EmTech Future 2026: MIT Technology Review sells access to recordings of its event on AI, quantum and energy

An important caveat first: what could be downloaded from this link is not an editorial article but MIT Technology Review's paid promotional page selling on-demand access to the recordings of its 'EmTech Future 2026' event. The text itself explicitly states that the content is 'available only to subscribers'. In addition, the short headline this link arrived with in the digest ('People really hate AI, so why can't they get enough?') does not match the actual content downloaded, which covers the EmTech Future event program. What follows is therefore a very short summary, strictly limited to what appears on the page, and not an analysis of that other topic.

According to the page itself, EmTech Future 2026 was a three-day event organized by MIT Technology Review that addressed, in its words, 'how AI is impacting industries, where quantum computing is headed, what new energy systems could make possible, how robotics is evolving, and what challenges and opportunities arise as these technologies begin to converge'.

The page highlights several specific sessions from the program. Yossi Matias, vice president and head of Google Research, explored how AI is beginning to transform biology, infrastructure, manufacturing and science, suggesting its greatest impact could come precisely from its intersection with other fields. Hartmut Neven, founder and head of Google Quantum AI, spoke about how quantum computing is advancing alongside other technological frontiers and why its relevance may lie as much in its own capabilities as in its interaction with the systems around it. Evelyn Wang, MIT's vice president for energy and climate, discussed the growing interconnection between energy, computing, infrastructure and climate technologies, and what these converging systems could mean for industry and society. Finally, writer Cory Doctorow addressed how AI is changing the way we work and think.

The page offers full on-demand access to the program for $596, with a 20% discount for existing MIT Technology Review subscribers. It also links, as related but separate content, to other articles from the outlet on whether AI's recursive self-improvement is advancing as fast as thought, whether large language models really 'reason', the AI hype over the summer, and startups competing for the next big breakthrough in language models; none of those texts is developed in the downloaded document, so their content cannot be reliably summarized.

All in all, there is no original analytical material in this download to summarize beyond the description of the program and the access price: it is, in essence, a sales landing page for an event that has already taken place.