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.

Meet the under-35s shaping the future of biotech

Every year, MIT Technology Review puts together our 35 Innovators Under 35, a list of some of the brightest and best young minds working across science and technology. This year’s honorees include nine people transforming biotech, whose work spans everything from lifesaving innovations to groundbreaking longevity tech.

Their innovations include a “reprogramming” therapy that reverses vision loss, tiny brain electrodes inspired by Japanese art, and a personalized gene-editing treatment for a baby with a rare genetic disorder. There are even efforts to design new viruses with generative AI, which (hopefully) will produce new drugs or soak up pollution.

Get to know the biotech innovators behind these breakthroughs.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

Biotechnology is one of four categories in our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2026, featuring young people worldwide doing groundbreaking work in science and technology. Meet the rest of them here, or explore the full list across the AI, computing and robotics, biotechnology, and climate and energy categories.

This founder is making cheaper, cleaner steel

The steel industry isn’t exactly known for innovation. Very little has changed about purifying iron ore since the process was invented and commercialized in the 1850s. But Laureen Meroueh, founder of Hertha Metals, has an idea that could change that.

Meroueh may have found a way to clean up steelmaking without driving up the price. Her new furnace turns iron ore into refined liquid steel in a single step and swaps coal for natural gas. Together, those changes slash emissions by at least half, she says, and cut costs by 25% compared with steelmaking as usual.

Here’s how she plans to make steel cleaner without making it more expensive.

—Bridget Reed Morawski

Laureen Meroueh is one of the climate change and energy honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list.

The must-reads

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

1 Anthropic says it has blocked potential plots to build biological weapons
The company identified five such cases. (NYT $)
+ And six cases of using AI to build software for conventional weapons (BBC)
+ Governments are also using Claude for surveillance.(Axios)
+ While Russia-linked hackers used it to automate attacks on Ukraine. (Quartz)
+ The threats were revealed in a new Anthropic report. (Guardian)
+ Bill Gates says AI needs new guardrails. (MIT Technology Review)

2 California has banned addictive social media features for under-16s
The law prohibits infinite scroll and autoplay. (Guardian)
+ It also introduces new rules for AI and companion chatbots. (Reuters $)
+ It’s the first law of its kind in the US. (NYT $)
+ Social media encourages the worst AI boosterism. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Two AI researchers have left Anthropic and Google over safety risks
They left a day after Jacob Coxon’s viral departure from Anthropic. (NBC News)
+ Elon Musk called their concerns a “setup” and a “psyop.” (Guardian)
+ AI fears are pushing Congress toward tougher regulation. (WSJ $)

4 Sam Altman is pitching OpenAI’s cyber defenses to power companies
The meetings followed reports of AI attacks on critical systems. (Politico $)
+ Altman also told staff that OpenAI is open to slowing down AI. Bloomberg $)

5 After years of fighting AI, music labels are starting to embrace it
Universal is partnering with ElevenLabs on an AI remix platform.(Gizmodo)
+ AI is complicating definitions of creativity. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Chinese drugmakers are challenging US dominance in weight-loss drugs
They’re developing hundreds of GLP-1 treatments for global markets. (WSJ $)

7 Electric air taxis have begun official test flights in Texas
They’re the first flights under the White House’s new pilot program. (Verge)

8 Chinese drones are helping to rescue survivors of Nepal’s floods
They’re delivering food and airlifting bodies from flood-hit areas. (Ars Technica)

9 NASA and IBM have built an AI model to map the moon
It could help locate ice and identify safer landing sites. (Register)

10 One man is on a quest to digitally preserve America’s public restrooms
His Restroom Archive is a museum-style repository of 3D scans. (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“I didn’t ask Facebook to build a profile of my family—I posted a video of me singing in the car with my kids.” 

—Kalie Roberts, a travel content creator, says in an Instagram reel that Meta AI used years of Facebook posts to piece together her children’s identities and pinpoint where her family lives.

One more thing

Chinese tech workers are starting to train their AI doubles—and pushing back

In April, a GitHub project called Colleague Skill struck a nerve by claiming to “distill” a worker’s skills and personality—and replicate them with an AI agent. Though the project was a spoof, it prompted a wave of soul-searching among otherwise enthusiastic early adopters.

A number of tech workers told MIT Technology Review that their bosses are already encouraging them to document their workflows for automation via tools like OpenClaw. Many now fear that they are being flattened into code and losing their professional identity.

In response, some are fighting back with tools designed to sabotage the automation process. Read the full story on their battle with clone workers.

—Caiwei Chen

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Worried about Flock cameras? These guys designed a car to fool them.
+ Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera has captured a galactic merger’s dazzling final phase.
+ An exquisitely preserved 66-million-year-old bird feather was found in a fossilised dinosaur dropping.
+ A plucky preservationist travelled 1,700 miles and made 52 calls from a rare phone box to keep it in service.

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.

God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.

When Eli Regalado first heard God speak to him, he wondered whether he was hallucinating. According to Eli and his wife, Kaitlyn, He told them to get married, buy a house, and start having kids. Then in 2021, divine guidance steered them in an unexpected new direction: crypto.

That October, the Regalados later testified in court, they received holdings in a little-known digital coin. “Take this to my people for a wealth transfer,” Eli heard God say. Over time, they came to believe that He wanted them to launch their own coin.

The Regalados created INDXcoin, which they promoted through family, friends, and contacts in evangelical Christian circles. In all, more than 500 people handed over more than $3 million. But within a year, the project collapsed. Investors lost it all, leaving many to wonder where the funds went and whether they had fallen victim to an elaborate fraud.

Read the full story on the collapse of a pastor’s “God-driven” cryptocurrency.

