What’s next for robots
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Jan Liphardt teaches bioengineering at Stanford, but to many strangers in Los Altos, California, he is a peculiar man they see walking a four-legged robotic dog down…
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OpenAI launches Operator—an agent that can use a computer for you
After weeks of buzz, OpenAI has released Operator, its first AI agent. Operator is a web app that can carry out simple online tasks in a browser, such as booking concert tickets or filling an online grocery order. The app is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent—CUA (“coo-ah”), for short—built on top of…
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Implementing responsible AI in the generative age
Many organizations have experimented with AI, but they haven’t always gotten the full value from their investments. A host of issues standing in the way center on the accuracy, fairness, and security of AI systems. In response, organizations are actively exploring the principles of responsible AI: the idea that AI systems must be fair, transparent, and…
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OpenAI ups its lobbying efforts nearly seven-fold
OpenAI spent $1.76 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday–a significant jump from 2023 when the company disclosed just $260,000 spent on Capitol Hill. The company also disclosed a new in-house lobbyist, Meghan Dorn, who worked for five…
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Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Peering into the body to find and diagnose cancer is all about spotting patterns. Radiologists use x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging to illuminate tumors, and pathologists examine tissue from kidneys, livers,…
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The second wave of AI coding is here
Ask people building generative AI what generative AI is good for right now—what they’re really fired up about—and many will tell you: coding. “That’s something that’s been very exciting for developers,” Jared Kaplan, chief scientist at Anthropic, told MIT Technology Review this month: “It’s really understanding what’s wrong with code, debugging it.” Copilot, a tool…
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Meta’s new AI model can translate speech from more than 100 languages
Meta has released a new AI model that can translate speech from 101 different languages. It represents a step toward real-time, simultaneous interpretation, where words are translated as soon as they come out of someone’s mouth. Typically, translation models for speech use a multistep approach. First they translate speech into text. Then they translate that…
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Training robots in the AI-powered industrial metaverse
Imagine the bustling floors of tomorrow’s manufacturing plant: Robots, well-versed in multiple disciplines through adaptive AI education, work seamlessly and safely alongside human counterparts. These robots can transition effortlessly between tasks—from assembling intricate electronic components to handling complex machinery assembly. Each robot’s unique education enables it to predict maintenance needs, optimize energy consumption, and innovate…
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Here’s our forecast for AI this year
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In December, our small but mighty AI reporting team was asked by our editors to make a prediction: What’s coming next for AI? In 2024, AI contributed both to Nobel Prize–winning…
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Anthropic’s chief scientist on 5 ways agents will be even better in 2025
Agents are the hottest thing in tech right now. Top firms from Google DeepMind to OpenAI to Anthropic are racing to augment large language models with the ability to carry out tasks by themselves. Known as agentic AI in industry jargon, such systems have fast become the new target of Silicon Valley buzz. Everyone from…
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