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A record-breaking total of more than 5,000 alumni and friends attended this year’s MIT Tech Reunions, held online June 4–6. There were special events for reunion-year classes, and the entire MIT community was invited to watch the online Tech Night at Pops, learn from faculty during Technology Day, and take virtual campus tours.

Symphony Hall at home

BOSTON POPS/WINSLOW TOWSON

Because the 123rd annual Tech Night at Pops was held virtually, there was no limit to the number of alumni and guests who could attend, and everyone got a front-row seat. Conducted in an empty Symphony Hall by Keith Lockhart, the Boston Pops Orchestra performed a program custom-made for the occasion, with Institute favorites like “Arise All Ye of MIT” and a 50th-reunion tribute to the Class of 1971 with tunes from Three Dog Night and Carole King. The evening also included classical pieces such as the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto—featuring soloist William Wang, an MIT PhD candidate and music student in MIT’s conservatory-level Emerson Program, in his first performance with a professional orchestra. In keeping with tradition, the broadcast ended with “Stars and Stripes Forever” and a (virtual) balloon drop. Throughout the performance, alumni and guests lit up the chat with greetings and reminiscences from around the world:

Stephanie SharoChiesi ’99, ’01,
SM ’04:

So excited to be able to share Tech Night at the Pops with my 3.5 year old tonight from here in Tucson!

Debbie Zappen ’86:

Hello from Austin, TX! Here as part of the 1986 35th reunion events.

Jesse Heines ’70:

We’ve seen the Pops many times, but we always look forward to it.

Maris Fravel ’56:

Greatly looking forward to my first Pops concert since graduation.

Alan Whitney ’66,
SM ’67, PhD ’74:

Alan Whitney, Class of ’66 here (BSEE, MSEE, PhD); as undergrad and grad-school student, I played 1st violin in the MIT Symphony for all those years.

Nowa Lubega ’86:

Greetings from Ugandamy first Pops concert. Lovely!

Dalié Jiménez ’01:

Hello from the road in Southern California! Hi Class of 2001!

Bob Nakata ’81,
SM ’85:

Aloha from Honolulu, Hawaii!

Jennifer Dickson ’96:

Greetings from Charleston SC. This is fun. Cheers to everyone who made this reunion possible.

Lucas Camelo Sá ’16:

Hi from Fortaleza, Brazil!

Jim Mannoia ’71:

Our 50th year reunion! Who could have imagined! Watching the live stream while eating my gift of Tech Night at the Pops popcorn and watching polo at the Santa Barbara Polo Club.

Ric Schonblom ’56, SM ’57:

Great to be here. First time “on campus” in over fifty years!

Philip Huang ’99:

Hello from Shanghai! 

Surekha Vajjhala Trivedi
’96, SM ’99:

Hello 25th reunion friends from Class of 1996! I miss seeing all the red jackets in person!

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By: Katie McLean
Title: Log on all ye of MIT
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/24/1030546/log-on-all-ye-of-mit/
Published Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2021 21:00:00 +0000

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The Download: generative AI’s carbon footprint, and a CRISPR patent battle

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone

The news: Generating a single image using a powerful AI model takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone, according to a new study. This is the first time researchers have calculated the carbon emissions caused by using an AI model for different tasks.

The significance: These emissions will add up quickly. The generative-AI boom has led big tech companies to integrate powerful AI models into many different products, from email to word processing. They are now used millions, if not billions, of times every single day.

The bigger picture: The study shows that while training massive AI models is incredibly energy intensive, it’s only one part of the puzzle. Most of their carbon footprint comes from their actual use. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

The first CRISPR cure might kickstart the next big patent battle

By the middle of December, Vertex Pharmaceuticals is expected to receive FDA approval to sell a revolutionary new treatment for sickle-cell disease that’s the first in the US to use CRISPR to alter the DNA inside human cells. (Vertex has already received regulatory approval in the UK.)

But there’s a problem. The US patent on editing human cells with CRISPR isn’t owned by Vertex—it is owned by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, probably America’s largest gene research center, and exclusively licensed to a Vertex competitor, Editas Medicine, which has its own sickle-cell treatment in testing.