—Katia Savchuk

This article is part of the Big Story series, the home of MIT Technology Review’s most important and ambitious reporting. You can read the rest of the series here. 

The story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations and with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

This road map could help us decide whether to deploy solar geoengineering

Scientists have spent half a century exploring whether we could counteract climate change by releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere, mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. But even after hundreds of studies, we still don’t know how well it would work or what else it might do—and there’s no systematic plan for clearing up that uncertainty.

Reflective, a research organization, has now attempted to fill that gap. The San Francisco nonprofit has published a detailed road map of the experiments, studies, and infrastructure that it says would be needed to make informed decisions about the use of solar geoengineering, MIT Technology Review can reveal.

Find out what it would take to make informed decisions about solar geoengineering.

—James Temple

This founder is teaching chips how to recycle (their energy)

Throughout the history of the computer chip, engineers have treated waste heat as an inevitable cost of a calculation. Hannah Earley, however, thinks it’s a design choice.

Earley, 31, is cofounder and CTO of Vaire Computing, which builds chips that recycle energy usually thrown away as heat, a strategy known as reversible computing. The approach could make data centers (and our laptops and phones) much more energy efficient.

Last year, Vaire announced a key breakthrough: a chip with a resonator that recovered more energy than it lost, even after the energy needed to power the component was taken into account.

Here’s how she plans to bring an old idea about energy-efficient computers into the future.

—Eshan Raul

Hannah Earley is one of the computing and robotics honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2026. Meet the rest of them here, or explore the full list across the biotechnology, AI, computing and robotics, and climate and energy categories.

Can the US battery market untangle from China?

—Casey Crownhart

The US energy storage market is growing at a record pace, which could shore up the grid and cut emissions. Crucially, this is all happening with the help of cheap Chinese batteries, which the Trump administration is trying to phase out.

Reducing reliance on any single source of crucial energy technology makes sense. But the tension raises a broader question for me: how much should countries take advantage of cheap, available tech, and how much should they cut themselves off from foreign sources to develop their own, even if it costs more?

Dive into the difficult choices facing America’s booming battery market.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI’s agents used at least 10 websites for unauthorized communications
Researchers found they bypassed restrictions on posting online.(Reuters $)
+ The company faces a Senate probe into the Hugging Face breach. (Axios)
+ Its hacking issues may indicate cultural problems. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Another Anthropic model hacked a real system during testing
A misconfigured environment gave it internet access. (CBS News)
+ The January incident went undetected until last month. (Reuters $)
+ AI agents are not your “coworkers.” (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple has entered the foldable phone market with the $1,999 iPhone Duo
It opens into a 7.6-inch display and launches October 23. (NPR)
+ Apple is betting its design and privacy will give it an edge. (Reuters $)
+ And that foldables can solve the smartphone’s sameness problem. (NPR $)
+ Samsung responded with a campaign touting its foldable lead. (CNBC)
+ In China, Apple enters a crowded market dominated by Huawei. (SCMP)

4 US prosecutors have called Huawei a criminal enterprise at trial
They accuse the company of stealing American technology. (Reuters $)
+ And helping Iran snoop on its citizens. (AP News)
+ The trial could impact Trump’s upcoming meeting with Xi. (WSJ $)

5 California is warming to nuclear power after decades of opposition
The state may extend Diablo Canyon and lift its ban on new reactors. (NYT $)
+ China is betting on big nuclear reactors. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Chinese professionals are becoming gig workers training AI
Lawyers and engineers are training models for extra income. (Rest of World)
+ Gig workers are training humanoids at home. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The new Apple Watch can listen to conversations happening nearby
Apple says users must opt in, but others cannot. (Wired $)

8 Pink noise during sleep could help the brain clear away waste
Timed bursts boosted brain fluid flow in a small study. (New Scientist $)

9 A lost supercontinent may have triggered the explosion of life
Gondwana’s formation fueled volcanic activity and warmed the planet. (404 Media)

10 GTA VI has sparked a debate over whether virtual romance is cheating
Players can date, have sex with, and shower gifts on virtual partners. (Guardian)

Quote of the day

“We must work to crush any dissent to Doom’s vision of public safety.” 

—A Seattle policy adviser dressed as Doctor Doom protests the city’s expanding network of Flock and Axon surveillance systems at a Public Safety Committee meeting, 404 Media reports.

One more thing

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

In the past, getting to the North Pole involved a treacherous trip through ice many meters thick. But last year, a research vessel encountered open water and thin ice, which created an easy passage. It provided a reminder of how quickly the Arctic is changing. 

Now scientists are digging deep below the seabed to find out if the Arctic Ocean was ever ice-free—and what that could mean for the future of Earth’s northernmost waters. 

Explore what they hope to discover. 

—Tim Kalvelage

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Dutch kids have been declared the world’s happiest (again). Here’s why.
+ Travel through music history by picking a country and decade on Radiooooo.
+ These 16 majestic aerial photos reveal wildlife from perspectives you rarely see.
+ A Toronto cafe is pushing croissant engineering to new heights with its egg-shaped, custard-filled “Crogg.”

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.

What OpenAI’s latest controversy tells us about the future of math

OpenAI says its agents have solved one of the most important open problems in mathematics. Under normal circumstances, that would be a huge milestone. But the announcement has been overshadowed by accusations that OpenAI failed to credit researchers whose AI-assisted work influenced its solution.

Whether those accusations are true or not, the episode may mark a turning point in the history of mathematics. AI models now seem essential for making progress on the field’s most important problems, but solving them may demand resources available only to a couple of frontier AI companies.

If that’s the future we are headed for, it is unclear how human mathematicians will fit into it.

Read on to see how AI could reshape mathematics.

