Devastating bioweapon or humanity’s saviour? UN green lights the ‘Gene Drive’
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world’s most powerful genetic technology – one that could cure disease, and at the same time wipe out entire species in the blink of an eye – has just been green lighted by the UN, and now the genies about to come out of...
MIT researchers have taught their AI to recognise sounds
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Developing AI’s that can recognise and understand raw sound could have implications for autonomous vehicles, elderly care, entertainment, home security and much more In recent years, computers have gotten remarkably good at recognizing speech and images. Think of the dictation software on most smartphones,...
MIT’s latest breakthrough? Getting AIs to explain their decisions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly running more and more of our world, and its digital fabric, but in many cases just how they make their decisions is a “Black Box”, this research aims to develop a new AI architecture that will help AI’s explain their...
MIT’s new AI can create videos of the future by looking at a photo
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The human brain is good at looking at a scene and figuring out what happens next, now an AI can look at a photo and create a video of the future from it and that opens up some interesting applications. Love the Exponential Future?...
MIT breakthrough lets virtual reality gamers cut the chord
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Consumers love convenience and by helping to cut the chords on VR headsets MIT’s new breakthrough could help speed up the technology’s adoption Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new technology that lets data be transmitted at...
ISS SPHERE drones learn to see and fly around in space all by themselves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF This new milestone will help to pave the way for fully autonomous drones, and vehicles, that can navigate their surroundings without the need for any specific maps or navigation aids. During an experiment this week on board the International Space Station (ISS) a small drone,...
Ubers flying taxis will take passengers to the heavens and back by 2021
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Most urban transportation systems today are at capacity and, or, gridlocked. Using the airspace above cities is one way to alleviate those burdens. There’s no doubt that Uber has redefined the world of business and sparked a revolution. Whether it’s because they’re masters at tapping...
Scientists are creating a detailed map of all 35 trillion cells in the human body
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Human Cell Atlas will exponentially accelerate our understanding of disease and “the Human Condition.” Last week in at a meeting in London, convened by the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard University, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Wellcome Trust, a group of international scientists...
Skydio’s autonomous drone takes to the skies
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Autonomous drones – revered by extreme sports enthusiasts and feared in the battlefield – are on the rise. We all know that the next evolution of drones will be fully autonomous rather than just semi-autonomous as some of them, such as delivery or defence drones,...
Autonomous Roboats to sail the canals of Amsterdam
Cities might have a monopoly on driverless cars but Amsterdam has driverless ships The idea of self-driving cars cruising our roads may not be a new idea, but a plan to release autonomous boats into the canals of Amsterdam would be the first of its kind. The Amsterdam Institute for...
Scientists use WiFi to read your emotions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are edging closer to living in the world of Minority Report, surrounded by technologies that authorise us, sense us and interact with us remotely, and now the only thing that is fiction is privacy. Whether it’s at your local fuel station or at...
World first as researchers observe atoms interacting
Being able to observe the interactions of individual atoms will one day lead to the creation of better superconductors In a world first, researchers at MIT have managed to capture images of individual potassium atoms distributed on an optical lattice, providing them with a unique opportunity to see how they interact...
MIT’s latest Human-AI hybrid cybersecurity platform blitzes trials
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are in the middle of a tug of war that pits Human security experts against autonomous AI “Robo-Hackers” but MIT’s found a middle ground that out performs them all. Today’s security systems usually fall into one of two categories – Human or Machine. So...
New MIT tech lets Pokemon magically interact with the real world
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Pokémon Go changed our children’s lives – okay, we’ll admit it – all of our lives. Now it’s hard to imagine life without those plucky virtual creatures sneaking up on you when you’re trying to have some alone time. But get ready for it,...
Human on a chip development signals the end of animal testing
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Noone will be sad to see the back of animal testing. Before a new drug or medical treatment can be let loose on human beings, it has to go through a rigorous set of tests to make sure it’s safe – tests that unfortunately...
3D, the sequel at a cinema near you sometime whenever
just got a shot in the arm, this must be the sequel Avatar first premiered in 2009 and at the time everyone raved about how in the future all movies would be shown in 3D. Just a few years later everyone realized that watching 3D movies through a pair of Clark...
Researchers have created a programming language for living cells
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to create biological circuits, rather than electronic ones, paves the way for an amazing array of new possibilities that will revolutionise everything from computing to healthcare. A team of MIT biological engineers have announced that they’ve created a programming language that allows...
In the future everything will be connected
In 400 years time our descendants will look back at our Age in the same way we look at the Stone Age Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius, by combining his observations of the laws of nature with his passion for mechanical invention he managed to conceive early versions of...
Using open innovation to gain first mover advantage
People keep asking me to define open innovation so it’s clear to me that plenty of confusion still reins around the topic so here I spend some time trying to ensure that we are all on the same page about how it’s defined and how it ultimately relates to other terms such...
