MIT Technology Review

07/29/2025

Exclusive: A record-breaking baby has been born from an embryo that’s over 30 years old

The embryos were created in 1994, while the expectant father was still a toddler, and donated via a Christian “embryo adoption” agency.

07/29/2025

AI is expanding across Africa and new policies are taking shape. But poor digital infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks could slow adoption.

AI is expanding across the continent and new policies are taking shape. But poor digital infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks could slow adoption.

07/29/2025

The Download: how to store energy underground, and what you may not know about Trump’s AI Action Plan

Plus: Trump's China AI chips U-turn hasn't gone down well with Democrats

07/29/2025

We need to take steps toward a more inclusive future—one that we all can inhabit.

07/29/2025

In a Copenhagen suburb, a fifth-grade classroom is having its weekly cake-eating session, a common tradition in Danish public schools. While the children are eating chocolate cake, the teacher pulls up an infographic on a whiteboard: a bar chart generated by a digital platform that collects data on how they’ve been feeling.

Organized to display the classroom’s weekly “mood landscape,” the data shows that the class averaged a mood of 4.4 out of 5, and the children rated their family life highly.

The students in this class are frequently surveyed on a variety of well-being indicators by an app called Woof. Woof then analyzes the students' responses and suggests particular issues for the class to focus on. That week, the app noted that students were struggling with their sleep hygiene. Their teacher helped them think of ways to improve their sleeping habits.

These sorts of data-driven well-­being audits are becoming more and more common in Denmark’s classrooms. Danish schoolchildren are in the midst of a mental-health crisis that one of the country’s biggest political parties has called a challenge “equal to inflation, the environmental crisis, and national security.” Companies say these tools can help improve well-being, but some experts worry it could have the opposite effect.

Companies say the software can help improve well-being, but some experts worry it could have the opposite effect.

07/29/2025

This startup wants to use the Earth as a massive battery

A recent test shows that Quidnet’s technology can store energy in pressurized water underground for months at a time.

07/29/2025

What you may have missed about Trump’s AI Action Plan

It blends culture-war politics and industry giveaways with at times naïve techno-optimism.

07/29/2025

When devastating wildfires swept through Maui in August 2023, Raven Imperial’s family was separated for days. After some 72 hours, they all found their way back to one another … except for the patriarch of the family, Rafael.

His family and friends spent a frantic month searching for “Uncle Raffy,” as he was known to locals on the island—following dead-end lead after dead-end lead. When his family eventually submitted a DNA sample, a new kind of rapid DNA analysis quickly confirmed what they had feared: Rafael had died in the blaze.

This grim yet revolutionary technology allowed Raven and his family to gain the closure they deserved more quickly than they would have before. But unfortunately, their experience is also a preview of a dark future marked by increasingly frequent and catastrophic mass-casualty disasters.

After hundreds went missing in Maui’s deadly fires, rapid DNA analysis helped identify victims within just a few hours and bring families some closure more quickly than ever before. But it also previews a dark future marked by increasingly frequent catastrophic events.

07/29/2025

Chinese social platforms have already expanded the scope of a controversial rule that requires influential users to disclose their legal names. Regular users are right to be worried.

07/29/2025

Fragments from the brain of a man killed by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in the year 79 are smooth and shiny but still contain visible neurons.

07/28/2025

Join us on Wednesday for a subscriber-only MIT Technology Review Roundtables session, “Why It’s So Hard to Make Welfare AI Fair.”

Can AI ever be fair? In this 30-minute discussion, MIT Technology Review editor Amanda Silverman and investigative reporter Eileen Guo will join Lighthouse Reports investigative reporter Gabriel Geiger to explore Amsterdam’s attempt to create a fair, ethical welfare algorithm - and what it reveals about the deeper challenge of if algorithms can ever be fair.

🗓 Wednesday, July 30
🕜 1:00 pm ET

There’s still time to register. We hope to see you there!

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The MIT Technology Review Roundtables series brings our award-winning journalism to life for subscribers in intimate, interactive sessions with our editorial staff.

07/28/2025

Female volunteers are using messages, statuses, and hyperlocal groups to fight dangerous medical misinformation and combat the country’s high maternal mortality rate.