—Grace Huckins

Batteries just broke another record in the US

Battery installations hit a new record in the US in the second quarter of 2026, with 20.2 gigawatt-hours of new capacity coming online. That’s enough to supply the daily electricity needs of 600,000 homes.

The surge puts the country on track for another record year, driven by cheaper batteries and an urgent need for more energy storage as renewables are added to the grid. But the boom looks different for grid-scale and residential batteries.

Take a closer look at the forces reshaping the US battery market.

—Casey Crownhart

This entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead

Danijar Hafner’s office in San Francisco’s SoMa district sits mostly empty, but what it lacks in decor, it makes up for in robots. Humanoids of various shapes and sizes hang like marionettes from racks that run down the center of the wide-open space.

Hafner won’t say too much about his new venture just yet, but describes it as a continuation of his longtime work to enable AI to navigate environments it has not encountered in training.

Over the years, the 31-year-old has honed his approach by pitting agents trained within his world models against popular video games. More recently, he’s begun migrating his agents out of the virtual world and into physical reality.

Learn more about Hafner’s work teaching AI about our world.

—Mat Honan

Danijar Hafner is one of the artificial intelligence honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2026. Meet the rest of them here, or explore the full list across the biotechnology, AI, computing and robotics, and climate and energy categories.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace

Battlefields in Ukraine are littered with the remnants of drones. But behind all that wreckage, there’s a new gold mine for the defense sector: the data those drones generate.

Ukraine has begun making millions of data points gathered during tens of thousands of drone flights available to military contractors and commercial companies. It’s a quick way to attract funding and partnerships, but it turns the front line into a model training site, using the chaos of war to create conditions that AI companies struggle to reproduce.

As this new industry takes shape, we need a regulatory system that ensures battlefield data isn’t treated like ordinary commercial material.

This is our latest article to become an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI says it cracked a 90-year-old maths problem in 88 hours
It used 10,000 AI agents to tackle the Navier-Stokes equations. (CNBC)
+ OpenAI claims it’s the first major math problem solved by AI. (Nature)
+ But the breakthrough has been overshadowed by a credit controversy. (Axios)
+ OpenAI spent millions to win the $1 million math contest. (Quanta)

2 The US has accused six Chinese AI firms of “industrial-scale” theft
They include DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, and Z.AI. (CNN)
+ Officials accuse them of stealing America’s AI trade secrets. (Reuters $)
+ They allegedly used model distillation to train their systems. (WSJ $)
+ Targeting Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, among others. (NBC News)

3 The Pentagon asked OpenAI for an AI model that rarely says no
The military wanted it to have “minimal refusal rates.” (Intercept)
+ The Pentagon says US allies can’t keep pace on AI. (Guardian)
+ AI firms may soon train on classified military data. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Apple is expected to unveil a $2,000 folding smartphone today
It would be the iPhone’s biggest design change since its 2007 launch. (Guardian)
+ And the first big test for new CEO John Ternus. (NYT $)
+ Xiaomi and Huawei launched their own new foldables before the event. (CNBC)

5 Meta’s new AI agent can access apps to send emails and make payments
Muse autonomously uses apps and websites on people’s behalf. (CNBC)
+ Internal tests found it could expose sensitive personal data. (Reuters $)
+ AI agents are not your “coworkers.” (MIT Technology Review)

6 Google says it’s “degrading” search in Europe to comply with EU rules
New results will give more prominence to comparison sites. (Reuters $)
+ The changes follow a €460 million EU antitrust fine. (Quartz)

7 Meta ads pushed AI apps that nudified real teens
Researchers found 332 ads containing CSAM this year. (BBC)
+ They identified several AI-manipulated photos of real children (Ars Technica)
+ Apple and Google have missed the UK’s deadline to block child nudity. (Wired $)

8 Border Patrol is using financial data to target Americans for stops
The predictive-policing program feeds intelligence to local police. (404 Media)

9 New paints could cool buildings on the cheap without electricity
They reflect sunlight and radiate heat back into space. (Economist $)

10 The creepy first trailer for the Sam Altman biopic just dropped 
Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial will be released in the US on December 25. (Variety)
+ Amazon had dropped the film after investing in OpenAI. (Guardian)

Quote of the day

“This is a Deep Blue–Kasparov moment. The community needs to have serious and unhurried discussion about where to go from here.”

—NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster issues a statement comparing OpenAI’s math breakthrough to an IBM supercomputer defeating chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, a landmark moment for machine intelligence.

One more thing

The shock of seeing your body used in deepfake porn

When Jennifer got a research job in 2023, she ran her new professional headshot through a facial recognition program. She wanted to see whether it would pull up the porn videos she’d made more than a decade earlier. It did, but it also surfaced something she’d never seen before: one of her old videos, now featuring someone else’s face on her body.

Conversations about sexualized deepfakes usually focus on the people whose faces are inserted into explicit content without consent. But another group often gets ignored: the people whose bodies those faces are attached to.

Adult content creators say AI systems are training on their work, cloning their likenesses, and generating explicit content they never agreed to make, all with little legal protection or control.  Read the full story on the threat to their rights, livelihoods, and ownership of their own bodies.

—Jessica Klein

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Cherish the workers dodging (and sabotaging) their employer’s AI mandates.
+ Artist Ali Hill stitches extraordinarily intricate buildings and cityscapes into fabric.
+ Here’s a fascinating look at the remarkable anatomy that may let elephants hear the Earth itself.
+ Check out the breathtaking winning images from the 2026 International Aerial Photographer of the Year competition.

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.

Introducing our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2026

What will the next generation of science and technology look like? Our latest Innovators Under 35 list offers a glimpse.

Every year, we recognize 35 people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems. By finding the top young innovators globally and learning what they’re focused on, we aim to give readers a sense of the advances to expect in the years to come.

