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. After weeks of drawn-out congressional debate over how much the United States should spend on conflicts abroad, President Joe Biden signed a $95.3 billion aid package...

Chatbot answers are all made up. This new tool helps you figure out which ones to trust. The news: Large language models are famous for their ability to make things up—in fact, it’s what they’re best at. But their inability to tell fact from fiction has left many businesses wondering if using them is worth the risk. A new tool created by Cleanlab,...

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.  Six weeks ago, I pre-ordered the “Firefly Petunia,” a houseplant engineered with genes from bioluminescent fungi so that it glows in the dark.  After...

Large language models are famous for their ability to make things up—in fact, it’s what they’re best at. But their inability to tell fact from fiction has left many businesses wondering if using them is worth the risk. A new tool created by Cleanlab, an AI startup spun out of a quantum computing lab at MIT, is designed to give high-stakes...

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. An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary Until now, AI-generated videos of people have tended to have some stiffness, glitchiness, or other unnatural elements that...

Political fights over mining and minerals are heating up, and there are growing environmental and sociological concerns about how to source the materials the world needs to build new energy technologies.  But low-emissions energy sources, including wind, solar, and nuclear power, have a smaller mining footprint than coal and natural gas,...