EmTech Future 2026: When AI Meets Everything — SkimNews
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- EmTech Future 2026 is a three-day MIT Technology Review conference that explored how AI, quantum, energy systems, and robotics are reshaping technology and where these fields are beginning to converge.
- Yossi Matias (VP & Head of Google Research) presented a session arguing that AI's greatest impact will come from its intersections with biology, infrastructure, manufacturing, and science rather than any single field alone.
- Hartmut Neven (founder and lead at Google Quantum AI) discussed how quantum's significance may lie in how it interacts with surrounding systems, not just what it can do independently.
- Evelyn Wang (VP for energy & climate at MIT) examined how energy, computing, infrastructure, and climate technologies are increasingly interconnected and what that convergence could mean for industry and society.
- Cory Doctorow presented a session on how AI is changing the way people work and think, addressing the human-relationship side of the convergence theme.
- The full EmTech Future 2026 program is available on demand to MIT Technology Review subscribers for $596 after a 20% subscriber discount.
Why it matters: MIT Technology Review is curating a narrative that treats AI, quantum, energy, and robotics as a single convergent wave rather than parallel tracks — a framing now being delivered directly by a Google Research VP and Google Quantum AI's lead, which matters because it positions the most-funded tech giants' priorities as mutually reinforcing rather than competing, and the event is gated behind a $596 subscriber paywall that limits wider access to those arguments.
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