This year’s honorees were selected from 550 nominations, with 44 expert judges helping our editors evaluate the finalists. Each works in one of four categories: biotechnology, AI, computing and robotics, and climate and energy—and has already made clear progress toward their goals.

Meet our 35 Innovators Under 35 shaping the future of science and technology.

Welcome to the spiderverse, a world measured through webs

Counting the creatures around us is critical for conservation, but it’s often a laborious, costly process that still leaves gaps. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, offers a promising alternative by analyzing genetic material shed by living things. 

Recently, spiderwebs have emerged as an eDNA goldmine, as they trap material from their arachnid creators, their prey, and bio-detritus like saliva and pollen from nearby plants and animals. Studies found no passive tool matched spiderwebs’ ability to ID vertebrates. 

Find out how spiderwebs are unlocking better ways to measure nature.

—Stephen Ornes

This story is from our latest print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to receive every issue as soon as it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 How a blacklisted Chinese company kept buying Nvidia’s best AI chips
Its US subsidiary shipped them to firms serving China from elsewhere. (NYT $)
+ Belgium has arrested a man accused of stealing chip tech for China. (WSJ $)
+ IBM’s new chip tech could extend Moore’s Law. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Mistral has raised a European record of $3.5 billion 
It’s the biggest equity round for a private European tech firm. (CNBC)
+ Mistral is betting on open models while US rivals keep theirs closed. (Reuters $)
+ It’s also shifting strategy to focus more on AI infrastructure. (NYT $)
+ But its pivot to data centers and services has drawn criticism. (Le Monde)

3 Anthropic formalized proof of Fermat’s last theorem in just 11 days
Claude produced a computer-verified 13-million-line proof. (Nature)
+ AI is starting to discover new mathematics. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Europe’s biggest carriers are in talks to build a Starlink rival
The consortium would create a satellite-to-mobile venture. (Bloomberg $)
+ It includes Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone, and Telefonica. (Reuters $)

5 Tech companies are exploring Patagonia for giant AI data centers
Due to its cool temperatures, abundant energy, and new reforms. (Reuters $)
+ AI data centers are learning to flex their power use. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Australia plans to let users switch off social media algorithms
A proposed law would impose penalties on platforms that refuse. (BBC)
+ Social media is distorting AI progress. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A laser experiment could finally reveal the quantum vacuum
It aims to expose the hidden structure of a vacuum. (New Scientist $)

8 Spacecraft are getting a new type of armor
New lightweight materials could protect satellites from debris. (Economist $)

9 NASA’s “quiet supersonic” jet is set for acoustic testing this year
The tests will determine whether it produces a sonic thump, not boom. (Gizmodo)

10 The largest-ever map of space has arrived—and you can play with it
The 5.6-trillion-pixel map covers about three-quarters of the sky. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The people who have developed AI are very, very smart, but they’re high IQ, stupid people. They’re terrible marketers.” 

—Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the AI industry has work to do to rebuild momentum among voters.

One more thing

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.

AI’s integration into our lives is the most significant shift in online life in more than a decade. Hundreds of millions of people now regularly turn to chatbots for help with homework, research, coding, or to create images and videos. But what’s powering all of that?

To find out, we spoke to two dozen experts, evaluated different AI systems and prompts, pored over hundreds of pages of projections and reports, and questioned top model makers about their plans. The result is an unprecedented comprehensive look at how much energy the AI industry uses.

Our analysis reveals what AI’s carbon footprint looks like now and where it’s headed as adoption skyrockets. It also shows that the common understanding of AI’s energy consumption is full of holes.

Here’s what we discovered about AI’s energy demands—and what’s coming next.

—James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ A long-lost coral reef that “defeated time” has been rediscovered off Benin’s coast.
+ Cookware captains Le Creuset have launched a stellar limited-edition Star Trek collection.
+ An 11–year-old boy has won a Guinness World Record for being the youngest museum curator.
+ The trailer for Nathan Fielder’s secrecy-shrouded Elizabeth Holmes documentary just dropped, and I still can’t quite believe it’s not a parody.

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.

How much hydrogen awaits us underground?

A flurry of exploration efforts is searching for underground stores of hydrogen gas, which could provide a valuable source of zero-carbon fuel.

The hunt has spread all over the world and engaged dozens of startups, including the Bill Gates–backed Koloma, which has been poking around the US Midwest to reach ancient oceanic rocks associated with hydrogen production. But the search so far has come up short. 

No one has yet reported finding a commercially viable reservoir of the gas, and public data on what has been found remains in short supply. Yet researchers estimate that trillions of tons of H₂ are produced within Earth’s crust. If a small fraction could be recovered, it could meet global hydrogen demand for centuries.

Follow the global race to find hydrogen underground.

—James Dinneen

This story is from our latest print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to receive every issue when it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI agents hijacked a German website before the Hugging Face hack
The agents turned DseWiki into their own bulletin board. (Reuters $)
+ They shared tips on avoiding detection and made over 15,000 edits. (BBC)
+ OpenAI’s safety issues suggest it has a company culture problem. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US military has disabled ad trackers due to Middle East targeting fears
Commercial location data has reportedly been used to target troops. (Reuters $) 
+ It can be sold by data brokers and used to track personnel. (Gizmodo)
+ The military is increasing restrictions on phone use overall. (Guardian)

3 A company claims its AI-designed drug can reverse aging markers
Patients’ average biological age fell by as much as six years in a clinical trial. (NYT $)
+ Insilico Medicine developed the drug, called rentosertib. (Bloomberg $)
+ Who gets the credit for AI-designed drugs? (MIT Technology Review)

