MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of our series here. In 2023, AI policy and regulation went from a niche, nerdy topic to front-page news. This is partly thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which helped AI…
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These AI-powered apps can hear the cause of a cough
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. This week I came across a paper that uses AI in a way that I hadn’t heard of before. Researchers developed a smartphone app that can…
The race to produce rare earth materials
Abandoning fossil fuels and adopting lower-carbon technologies are our best options for warding off the accelerating threat of climate change. Access to rare earth elements, key ingredients in many of these technologies, will partly determine which countries will meet their goals for lowering emissions or increasing the proportion of electricity generated from non-fossil-fuel sources. But…
Germicidal danger
Devices that emit germicidal ultraviolet light at a wavelength considered safe for humans have been touted as a way to reduce airborne pathogens like SARS-Cov-2 in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, but new lab experiments show they can produce compounds that are dangerous to breathe. The trouble begins when the ultraviolet light interacts with oxygen to…
It is a wonderful life
In 1936, when John Francis Brady ’48, SM ’50, was in second grade, he was diagnosed with rheumatic fever. His doctors, following the practice of the day, prescribed complete rest. He wasn’t even allowed to climb stairs. So when it came time to start third grade, which was taught on the third floor of his…
Celebrating a pioneer and role model for women in STEM
When Sawaka Kawashima Romaine ’01 became president of MIT’s Club of Japan in 2022, she was the first woman to hold the office in the club’s more than 110-year history. Understandably, she felt a lot of pressure. “I had just given birth to my first child, and I had also recently changed jobs, so it…
Writing in two directions
When I was a teenager in South Jersey and getting a driving lesson from my dad, he casually mentioned that I should look in the rearview mirror every now and then to see what was going on behind me. To borrow an expression from my Italian grandmother, I remained with my mouth open—that is, I…
Recent books from the MIT community
From Spinors to SupersymmetryBy Howard E. Haber ’72, SM ’73, Herbi Dreiner, and Stephen P. MartinCAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023, $99.99 Spoken Word: A Cultural HistoryBy Joshua Bennett, professor of literature and distinguished chair of the humanities KNOPF, 2023, $30 The Decision Intelligence Handbook: Practical Steps for Evidence-Based Decisions in a Complex WorldBy Nadine Malcolm ’70…
Can AI provide better customer service?
Customer service experiences can really stick with you—a positive interaction can inspire brand loyalty, and a negative one can prompt a complete boycott. But encounters with automated customer interfaces, which often rely on limited phone menus or inept chatbots, rarely generate rave reviews. So Liz Tsai ’11, SM ’13, came up with an alternative. In…
Calculating the costs of war
What can be done to prevent war? That’s the question that drives Neta Crawford, PhD ’92, who chaired the political science department at Boston University from 2018 until 2022 and is now a professor of international relations at Oxford University. The answer, she believes, is for people to reject armed conflict as an acceptable way…