How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play
Open-world video games are inhabited by vast crowds of computer-controlled characters. These animated people—called NPCs, for “nonplayer characters”—populate the bars, city streets, or space ports of ...
25 Sep 202430min
The entrepreneur dreaming of a factory of unlimited organs
At any given time, the US organ transplant waiting list is about 100,000 people long. Martine Rothblatt sees a day when an unlimited supply of transplantable organs—and 3D-printed ones—will be readily...
18 Sep 202423min
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
Design thinking suggests that we are all creatives, and we can solve any problem if we empathize hard enough. The methodology was supposed to democratize design, but it may have done the opposite. Whe...
11 Sep 202430min
How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime
Tokelau is a group of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand (of which it’s an official territory) and Hawaii. Its population hovers around 1,400 people. Reachin...
4 Sep 202426min
An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary
An AI startup created a hyperrealistic deepfake of MIT Technology Review’s senior AI reporter that was so believable, even she thought it was really her at first. This technology is impressive, to be ...
28 Aug 202429min
It’s time to retire the term “user”
Though “user” seems to describe a relationship that is deeply transactional, many of the technological relationships in which a person would be considered a user are actually quite personal. That bein...
21 Aug 202415min
The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
We've known of Europa’s existence for more than four centuries, but for most of that time, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon was just a pinprick of light in our telescopes— a bright and curious companion ...
14 Aug 202428min
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
Despite all their runaway success, nobody knows exactly how—or why—large language models work. And that’s a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial ...
7 Aug 202417min
