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A New York City law is requiring companies to show that the AI-powered tools they use in hiring and promotion are not biased. Critics say it lets most employers off the hook

Research into AI is experiencing a boom, so we have rounded up the best of news from the past month to help you keep up to date

Before joining the Lifelong Kindergarten group in the MIT Media Lab, Cecilé Sadler saw computer engineering and community service as separate aspects of her life. Alongside her bachelor’s and master’s work in computer engineering at North Carolina State and Duke University, respectively, Sadler also spent a lot of time working with young people through local […]

A globe-spanning group of physicists used pulsars to measure the waves, which they believe emanated from pairs of supermassive black holes.

Kellen Browning / New York Times: In court, Satya Nadella says he’d love to end “exclusives on consoles”; Bobby Kotick says making CoD exclusive would cause “revolt” and “reputational damage”  —  In federal court, Satya Nadella and Bobby Kotick opposed an attempt by the F.T.C …

During a tour in Europe to make a Neuralink announcement, Musk’s real goal became apparent: Stop the European Commission’s proposed measures regarding online content moderation.

Yet again, smoke from Canadian wildfires is pouring into the US. This mesmerizing yet troubling model forecasts how the haze is swirling.

Jay Peters / The Verge: Internal messages: Reddit tells protesting mods that their communities won’t remain private beyond the timeframe set for this week to confirm reopening plans  —  / ‘This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.’

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Celestial AI, which offers optical interconnect tech for compute, memory, and data transmission, raised a $100M Series B, bringing its total funding to $165M+  —  David Lazovsky and Preet Virk, technologists with backgrounds in semiconductor engineering and photonics, came …

Computers possess two remarkable capabilities with respect to images: They can both identify them and generate them anew. Historically, these functions have stood separate, akin to the disparate acts of a chef who is good at creating dishes (generation), and a connoisseur who is good at tasting dishes (recognition). Yet, one can’t help but wonder: […]

When Erik Duhaime PhD ’19 was working on his thesis in MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, he noticed his wife, then a medical student, spending hours studying on apps that offered flash cards and quizzes. His research had shown that, as a group, medical students could classify skin lesions more accurately than professional dermatologists; the […]

A team of researchers led by Feng Zhang at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has uncovered the first programmable RNA-guided system in eukaryotes — organisms that include fungi, plants, and animals. In a study published today in Nature, the team describes how the system is […]

Strategies for overscheduled, under-connected employees.

How to leverage the tension of opposing ideas to make smarter strategic decisions.

How to help employees embrace curiosity, failure, and learning.

What one educator wants students, teachers, and everyone else to know about the ethics of using of AI in education.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Carl Pei’s Nothing raised $96M led by Highland ahead of its Phone (2) announcement, taking its total funding to $250M; sources put 2022 revenue at $200M  —  Smartphone sales are in decline as handset makers grapple with saturated markets and a tough consumer economic climate.

The spotted-wing drosophila is a threat to fruit growers across the US and Europe. Crispr could thwart the pest’s numbers.

It’s the nicest tablet the company has ever made, but it’s not worth your money.

New York Times: UK convenience stores are increasingly using facial recognition to combat shoplifting, something critics say is a disproportionate solution for minor crimes  —  British merchants are increasingly using the technology to combat shoplifting, raising questions about its spread as artificial intelligence rapidly improves it.

Emma Roth / The Verge: DoorDash announces new features for couriers, including “earn by time” for a guaranteed hourly minimum rate, real-time location sharing, and Dash Along the Way  —  DoorDash is making a big change to the way couriers get paid.  In an announcement on Wednesday …

A savvy hacker can obtain secret information, such as a password, by observing a computer program’s behavior, like how much time that program spends accessing the computer’s memory. Security approaches that completely block these “side-channel attacks” are so computationally expensive that they aren’t feasible for many real-world systems. Instead, engineers often apply what are known […]

Turning your kitchen into a café is a great way to learn (or hone) the art of making the perfect shot.

Generative AI is already being tapped to write books, but it struggles with basic narrative. Just look at what happens when you make one a dungeon master.

From American Born Chinese to Secret Invasion, here’s everything you should be watching on Disney+.

