We’re three years into a post-ChatGPT world, and AI remains the focal point of the tech industry. In 2025, several ongoing trends intensified: AI investment accelerated; enterprises integrated agents and workflow automation at a faster pace; and the toolscape for professionals seeking a career edge is now overwhelmingly expansive. But the jury’s still out on…
Artificial intelligence has captured headlines recently for its rapidly growing energy demands, and particularly the surging electricity usage of data centers that enable the training and deployment of the latest generative AI models. But it’s not all bad news — some AI tools have the potential to reduce some forms of energy consumption and enable cleaner grids….
Every autumn, as the Northern Hemisphere moves toward winter, Judah Cohen starts to piece together a complex atmospheric puzzle. Cohen, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), has spent decades studying how conditions in the Arctic set the course for winter weather throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. His research…
There’s an open secret in the world of DevOps: Nobody trusts the CMDB. The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is supposed to be the “source of truth”—the central map of every server, service, and application in your enterprise. In theory, it’s the foundation for security audits, cost analysis, and incident response. In practice, it’s a work of…
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work officially launched on Nov. 3, 2025, bringing together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore critical questions about economic opportunity, technology, and democracy. Co-directed by MIT professors Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson, the new Stone Center analyzes the forces that contribute to growing…
The narrative from the AI labs is dazzling: build AGI, unlock astonishing productivity, and watch GDP surge. It’s a compelling story, especially if you’re the one building or investing in the new thought machines. But it skips the part that makes an economy an economy: circulation. An economy is not simply production. It is production…
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. I am writing this because one of my editors woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled on a bedside notepad: “What is a…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Sometimes AI feels like a niche topic to write about, but then the holidays happen, and I hear relatives of all ages talking about cases of chatbot-induced psychosis, blaming rising electricity prices…
What is patient privacy for? The Hippocratic Oath, thought to be one of the earliest and most widely known medical ethics texts in the world, reads: “Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I…
Some of designer C Jacob Payne’s projects present new, futuristic products — such as zero-gravity footwear for astronauts, and electronic-embedded ceramics — using technological tools and processes of digital fabrication, material innovation, and interactive interfaces. Other projects travel back in time to past centuries, considering the challenge of preserving and reconstructing Black architectural heritage. Payne…