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Controversial CRISPR scientist promises “no more gene-edited babies” until society comes around

He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist whose controversial 2018 experiment led to the birth of three gene-edited children, says he’s returned to work on the concept of altering the DNA of people at conception, but with a difference. This time around, he says, he will restrict his research to animals and nonviable human embryos. He will…
The Download: AI’s math solutions, and brewing beer with sunlight

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. Google DeepMind’s new AI systems can now solve complex math problems AI models can easily generate essays and other types of text. However, they’re nowhere near as good at solving math problems, which…
How our genome is like a generative AI model

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. What does the genome do? You might have heard that it is a blueprint for an organism. Or that it’s a bit like a recipe. But building an…
Roundtables: CRISPR Babies—Six years later

Recorded on July 25, 2024 CRISPR Babies: Six years later Speakers: He Jiankui, CRISPR Pioneer, Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine, and Mat Honan, editor in chief Gene editing can correct or improve the DNA of human embryos, essentially opening the door to “technological evolution” of our species. But in 2018, a premature attempt to…
“Copyright traps” could tell writers if an AI has scraped their work

Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, content creators have argued that their work has been scraped into AI models without their consent. But until now, it has been difficult to know whether specific text has actually been used in a training data set. Now they have a new way to prove it: “copyright…
Google DeepMind’s new AI systems can now solve complex math problems

AI models can easily generate essays and other types of text. However, they’re nowhere near as good at solving math problems, which tend to involve logical reasoning—something that’s beyond the capabilities of most current AI systems. But that may finally be changing. Google DeepMind says it has trained two specialized AI systems to solve complex…
Beer, hydrogen, and heat: Why the US is still trying to make mirror-magnified solar energy work

The US is continuing its decades-long effort to commercialize a technology that converts sunlight into heat, funding a series of new projects using that energy to brew beer, produce low-carbon fuels, or keep grids running. On July 25, the Department of Energy will announce it is putting $33 million into nine pilot or demonstration projects…
The Download: US quantum computing, and AI garbage

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. PsiQuantum plans to build the biggest quantum computing facility in the US Quantum computing firm PsiQuantum is partnering with universities and a national lab to build the largest US-based quantum computing facility in…
PsiQuantum plans to build the biggest quantum computing facility in the US

The quantum computing firm PsiQuantum is partnering with the state of Illinois to build the largest US-based quantum computing facility, the company announced today. The firm, which has headquarters in California, says it aims to house a quantum computer containing up to 1 million quantum bits, or qubits, within the next 10 years. At the…
The race to clean up heavy-duty trucks

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Truckers have to transport massive loads long distances, every single day, under intense time pressure—and they rely on the semi-trucks they drive to get the job done. Their diesel engines spew not…