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Desalination technology, by the numbers

For more on how this crucial water infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable during the war in Iran, check out my latest story. Here, though, let’s look at the state of desalination technology, by... Read more »

Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over.

New York City has 286 municipal synthetic-­turf fields, with more under construction. In Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan, two fields were approved via Zoom meetings during the pandemic, and Massimo Strino,... Read more »

Mustafa Suleyman: AI development won’t hit a wall anytime soon—here’s why

Think of AI training as a room full of people working calculators. For years, adding computational power meant adding more people with calculators to that room. Much of the time those workers... Read more »

The Download: water threats in Iran and AI’s impact on what entrepreneurs make

—Casey Crownhart  This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.  AI is... Read more »

Desalination plants in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable

Membrane technologies have made up essentially all new desalination capacity in recent years; the last major thermal plant built in the Gulf came online in 2018. Many reverse osmosis plants still rely... Read more »

Enabling agent-first process redesign

In an agent-first enterprise, AI systems operate processes while humans set goals, define policy constraints, and handle exceptions. “You need to shift the operating model to humans as governors and agents as... Read more »

The Download: AI’s impact on jobs, and data centres in space

The must-reads  I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.  1 Trump has again proposed major cuts to US science and tech spending He wants to slash nearly every science-focused agency.... Read more »

The one piece of data that could actually shed light on your job and AI

These conversations have unsurprisingly left many workers in a panic (and are probably contributing to support for efforts to entirely pause the construction of data centers, some of which gained steam last... Read more »

AI is changing how small online sellers decide what to make

For small entrepreneurs in the US, deciding what to sell and where to make it has traditionally been a slow, labor-intensive process that can take months. Now that work is increasingly being... Read more »

Four things we’d need to put data centers in space

Large structures with hundreds of square meters of solar arrays would quickly suffer damage from small pieces of space debris and meteorites, which would over time degrade the performance of their solar... Read more »