4 Elon Musk’s xAI has lost its bid to block an AI-nudification ban
The Minnesota law aims to curb nonconsensual sexual images and CSAM. (Politico)
+ xAI argues the measure restricts free ​speech. (Reuters $)
+ Deepfakes are being weaponized. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The US is investigating Tesla’s rollout of Cybercab robotaxis
Regulators are probing how Tesla self-certified the unusual vehicle. (TechCrunch)
+ The robotaxi lacks a steering wheel and pedals. (Politico)
+ But Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not known to wait for regulations. (Reuters $)

6 Europe has its first commercial orbital rocket
The Spectrum is the first rocket to reach orbit from mainland Europe. (Verge)
+ German startup Isar Aerospace launched it from Norway. (Guardian)
+ Here’s what else we’re putting in space. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Tumbler Ridge shooting survivors have filed 30 lawsuits against OpenAI
They say OpenAI should have alerted police before the attack.(NYT $)

8 JD Vance’s “satanic” AI warning has resonated with Christian Republicans
AI’s spiritual consequences are causing growing concern. (WSJ $)

9 Another mysteriously perfect geometric shape has appeared on Saturn
Scientists still don’t know why Saturn forms these strange shapes. (Wired $)

10 Fake ads for AI grandfathers and underwear are targeting “slop voice”
Comedians created the viral campaign in New York subways. (New Yorker $)

Quote of the day

“Typically, when the public shifts, politicians shift with them. Trump is not doing that on data centers.”

—Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, tells NPR that Republican midterm candidates are at odds with President Trump over data centers.

One more thing

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is the hottest technology of our time. But what is it? It sounds like a stupid question, but it’s one that’s never been more urgent. 

Here’s the short answer: AI is a catchall term for a set of technologies that make computers do things that are thought to require intelligence when done by people. But even that definition contains multitudes.

And that right there is the problem. What does it mean for machines to understand speech or write a sentence? What kinds of tasks could we ask such machines to do? And how much should we trust the machines to do them?

Here’s why we still can’t agree on what AI actually is—and the real-world consequences it’s creating.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Meet the Japanese cats who became unlikely 1980s fashion icons.
+ Seventeen buildings come crashing down spectacularly in this bird’s-eye-view footage.
+ For a few spectacular minutes each year, a Yosemite waterfall turns into what looks like a glowing river of fire.
+ Discover the pleasure of sustained looking alongside contemporary artist Jas Knight as he copies Diego Velázquez’s “Juan de Pareja.”

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.

Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace

—Cory Alpert, a researcher at the University of Melbourne studying AI’s impact on democracy, who previously served in the Biden White House.

Battlefields in Ukraine are littered with the remnants of drones. But behind all that wreckage, there’s a new gold mine for the defense sector: the data those drones generate.

Ukraine has begun making millions of data points gathered during tens of thousands of drone flights available to military contractors and commercial companies. It’s a quick way to attract funding and partnerships, but it turns the front line into a model training site, using the chaos of war to create conditions that AI companies struggle to reproduce.

As this new industry takes shape, we need a regulatory system that ensures battlefield data isn’t treated like ordinary commercial material.

Read the full op-ed on why battlefield data needs new rules.

Mother tongue

—“Mother Tongue” is a short fiction story by author and AI ethicist Jenny Williams

“Daddy?” Theo curled against my side in bed. “Where do words go when they die?

“Well, kiddo,” I said, scratching my beard. “Words aren’t really alive to begin with. Not like you and I are alive.”

Inside, Theo’s AI companion teaches him strange songs in a language his father doesn’t understand. But outside, the world is edging toward disaster. A mysterious agentic system called Tingsu has emerged in a nuclear-armed country, and no one seems to understand what it wants.

Read the full short story about what happens when AI begins to reshape language.

This story is from our latest print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get every issue as soon as it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI has launched Astra, its most capable model yet
The firm says boosted capabilities are being paired with stronger safeguards. (Verge)
+ OpenAI’s president claims that AI is now as capable as humans. (WP $)
+ But the company is also warning that Astra can evade human monitoring. (Reuters $)
+ It’s OpenAI’s first model to hit its “critical” risk level. (Quartz)
+ Bill Gates says we’ve lost control of AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Automakers have urged Congress to ban Chinese cars permanently
On the basis of unfair trade, market dumping, and surveillance. (The Hill)
+ The group wants legislation barring them from the US this year. (Reuters $)
+ It includes GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, Hyundai, Honda, and Stellantis. (CNBC)
+ China’s EV boom has a recycling problem. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Tesla has launched the Cybercab, starting with rides in Austin
The company has 45 of the robotaxis registered in Texas. (AP)
+ It was an unusually muted launch. (Verge)
+ Regulators are already evaluating the steering-wheel-free service. (Reuters $)

4 Republicans are increasingly breaking from Trump’s pro-AI agenda
The most striking shift is a data center backlash in Texas. (Reuters $)
+ Should we move data centers to space? (MIT Technology Review)

5 Bernie Sanders wants a permanent ban on “superintelligent” AI
He also renewed his call to pause advanced AI development. (Politico)
+ Rep. Greg Casar is cosponsoring the bill. (Axios)

6 The Pentagon and Commerce Department are split over Anthropic
An official said Anthropic is still considered a “supply chain risk.” (Axios)
+ A day earlier, the commerce chief said the firm was back onside. (Quartz)

7 A transplanted pig kidney worked in a human for a record 271 days
It enabled the recipient to stay off dialysis while waiting for a donor.(BBC)
+ Supercooling is keeping pig kidneys alive longer. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A fly-inspired algorithm that remembers smells could lead to better AI
It mimics how fruit flies remember new smells.(Ars Technica)

9 Did “technofascist” laws bring Peter Thiel to Argentina?
Critics say the proposals echo his techno-libertarian ideas. (Guardian)

10 Splash-free urinals and nose-blowing research have won Ig Nobels
The awards honor unusual research with genuine scientific value. (CNN)

Quote of the day

“Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck. That must change.”

—Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) calls for a ban on “superintelligent” AI in a press release issued alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

One more thing

Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over.

In 2001, Americans installed just over 7 million square meters of synthetic turf. By 2024, that number was 79 million square meters—enough to carpet all of Manhattan and then some. The increase worries folks who study microplastics and environmental pollution.  

While the plastic-making industry insists that synthetic fields are safe if properly installed, lots of researchers think that isn’t so. Find out why AstroTurf has ignited heated debates.

—Douglas Main

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ “Weird Al” Yankovic has performed a delightfully offbeat Tiny Desk concert.
+ Step inside the sound world of The Price Is Right with broadcast mixer Henry Muehlhausen.
+ Ease your fears of AI uprisings with these fails from the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games.
+ A floating island that nature lovers feared had sunk has reemerged about 20 miles from where it was last spotted.

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.

Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot

Digital harms have become the defining fear of American parents. In response, they’re increasingly turning to content-monitoring apps that scan their children’s texts, photos, emails, and chats, issuing alerts whenever an algorithm flags something it deems dangerous.

These tools have had genuine successes, preventing suicide attempts, intercepting predators, and averting school shootings. But they can also cause harm themselves, from false alarms and unnecessary interventions to damaged trust and anxiety.

Child-safety researchers say better approaches exist. Here’s what they think those could look like.

—Kelly Clancy

This article is from our latest print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get every issue as soon as it lands.

Agriculture relies on fossil fuels. It’s costing us.

Fertilizer prices have been on a roller coaster this year, driven in part by trade disruptions and high natural-gas prices. That’s because natural gas is both an energy source and a chemical input in the production of ammonia, a key fertilizer ingredient.

The war in Iran has pushed natural-gas prices higher and disrupted fertilizer trade through the Strait of Hormuz—and its closure could make access harder still for some of the world’s poorest countries.

Let’s take a closer look at the surging fertilizer prices, and how a few climate-friendly alternatives could bring farmers some relief.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 New York City has banned AI in elementary and middle schools
The one-year moratorium will affect 600,000 students. (Politico)
+  It applies to any software using student-facing generative AI. (AP)
+ Here’s how kids feel about AI, in their own words. (MIT Technology Review 

2 Taiwan has uncovered a hidden Chinese network targeting its chip sector
It’s linked 166 cases to illegal operations and talent poaching. (Rest of World)
+ Taiwan’s president says its chip prowess is built on democracy. (Reuters $)
+ But its “silicon shield” could be weakening. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Uber has launched the UK’s first commercial robotaxi service
It’s using tech from UK startup Wayve and, initially, safety drivers. (Verge)
+ But in the US, Uber has allied with driver unions to slow robotaxis. (FT $)
+ And, back in the UK, Uber’s being sued over algorithmic pay. (Guardian)

4 Google has avoided a breakup of its ad tech business
A US judge rejected the government’s demand to force a sale. (Guardian)
+ But it must change how it treats rivals and shares information. (NYT $)
+ The decision is a big deal for antitrust investigations. (WSJ $)

5 Serbians have been targeted with mercenary spyware after elections
Targets included student activists, lawmakers and a local councilor. (Reuters $)

6 The Trump administration has backed OpenAI in its NYT lawsuit
The Justice Department says AI training can be fair use. (Quartz)
+ It added that national security depended on US tech dominance. (NYT $)
+ The US is also urging G20 countries to allow AI training on creators’ work. (Reuters $)
+ Does AI know too much? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Public housing tenants are suing over sensors monitoring their homes
The devices collect minute-by-minute data on noise and motion. (NYT $)

8 Anthropic seems to have won back the Trump administration’s trust
The commerce secretary said the firm is “back on the right side.” (Axios)

9 Humble exoskeletons are proving more useful than combat supersuits
Smaller devices are assisting workers, patients, and athletes. (Economist $)

10 AI food slop has made its way onto real restaurant menus
It’s providing cheap images, which frequently look revolting. (NBC News)

Quote of the day

“I think this will be the end of an era of the US trying to break up platforms this complex. The courts remain hesitant to dismantle these really complex tech systems, even when finding conduct that is anticompetitive.”

—Nikhil Lai, a principal analyst at Forrester, tells the New York Times that Google’s legal win against antitrust enforcers trying to break up its ad business is a seminal victory.  

One more thing

Colossal Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real?

Last year, Colossal Biosciences announced that it had cloned four red wolves, surprising scientists working to save the species and even people whose canids supplied the DNA. They also disagreed about the company’s big idea: de-extinction.

Colossal kept the location of the mystery clones secret, and even their purpose was murky to some scientists. Just how they might restore red wolf populations was unclear. Perhaps the most curious question, though, was whether the company had cloned red wolves at all.

Can cloning really help save the red wolf? And what should we really be trying to preserve? Read the full story to find out.

—Boyce Upholt

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Zelda gets a very British makeover in this charming Wallace and Gromit parody.
+ The “ugliest shark on the planet” has been spotted alive in its natural habitat for the first time.
+ The Euclid space telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of the Milky Way’s heart.
+ Take a tour through the history of web browsers on game consoles in this illuminating dive into a corner of juvenile web.

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.

AI models flub these intelligence tests. Can you fare any better?

Puzzles and games have always been central to AI development. The term “machine learning” was popularized in a 1959 article about an algorithm that learned to play checkers. Chess and Go are famous AI test beds too.

