Pump jacks and pipelines clutter the Elk Hills oil field of California, a scrubby stretch of land in the southern Central Valley that rests above one of the nation’s richest deposits of fossil fuels. Oil production has been steadily declining in the state for decades, as tech jobs have boomed and legislators have enacted rigorous environmental and climate rules. Companies, towns, and residents across Kern County, where the poverty rate hovers around 18%, have grown increasingly desperate for...

Robots that can do many of the things humans do in the home—folding laundry, cooking meals, cleaning—have been a dream of robotics research since the inception of the field in the 1950s.  While engineers have made great progress in getting robots to work in tightly controlled environments like labs and factories, the home has proved difficult to design for. Out in the real, messy world, furniture and floor plans differ wildly; children and pets can jump in a robot’s way; and clothes that...

In an attempt to protect its forests and famous wildlife, Virunga has become the first national park to run a Bitcoin mine. But some are wondering what crypto has to do with conservation. This story was written by Adam Popescu and narrated by Noa (newsoveraudio.com)

We live in an undeniably gamified world. We stand up and move around to close colorful rings and earn achievement badges on our smartwatches; we meditate and sleep to recharge our body batteries; we plant virtual trees to be more productive; we chase “likes” and “karma” on social media sites and try to swipe our way toward social connection. But instead of liberating us from drudgery and maximizing our potential, gamification has turned out to be just another tool for coercion, distraction,...

Digital clones of people's dead relatives are far from perfect: they're occasionally impersonal and sometimes downright creepy. But if the technology might help us hang onto the people we love, is it so wrong to try? This story was written by news editor Charlotte Jee and narrated by Noa.

A Silicon Valley startup wants to supercharge trees to soak up more carbon and cool the climate. Is this the great climate solution or a whole lot of hype? This story was written by Boyce Upholt and narrated by Noa.

Artificial intelligence is the hottest technology of our time. But what is it? It sounds like a stupid question, but it’s one that’s never been more urgent.  MIT Technology Review takes a deep dive into the competing answers from titans of industry and helps us understand how we got here—and why you should care, no matter who you are. This story was written by senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and narrated by Noa.

The growing business of surf pools wants to bring the ocean experience inland, making surfing more accessible to communities far from the coasts. These pools can use—and lose—millions upon millions of gallons of water every year. With many planned for areas facing water scarcity, who bears the cost of building the perfect wave? This story was written by senior features and investigations reporter Eileen Guo and narrated by Noa.

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 games. They make virtual worlds feel lived in and full. Often—but not always—you can talk to them. After a while, however, the repetitive chitchat (or threats) of a passing stranger forces you to bump up against the truth: This is just a game.  It may not always be like that. Just as it’s...

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 available, saving countless lives. This story was written by senior biomedicine editor Antonio Regalado and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com

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. Where did it go wrong? This story was written by Rebecca Ackermann and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com

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. Reaching it requires a boat ride from Samoa that can take over 24 hours. To say that Tokelau is remote is an understatement: it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone… in 1997. Despite its size, Tokelau has become an internet giant. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users...

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 sure. But it raises big questions about a world where we increasingly can’t tell what’s real and what's fake. This story was written by senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkilä and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com

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 being the case, is the term “user” still relevant?  This story was written by Taylor Majewski and narrated by Noa.

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 to the solar system’s resident giant. Over the last few decades, however, as astronomers have scrutinized it through telescopes and six spacecraft have flown nearby, a new picture has come into focus. Europa is nothing like our moon. Observations suggest that its heart is a ball of metal and...

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 step towards controlling more powerful future models. This story was written by senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and narrated by Noa ((News Over Audio), an app offering you professionally-read articles from the world’s best publications.

Moore’s Law holds that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years or so. In essence, it means that chipmakers are always trying to shrink the transistors on a microchip in order to pack more of them in. The cadence has been increasingly hard to maintain now that transistor dimensions measure in a few nanometers. In recent years ASML’s machines have kept Moore’s Law from sputtering out. Today, they are the only ones in the world capable of producing circuitry at...

AI consciousness isn’t just a devilishly tricky intellectual puzzle; it’s a morally weighty problem with potentially dire consequences. Fail to identify a conscious AI, and you might unintentionally subjugate, or even torture, a being whose interests ought to matter. Mistake an unconscious AI for a conscious one, and you risk compromising human safety and happiness for the sake of an unthinking, unfeeling hunk of silicon and code. Philosophers, cognitive scientists, and engineers are...

Three years ago this week we launched this podcast on a mission to show the world how AI touches our everyday lives. It's been our great honor and privilege to make it through three seasons, a global pandemic, an unbelievable nineteen (19!!) award nominations, and a whole lot of tests and demos. Goodbyes are very hard to say, so instead we'll leave you with some of the show's highlights and an invitation to follow us as we continue our journey with a new show called SHIFT. Sign up for...

Hidden away in our voices are signals that may hold clues to how we’re doing, what we’re feeling and even what’s going on with our physical health. Now, AI systems tasked with analyzing these signals are moving into healthcare. We meet: Lina Lakoczky-Torres, student at Menlo College Angela Schmiede, Vice President of Menlo College. Grace Chang, CEO of Kintsugi David Liu, CEO of Sonde Health Liam Kaufman, former CEO of Winterlight Labs.  Margaret Mitchell, Chief Ethics Scientist of Hugging...

AI is used in farming in some ways you might not expect, like for tracking the health of crops—from space. We travel from test farms to labs in the second installment of our series on agriculture, AI, and satellites.  We Meet: Joseph Liefer, senior product manager of autonomy at John Deere Julian Sanchez, director of emerging technology at John Deere Shely Aranov, CEO of InnerPlant Rod Kumimoto, CSO of InnerPlant Credits: This episode was reported and produced by Jennifer Strong, Emma...

In this special episode we bring you a live taping between the "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton and MIT Technology Review's Senior Editor for AI Will Douglas Heaven. This conversation was recorded at EmTech Digital, our signature AI event, in the MIT Media Lab. Credits: This episode was recorded in front of a live audience in Cambridge, Massachusetts with special thanks to Will Douglas Heaven, Amy Lammers and Brian Bryson. It was produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens, directed by...

This episode, we get an insider's look at the ongoing chip war from the person who wrote the book on it, Chris Miller, professor at Tufts University and the author of Chip War. Join us for a live conversation from the MIT Media Lab at Tech Review’s Future Compute conference. Credits: This episode was recorded and produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens and Anthony Green. We’re edited by Mat Honan and mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from Garret Lang and Jacob...

I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of the In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed moments in artificial intelligence and computing happened, as told by the people who witnessed them. In this episode we meet Cognitive Scientist Gary Marcus. CREDITS: This project was produced by Jennifer Strong, Emma Cillekens, and Anthony Green. It was edited by Mat Honan and mixed by Garret Lang with original music by Jacob Gorski. The art is...