That means Editas will want Vertex to pay. And if it doesn’t, Editas and Broad could go to the courts to claim patent infringement, demand royalties and damages, or even potentially try to stop the treatment from being sold. Odds are we’re about to see a blockbuster lawsuit. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things health and biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

A high school’s deepfake porn scandal is pushing US lawmakers into action

On October 20, Francesca Mani was called to the counselor’s office at her New Jersey high school. A 14-year-old sophomore and a competitive fencer, Francesca wasn’t one for getting in trouble. But it turned out that over the summer, boys in the school had used artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit pictures of some of their classmates. The school administration told Francesca that she was one of more than 30 girls who had been victimized.

Francesca didn’t see the photo of herself that day. And she still doesn’t intend to. Instead, she’s put all her energy into ensuring that no one else is targeted this way.

And, in the past few weeks, her advocacy has already fueled new legislative momentum to regulate nonconsensual deepfake pornography in the US. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley 

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 This is why we’re all sick right now
We’re contending with a lot more illnesses than we did in the pre-covid world. (The Atlantic $)
And covid hasn’t gone away either. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Climate disinformation is a big obstacle to action
And much of it is generated by influential nations, including China and Russia. (NYT $)
The US government has stopped warning social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns. (WP $)

3 Is the Turing Test dead?
It was arguably never that reliable a measure of intelligence to begin with. (IEEE Spectrum)
Mustafa Suleyman: My new Turing test would see if AI can make $1 million. (MIT Technology Review)
Hiring is still hot for prompt engineers, a year since ChatGPT launched. (Bloomberg $)

4 The long-delayed Tesla Cybertruck is finally on sale
And the price tag starts at $60,990. (The Guardian)
It has its detractors. But it has plenty of fans, too. (The Atlantic $)

5 College students are subject to alarming levels of surveillance
Which is adding to their stress levels at an already stressful time in their lives. (The Markup)
Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University can’t agree on what privacy means. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How Huawei stunned the US with a new Chinese-made chip
Getting around sanctions will have been difficult, and very expensive. (FT $)
Huawei’s 5G chip breakthrough needs a reality check. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Anduril has launched a wild new jet-powered AI drone
The company says it could be used in Ukraine to intercept Russian drones. (Wired $)

8 Startups have had a bad

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By: Charlotte Jee
Title: The Download: generative AI’s carbon footprint, and a CRISPR patent battle
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084204/the-download-ai-carbon-footprint-crispr-battle/
Published Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:10:00 +0000

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The Download: abandoning carbon offsets, and creating new materials

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This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The University of California has all but dropped carbon offsets—and thinks you should, too

In the fall of 2018, the University of California tasked a team of researchers with identifying projects from which it could confidently purchase carbon offsets that would reliably cancel out greenhouse gas emissions across its campuses. They found next to nothing.

The findings helped prompt the entire university system to radically rethink its sustainability plans. Now the researchers are sharing the lessons they learned over the course of the project, in the hopes of helping other universities and organizations consider what role, if any, offsets should play in sustainability strategies, MIT Technology Review can report.

The project’s leaders have three main takeaways for what others should do. Read our story to find out what they are.

—James Temple

Google DeepMind’s new AI tool helped create more than 700 new materials

The news: Google DeepMind has created a tool that uses deep learning to dramatically speed up the process of discovering new materials. The technology, which is called graphical networks for material exploration (GNoME), has already been used to predict structures for 2.2 million new materials, of which more than 700 have gone on to be created and tested in the lab.

Why it matters: From EV batteries to solar cells to microchips, new materials can supercharge technological breakthroughs. But discovering them usually takes months or even years of trial-and-error research. Thanks to GNoME, the number of known stable materials has grown almost tenfold, to 421,000. Read the full story.

—June Kim

The X Prize is taking aim at aging with a new $101 million award

Money can’t buy happiness, but X Prize founder Peter Diamandis hopes it might be able to buy better health. The X Prize Foundation, which funds global competitions to spark development of breakthrough technologies, has announced a new $101 million prize—the largest yet—to address the mental and physical decline that comes with aging.