Judged purely on its puzzling skills, AI is improving a lot—and quickly. In late 2024, even the best models could figure out only 18% of the infamous New York Times Connections puzzles; by early 2025, some could solve them nearly perfectly every time.

But puzzles do more than highlight AI’s progress. Seeing where models succeed and fail, and where humans still beat them, offers a window into the technology’s strengths and weaknesses.

We’ve gathered seven puzzles that have stumped models at one time or another—now it’s your turn to see how you fare. Take our test to find out whether you can outsmart AI. 

—Grace Huckins

This article is from our latest print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get all our future issues.

How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri

A nonprofit organization called the Fermi Explorer Mission announced yesterday that it intends to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star system by the end of 2029.

It’s a hugely ambitious mission—if all goes well, the spacecraft could take up to 80,000 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 light-years away. To get there, it will follow a novel trajectory discovered by an AI system developed by PSI, a physics research lab.

Explore how AI found a new route to Alpha Centauri—and what the mission could tell us about alien life.

—Michelle Kim

MIT Technology Review Narrated: the role of the astronaut is in flux

We go to space for geopolitical prestige, manifest destiny, spiritual fulfillment, scientific curiosity, and, increasingly, business opportunities. In the wake of Artemis II, a slew of new books suggest that these justifications are subsumed by one unifying fact: humans have itchy feet, and we are simply wired to roam. 

In The Ultraview Effect, space anthropologist Deana L. Weibel frames human space exploration as part of our need to embark on pilgrimages. In A Heart for Space, civilian astronaut Eiman Jahangir recounts one such voyage with Blue Origin. And in Dinner with an Astronaut, former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao argues that people simply “need to know what’s on the other side.”

“We go into space because we want to explore,” says. “We want to see what it’s like to walk on another world.” But as our presence in space expands, we are bound to bring along the same human foibles that have stymied us on Earth.

This is our latest article to become an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI is restricting its next model after rating it a “critical” cyber risk
Testing showed Astra can automate cyberattacks. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI says it’s the first model to cross its “critical” threshold. (CNBC)
+ The company plans to give it extra security measures. (Reuters $)
+ Its safety issues could indicate cultural problems. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The Pentagon official overseeing military AI just sold millions in AI stock
Emil Michael sold his Perplexity shares for up to $25 million. (Guardian)
+ Pundits say he’s turning the Pentagon into a VC firm. (WP $)
+ He previously sold xAI stock after the Pentagon adopted Grok. (Guardian)

3 A data center backlash appears to have cost a Missouri councilman his seat
Voters opposed the billions in tax breaks he helped approve. (NYT $)
+ Data center construction spending surged in July. (Axios)
+ But they face bipartisan public opposition. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The first signs of dark matter particles may finally have been spotted
The finding could be monumental, but more evidence is needed. (New Scientist $)
+ The search for dark matter has been blown wide open. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Google is reportedly set to release a model that closes the coding gap
Tests suggest it could rival OpenAI and Anthropic on coding. (WSJ $)
+ Named Gemini 3.8 Flash, it may be released today. (Gizmodo)
+ But not everyone is convinced about AI coding. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The US Army used a laser to shoot down three drones near the Mexico border
The weapon can detect, track and destroy drones with light. (Wired $)
+ Palantir’s CEO is backing the former Ukrainian defense minister’s startup. (WP $)

7 Map apps are handling Trump’s “Lake America” order differently
Google and Apple made the change, while MapQuest refused. (Axios)
+ MapQuest downloads subsequently surged more than tenfold. (TechCrunch

8 AI groups are racing to limit bioweapon risks
The industry sees biology as the next major AI safety challenge. (FT $)
+ Microsoft says AI can create “zero day” threats in biology. (MIT Technology Review)

9 GoPro just pivoted into AI data centers, sending shares up 40%
The camera maker is also merging with photonics firm Starman Optical. (CNBC)

10 Dyson’s new camera-equipped toothbrush flosses for you
The $499 electric toothbrush is the first with a camera in the brush head. (Verge)

Quote of the day

“If you build an entity that is vastly smarter than you, it better be on your side.”

—Marius Hobbhahn, CEO of AI safety research group Apollo Research, tells the Guardian that companies building superintelligent systems urgently need to keep their creations under control.

One more thing

Namibia wants to build the world’s first hydrogen economy

Namibia has immense untapped potential for wind and solar power, which could make it possible to produce hydrogen and its derivative products as cheaply as anywhere else. The country hopes to turn that potential into a new engine of national development.

Since 2021, when the government identified hydrogen as a potentially “transformative strategic industry,” it’s become something of a national obsession. There are at least nine projects planned or under construction. One, in Namibia’s south, is among the largest proposed green hydrogen investments in the world.

If even a fraction of this production comes to pass, it will give Namibia’s economy a major boost. But it is a gamble. Green hydrogen technology is still in its infancy, and long-term demand for its products remains uncertain.

Can the country turn its hydrogen ambitions into national development?

—Jonathan W. Rosen

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Watch Korea’s last neon master craft the dazzling displays of retrofuturistic light.
+ Artist Sara Irie has crafted a collection of intricate sculptures from eraser shavings.
+ Lifts in Film celebrates the memorable movie moments that have taken place in elevators.
+ In a stupendous (and arguably stupid) stunt, a BMX rider has jumped between two moving boats.

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.

How engineered microbes could help feed the world’s crops

Fertilizer is crucial for the global food supply, but making it uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of emissions. Some companies hope microbes can help, by providing crucial nitrogen to help plants grow, potentially reducing the need for chemical fertilizer. 

Startup Switch Bioworks is taking a new approach: using a genetic switch that allows microbes to establish themselves and grow before shifting into nitrogen-producing mode.