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: EU countries and lawmakers reach a provisional agreement on the Data Act, establishing rules on how Big Tech and other firms use EU consumer and corporate data  —  EU countries and EU lawmakers on Tuesday agreed on rules that govern how Big Tech and other companies use European consumer and […]

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI’s ChatGPT iOS app adds Bing for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, letting them get answers on information that extend beyond ChatGPT’s original training data  —  ChatGPT on mobile can now surf the web.  But only via Bing.  —  Today, OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus …

Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times: TikTok admits that it’s funding the TikTok creators’ lawsuit in Montana challenging the state’s ban of the app, but says it’s not paying the creators directly  —  The popular video service had deflected questions about its involvement in the creators’ lawsuit for more than a month.

MIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 12th year in a row MIT has received this distinction. The full 2024 edition of the rankings — published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad — can be […]

Physicists have been riveted by systems composed of materials only one or a few layers of atoms thick. When a few sheets of these two-dimensional materials are stacked together, a geometric pattern called a moiré pattern can be formed. In these so-called moiré systems, new, exotic phenomena can occur, including superconductivity and unconventional magnetism. As […]

Sihan Chen’s fascination with languages began when he was a teenager in his high school choir in his hometown of Shenzhen, China. “We sang religious and folk songs in different languages like Mandarin, English, Albanian, and Latin, and I would look up how to pronounce words in different languages,” he says. These early experiences planted […]

How enterprise leaders can deliver results in scarce times — and build the capabilities to fuel future growth.

Multinationals that don’t have a plan for building subsidiaries in the country risk missing out on one of the most promising market opportunities in the world today.

A conversation with ButcherBox CEO Mike Salguero on profitability from the get-go.

If you need a quick getaway, consider a digital stroll through the world’s biggest metropolises.

Microbes aren’t as charismatic as megafauna, but they outnumber humans—and their welfare deserves consideration.

These nontoxic beds and bedsheets are easier on the environment and your health—and they feel like a dream.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: US government official Kurt Campbell confronted Sequoia’s Don Vieira in DC over the VC firm’s ties to China, eventually leading to the three-way split  —  Scrutiny from Washington aggravated tensions within the venture-capital firm, fueling its decision to break up

Sanne Wass / Bloomberg: The EU launches four “crash test” facilities for AI tools, funded by a €220M investment, which will let companies test AI and robotics in real-life settings  —  The Europe Union is introducing “crash test” systems for artificial intelligence to ensure new innovations are safe before they hit the market.

Northvolt says that its massive factory in Sweden will soon produce enough batteries each year to power a million electric cars, with a much smaller carbon footprint than those made in China

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Tel Aviv-based NoTraffic, an AI-based traffic management service, raised a $50M Series B led by M&G Investments, following a $17.5M Series A in July 2021  —  AI-based traffic management platform NoTraffic has bagged $50 million in Series B funding as it picks up momentum in cities across …

The company’s new $1,799 smartphone proves the future is foldable.

Prepare flavorful fried food with little to no oil using this modern kitchen staple.

The latest in Nintendo’s real-time strategy series is made for zoning out. In a good way.

NewsGuard: Analysis: in May and June 2023, 141 major brands ran ads, mostly via Google Ads, across 55 low-quality sites with AI-generated articles, some posting ~1,200/day  —  NewsGuard identified 141 brands that are feeding programmatic ad dollars to low-quality AI-generated news and information sites operating with little to no human oversight

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Decentralized social media app Damus says Apple rejected an app update and asked it to either remove its tipping feature or use Apple’s in-app purchase system  —  Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple’s strict payment […]

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: Stability AI’s head of research David Ha and COO Ren Ito left the company in June 2023; VP of product Christian Cantrell left the company in March 2023  —  Stability AI, the closely watched artificial intelligence startup, has lost at least two top executives in recent weeks, including its head of […]

“Sensing is all around you,” said MIT.nano Associate Director Brian W. Anthony at Ambient Sensing, a half-day symposium presented in May by the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. Featuring MIT faculty and researchers from multiple disciplines, the event highlighted sensing technologies deployed everywhere from beneath the Earth’s surface to high into the exosphere. Brent Minchew, assistant professor […]

Who are you now, who do you want to be, and how can you stretch without taking on too much?

Over 600 MIT students are traveling abroad with the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) to intern, research, and work in organizations across 25 countries this summer. Twenty percent of the students were placed in areas related to climate and sustainability. Through MISTI, hundreds of MIT students travel abroad each summer to intern in […]