs, chatbots’ impact on teen mental...

MIT Technology Review