As the smallest living units, cells are key to understanding disease. Yet so much about them remains unknown. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, cofounders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), believe that unlocking the mysteries of our cells can lead to work that helps end many diseases as we know them—and that AI can assist scientists in achieving that. CZI is now helping to generate the scientific data and build out the computing infrastructure necessary to create a virtual cell modeling system that could simulate the appearance and known characteristics of any cell type in our body. Scientists could use that virtual cell modeling system, powered by AI, to predict how cells might respond to specific conditions and stimuli: how an immune cell responds to an infection, what happens at the cellular level when a child is born with a rare disease, or even how a patient’s body will respond to a new medication. In an exclusive story for MIT Technology Review, Chan and Zuckerberg argue that with the aid of a such a model, scientific discovery, patient diagnosis, and treatment decisions would all become faster, safer, and more efficient. Click the link in bio to read the full story. Art by @evaredamonti_art

Introducing: the Ethics issue. Delve into who gets to decide who receives experimental drugs and medical treatments. Examine what happens when AI makes its way into warfare: if a machine tells you when to pull the trigger, who is responsible? Plus, dive into a brief history of the corporate presentation, explore open source at 40, learn everything you wanted to know about alternative jet fuels, and hear what Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has to say about how AI will transform science. Click the link in bio to explore the full issue. Cover art by @selman.nyc

Once a manufacturing hub, the city of Syracuse, New York is now one of the poorest in the US. Can a massive infusion of money for making computer chips transform its economy and show us how to rebuild the nation’s industrial base? Click the link in bio to read the full story. Photos by @gokateshoot

Introducing: the Accessibility issue. Examine how climate change and the digital divide are linked. Meet a blind educator working to make images accessible to everyone. Learn how the app meant to streamline immigration at the border may be making things worse. Plus, read stories about regulating robotaxis, metaverse attorneys, and the forgotten history of highway photologs. Explore the issue at the link in bio.

Large language models are proliferating as engines for everything from search to health care to warfare to banking. Not for the first time, we’re experiencing what it’s like to be both seduced by and skeptical of AI. Swipe through to learn the story of Maillardet's Automaton and how it relates to the artificial intelligence of today. Then, click the first link in our bio to explore how AI is impacting the classroom in the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, the Education issue. Comic by @arielabergriger

The narrative around students using generative AI tools like ChatGPT to cheat is a prevalent one, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. After all, cheating is not a new problem: schools have already survived calculators, Google, Wikipedia, and essays-for-pay websites. In the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, the Education issue, meet the teachers who think that generative AI could help students build critical-­thinking and problem-solving skills... and make teaching feel more human. Explore this story and more from the issue at the first link in our bio. Art by @selman.nyc

The education of ChatGPT. How AI is transforming humanities research. Calibrating the classroom. Teaching the biliterate brain to read. Check out all of these stories and more in the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, the Education issue. ✏️ Explore the issue at the first link in our bio.

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. "That’s great!” the teacher exclaims, raising two thumbs up in the air. 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.” In just a few decades, the number of children and youth in Denmark with depression has more than sextupled. Companies say these tools can help improve well-being, but some experts worry it could actually make children feel worse. This story comes from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, the Education issue. Explore the rest of the story and the full issue at the link in bio. Art by @nicolerifkin

Introducing: The Education Issue. Delve into how AI is transforming the classroom. Learn why Danish schools are surveilling students. Find out how technology is changing the way kids learn to read. Examine what we’ve learned from “learning to code.” Plus, read stories on keyboard obsessions, wildfire resilience, and shroom speak. Click the link in bio to explore the full issue. Cover art by @selman.nyc

The computer scientists designing the future can’t agree on what privacy means. When computer science students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Software Research returned to campus in the summer of 2020, there was a lot to adjust to.  Beyond the inevitable strangeness of being around colleagues again after months of social distancing, the department was also moving into a brand-new, state-of-the-art building. The building's futuristic features included carbon dioxide sensors that automatically pipe in fresh air, a rain garden, a yard for robots and drones, and experimental super-sensing devices called Mites. Mounted in more than 300 locations throughout the building, these devices can measure 12 types of data—including motion and sound. Mites were embedded on the walls and ceilings of hallways, in conference rooms, and in private offices, all as part of a research project on smart buildings led by some members of the computer science department. Not everyone was pleased to find the building crawling with Mites. Even though one of the leaders of the project said the goal was to build safer and more secure IoT infrastructure, some in the department thought that the project violated their privacy rather than protected it. They felt that the devices would subject them to experimental surveillance without their consent.  An intradepartmental meltdown over privacy and consent ensued. If researchers within one of the best computer science programs in the world can’t agree on some of the most basic tenets of privacy, where does that leave the rest of us? Click the link in bio to learn more about the academic discussion around privacy and consent that deteriorated into a bitter dispute, complete with accusations of bullying, vandalism, misinformation, and workplace retaliation. Art by @madeby_ari

Michael Edenfield’s doctor calls him the Incredible Shrinking Man.  Between Thanksgiving 2021 and Christmas 2022, the 49-year-old aviation worker shed 129 pounds. Also gone: his sleep apnea machine, his high-blood-pressure medication, and a diuretic pill he had used to alleviate fluid retention in his legs. This is thanks to the only medication Edenfield takes today: Wegovy, a weight-loss drug he injects into his stomach once a week. Edenfield’s success story is the most popular post on a Reddit forum dedicated to weight-loss injections. What you can’t read about—anywhere on the internet—are the experiences of his sister, a 54-year-old restaurant owner named Melissa Hall. In October 2022, Hall began taking Mounjaro, an injectable diabetes medicine that was prescribed to her off-label as a weight-loss drug. She lost 27 pounds in a month and a half, but after her sixth weekly injection, she awoke feeling as though “I had ripped something in my abdomen, right down the middle.” She was diagnosed with pancreatitis and continued to experience “stabbing pain” for a week. Though she is now recovered, her doctor refuses to prescribe her Mounjaro again. (Pancreatitis is a known possible side effect of these drugs.) The Incredible Shrinking Man and his sister are one family with two very different experiences with the current weight-loss injection boom.  Weight-loss injection drugs like Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Ozempic have become viral TikTok sensations. But do the hype and the hashtags tell the full story? What are the physical, social, and psychological side effects of these so-called “miracle” drugs? And can all the publicity lead people to do things they definitely shouldn’t do? Click the link in bio to find out what the increasing popularity of weight-loss drugs means for people IRL. Art by @andreadaquino_art

Introducing: The Design Issue. If everything is design, is anything? Delve into the use of AI for the design of new drugs, the future of ecological design, and prosthetics that break the mold. Plus, a postmortem on design thinking. Click the link in bio to explore the issue. Cover art by @israelgevargas #design #designthinking