The winners will have to prove by 2030 that their intervention can turn back the clock in older adults by at least a decade in three key areas: cognition, immunity, and muscle function. Its organizers are hoping the large prize will convince hundreds or even thousands of teams to compete. Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Ilya Sutskever is leaving the OpenAI board  
But the chief scientist is staying at the firm—for now. (Bloomberg $)
Microsoft has been added as a non voting member of the board. (NYT $)
Sam Altman says he initially felt furious after being asked to return to the company. (The Verge)
Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Elon Musk isn’t playing nice with X’s worried advertisers
In fact, he went on a foul-mouthed rant railing against them. (CNBC)
Disney boss Bob Iger was a target of Musk’s ire. (WP $)
Musk just can’t help himself. (Slate $)

3 Next year is going to be even hotter
🌡
Thanks, in part, to the El Niño weather phenomenon. (FT $)
Methane is due to be a hot topic at COP28. (Economist $)+ Climate action is gaining momentum. So are the disasters. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Google has agreed to pay Canadian news outlets $100 million a year
It’s a rare win for publishers in their fight to get Big Tech to pay for content. (Motherboard)
Supporters say it’s the first step towards creating a sustainable news ecosystem. (BBC)

5 India is determined to clean up the Ganges river
The sacred waterway is incredibly polluted. Cleaning it up is both a holy and a scientific mission. (Wired $)
El Paso was “drought-proof.” Climate change is pushing its limits. (MIT Technology Review)

6 US border control is planning to trial Palmer Luckey’s AI surveillance towers
The autonomous towers track objects even in the coldest conditions. (404 Media)

7 Inside one man’s mission to track America’s gun violence
No one federal agency charts it, so Dan Kois has stepped up to fill the void. (Bloomberg $)

8 Please don’t follow TikTok’s dating advice
It’s bleak at best, outrageously sexist at worst. (Vox)
Here’s how the net’s newest matchmakers help you find love. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Cutting virtual grass is deeply satisfying
Just ask the video games fans transfixed by maintaining their lawns. (The Guardian)

10 What Spotify

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————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: abandoning carbon offsets, and creating new materials
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/11/30/1084123/the-download-abandoning-carbon-offsets-and-creating-new-materials/
Published Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:10:00 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/sustainability-starts-with-the-data-center/

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Sustainability starts with the data center

MIT Hitachi V5 110723 Cover

When asked why he targeted banks, notorious criminal Willie Sutton reportedly answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” Similarly, when thoughtful organizations target sustainability, they look to their data centers—because that’s where the carbon emissions are.

MIT Hitachi V5 110723 Cover 1

The International Energy Agency (IEA) attributes about 1.5% of total global electricity use to data centers and data transmission networks. This figure is much higher, however, in countries with booming data storage sectors: in Ireland, 18% of electricity consumption was attributable to data centers in 2022, and in Denmark, it is projected to reach 15% by 2030. And while there have been encouraging shifts toward green-energy sources and increased deployment of energy-efficient hardware and software, organizations need to accelerate their data center sustainability efforts to meet ambitious net-zero targets.

For data center operators, options for boosting sustainability include shifting energy sources, upgrading physical infrastructure and hardware, improving and automating workflows, and updating the software that manages data center storage. Hitachi Vantara estimates that emissions attributable to data storage infrastructure can be reduced as much as 96% by using a combination of these approaches.

Critics might counter that, though data center decarbonization is a worthy social goal, it also imposes expenses that a company focused on its bottom line can ill afford. This, however, is a shortsighted view.

Data center decarbonization initiatives can provide an impetus that enables organizations to modernize, optimize, and automate their data centers. This leads directly to improved performance of mission-critical applications, as well as a smaller, denser, more efficient data center footprint—which then creates savings via reduced energy costs. And modern data storage and management solutions, beyond supporting sustainability, also create a unified platform for innovation and new business models through advanced data analytics, machine learning, and AI.

Dave Pearson, research vice president at IDC, says, “Decarbonization and the more efficient energy utilization of the data center are supported by the same technologies that support data center modernization. Modernization has sustainability goals, but obviously it provides all kinds of business benefits, including enabling data analytics and better business processes.”

Download the full report.

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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————

By: MIT Technology Review Insights
Title: Sustainability starts with the data center
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/11/30/1083909/sustainability-starts-with-the-data-center/
Published Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 15:03:00 +0000

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