A screenshot from the new simulator that will be trialled for a special challenge at RoboCup2025. The annual RoboCup event, where teams gather from across the globe to take part in competitions across a number of leagues, will this year take place in Brazil, from 15-21 July. In advance of kick-off, we spoke to two members of the RoboCup Soccer 3D Simulation League: Executive Committee Member Klaus Dorer, and Stefan Glaser, who is on the Maintenance Committee and who has been recently developing a new simulator for the League. Could start by just giving us a quick introduction to the Simulation League? Klaus Dorer: There are two Simulation Leagues in Soccer: the 2D Simulation League and the 3D Simulation League. The 2D Simulation League, as the name suggests, is a flat league where the players and ball are simulated with simplified physics and the main focus is on team strategy.

This second edition adds a ton of examples that illustrate the ML4T workflow from universe selection, feature engineering and ML model development to strategy design and evaluation. A new chapter on strategy backtesting shows how to work with backtrader and Zipline, and a new appendix describes and tests over 100 different alpha factors. The book also replicates research recently published in top journals on topics such as extracting risk factors conditioned on stock characteristics with an autoencoder, creating synthetic training data using GANs, and applying a CNN to time series converted to image format to predict returns. The strategies now target asset classes and trading scenarios beyond US equities at a daily frequency, like international stocks and ETFs or minute-frequency data for an intraday strategy. It also expands coverage of alternative data such as SEC filings to predict earnings surprises, satellite images to classify land use, or financial news to extract topics.

Stefan Jockusch is not one of them. Vice president of strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, Jockusch says trusting an algorithm that powers an AI application is a matter of statistics. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review's editorial staff. "If it works right, and if you have enough compute power, then the AI application will give you the right answer in an overwhelming percentage of cases," says Jockusch, whose business is building "digital twin" software of physical products. He gives the example of Apple's iPhones and its facial recognition software--technology that has been tested "millions and millions of times" and produced just a few failures. "That's where the trust comes from," says Jockusch. In this episode of Business Lab, Jockusch discusses how AI can be used in manufacturing to build better products: by doing the tedious work engineers have traditionally done themselves.

Ask Stefan Jockusch what a factory might look like in 10 or 20 years, and the answer might leave you at a crossroads between fascination and bewilderment. Jockusch is vice president for strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, which develops applications that simulate the conception, design, and manufacture of products like cell phones or smart watches. His vision of a smart factory is abuzz with "independent, moving" robots. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review's editorial staff. "Depending on what product I throw at this factory, it will completely reshuffle itself and work differently when I come in with a very different product," Jockusch says. "It will self-organize itself to do something different." Behind this factory of the future is artificial intelligence (AI), Jockusch says in this episode of Business Lab. But AI starts much, much smaller, with the chip.

Ask Stefan Jockusch what a factory might look like in 10 or 20 years, and the answer might leave you at a crossroads between fascination and bewilderment. Jockusch is vice president for strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, which develops applications that simulate the conception, design, and manufacture of products like cell phones or smart watches. His vision of a smart factory is abuzz with "independent, moving" robots. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review's editorial staff. "Depending on what product I throw at this factory, it will completely reshuffle itself and work differently when I come in with a very different product," Jockusch says. "It will self-organize itself to do something different." Behind this factory of future is artificial intelligence (AI), Jockusch says in this episode of Business Lab. But AI starts much, much smaller, with the chip.

Over the last couple of months, we've explored how AI is or will be applied in a wide range of medical markets, from ophthalmology to dentistry to Wound Care and some have started to realise the potential of AI whilst others are still just working it out. In cardiology however, there is a problem which AI can, and will, help with immediately – Atrial Fibrillation (AF). AF is, essentially, an irregular heartbeat which occurs in sporadic'episodes' and is estimated to affect tens of millions of people around the world. On their own these episodes may not cause immediate damage, but they can be indicative of a more serious problem; the condition is one of the leading causes of strokes and comes with an increased risk of heart failure and dementia. The problem with these episodes is that a patient doesn't have access to their cardiologist during the event.

Artificial Intelligence is a new technology and, for the most part, one of its biggest challenges is just working out how it will be applied. Where it can be used best, most cost-effectively and easiest to gain the best results. Over the last couple of months, we've explored how AI is or will be applied in a wide range of medical markets, from ophthalmology to dentistry to Wound Care and some have started to realise the potential of AI whilst others are still just working it out. In cardiology however, there is a problem which AI can, and will, help with immediately – Atrial Fibrillation (AF). AF is, essentially, an irregular heartbeat which occurs in sporadic'episodes' and is estimated to affect tens of millions of people around the world.

Using AI and lots of data Stefan Heck's startup Nauto is already saving lives on the road. While completely autonomous vehicles all the time may still be months away, this venture has found a way to apply the best in technology to make a difference today. Stefan Heck grew up between New York City and Austria. He learned to navigate ski slopes before he was three years old. Now he's helping large commercial fleets, taxi companies, automakers, and insurers navigate the applications of new technology on the roads.

The latest installment of the dystopian tech anthology series Black Mirror, "Bandersnatch," set in the 1980s, is a choose-your-own-adventure movie about the troubled, twitchy Stefan (Fionn Whitehead), a young man who is single-mindedly adapting a massive choose-your-own-adventure novel, Bandersnatch, into a choose-your-own-adventure video game. At various points viewers are prompted to decide what Alex should do: Eat Sugar Puffs or Frosties? Make his game at home or in the office? A New York Times piece about "Bandersnatch" matter-of-factly explained Netflix's interest in this style of program: "The idea behind the interactive push is simple: Viewers will care more if they are complicit." It then quoted a Netflix executive as saying "If bad things happen, you'll feel even more crestfallen, because you were responsible. If the character is victorious, you'll feel even more uplifted because you made that choice."

Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch" is the story of a 19-year-old software developer trying to turn a novel by a psychologically unstable science fiction visionary into a 1980s video game. The dystopian anthology's fifth "season" turns out to be a single project, an interactive movie (if that's not a contradiction in terms) that offers viewers dozens of distinct choices, ranging from the innocuous selection of a sugary breakfast cereal to life-or-death forks in the road. You control Stefan (Fionn Whitehead), a jittery teenager trying to create a joystick-controlled analogue for Bandersnatch, a multistranded novel by the science-fiction author Jerome F. Davies, whose views on fate and alternate realities are clearly modeled on those of Philip K. Dick. Stefan seeks out the already legendary game designer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) for advice, but instead Colin leads him toward a psychotic break, insisting that freewill is an illusion, that people are controlled by unseen hands, and that what we take to be reality is just one possibility that exists simultaneously alongside many others. In other words, life is just one big game of choose your own adventure.