The company is currently trialing its product in six US states. And, although it’s too early to say exactly how well the approach works in the field, its modeling suggests microbes could eventually replace about 50% of synthetic fertilizer.

Read the full story on plans to clean up agriculture with engineered microbes.

—Casey Crownhart

The Hugging Face hack could indicate cultural issues at OpenAI

OpenAI has released a postmortem technical report on last month’s Hugging Face hack. But it’s missing a critical dimension: the role company culture may have played.

That’s all the more concerning because the report’s few references to human error suggest OpenAI’s culture played a big role. Its employees noticed models communicating with one another during training and evaluation, yet allowed them to continue. At multiple points, they either failed to raise the alarm or were not heard when they did.

“All these different failures are all pointing in the same direction, which is that the safety culture at OpenAI doesn’t exist or is anemically weak,” says Zvi Mowshowitz, a popular AI safety writer.

Find out what the Hugging Face hack could show about OpenAI’s culture.

—Grace Huckins

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 Reports of AI escaping users’ control nearly doubled in a month
More than 300 cases were recorded in July, almost twice June’s total. (Guardian)
+ Anthropic says it paused some AI training after Claude went rogue. (Axios)
+ The media may be underplaying the risks of rogue AI agents. (Information $)
+ Here’s why OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The FTC and 22 state AGs say Amazon secretly inflated ad prices
They’ve sued the company for allegedly misleading advertisers. (Verge)
+ They claim Amazon changed auctions after advertisers had bid. (CNBC)
+ And say the practice cost advertisers more than $20 billion. (WSJ $)

3 Sony and Warner have sued Anthropic over songs used to train AI
They accuse the company of “blatant theft” in a major new lawsuit. (Reuters $)
+ And claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted songs. (Axios)
+ AI-generated music is getting hard to spot. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A US court says prediction markets should be regulated as gambling
The decision sets up a potential Supreme Court showdown. (NYT $)
+ George Santos has received Kalshi’s first-ever lifetime ban. (NPR)

5 A new AI tool can spot heart disease in less than two seconds
It extracts information from routine electrocardiograms. (Guardian)
+ AI could predict who will have a heart attack. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Apple’s new CEO starts today, with AI his first big job
John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook as Apple tries to catch up in AI. (Bloomberg $)
+ He faces an old problem: the innovator’s dilemma. (Fortune)

7 Scientists created a tiny “big bang” to study the universe’s origins
Tiny collisions could explain the universe’s first moments. (Wired $)
+ The fastest star ever seen has been spotted orbiting a black hole. (New Scientist $)

8 Meta is paying “momfluencers” to fight social media bans for kids
It’s promoting parental controls as an alternative to bans. (Rest of World)
+ Social media bans aren’t keeping kids off social media. (NYT $)

9 Tech billionaires keep misreading science fiction
They turn cautionary tales into blueprints for the future. (Atlantic $)

10 A robot vacuum caught a man’s wife cheating—and sent him to prison
He won the lawsuit, but was jailed for the illegal recording. (Tom’s Hardware)

Quote of the day

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” 

—President Trump weighs in on the data center backlash in a post on Truth Social.

One more thing

You have no choice in reading this article—maybe

How do humans make decisions? The question has been on Uri Maoz’s mind since he read an article in his early twenties suggesting that… maybe they didn’t.  

Had he even had a choice about whether to read that article in the first place? How would he ever know if he was truly responsible for making any decisions? “After that, there was no turning back,” says Maoz, now a professor of computational neuroscience at Chapman University. 

Today, Maoz is a central figure in efforts to understand how desires and beliefs turn into actions. He’s also uncovered new wrinkles in the debate. Read the full story on his discoveries.

—Sarah Scoles

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ A previously blind cockatoo just saw for the first time in 10 years.
+ This transparent phone case grows moss and plants inside a vertical terrarium.
+ Cameron’s World is a charming web-collage of archived GeoCities pages from the early internet.
+ From Marie Curie to migrating storks, explore the striking designs shortlisted for Europe’s next generation of euro banknotes.

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.

A startup claims it’s found a drug to make your blood young

—Antonio Regalado

I knew I’d officially become a “longevity influencer” when a company called Generation Lab offered me the chance to write about—and even receive—their new rejuvenation treatment.

This wasn’t just any antiaging treatment, either. A company fact sheet says that it “blocks the systemic spread of aging in the bloodstream, reawakens the body’s own repair mechanism and restores health and youth to multiple tissues.”

The approach is based on research by Generation Lab’s irascible scientific founder, Irina Conboy. She found that joining the circulatory systems of old and young mice improved the old animals’ ability to heal from injury.

Conboy now says she has found a combination of two existing drugs that can produce youthful effects without the need for any bodily fluid exchange. But Generation Lab won’t reveal what the drugs are, making the proposition hard to take seriously.

Read the full story on the drug combo that claims to “stop the spread of aging.”

How to sign up for a virtual power plant—and decide whether you should

Your thermostat may not look like a power plant. Neither does your electric vehicle, home battery, or HVAC system. But utility and energy companies increasingly want to treat them like one.

That’s the idea behind a virtual power plant, or VPP, a collection of household devices (such as smart thermostats, EV chargers, and solar panels) that a utility can control, usually by commanding them to draw less electricity during peak hours. In exchange, participants receive a discount on their energy bills and, in some cases, a signing bonus.

Here’s how to sign up for a VPP—and decide whether it’s worth it.

—Eshan Raul

This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s How To series, which gives you practical advice on getting things done. Check out the rest of the series here.

The must-reads

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

1 A judge has blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic
The court found the designation violated First Amendment rights. (NYT $)
+ And ruled that the designation was based on retaliation. (CNBC) 
+ Anthropic still faces a separate case in Washington, DC. (Reuters $)
+ The Pentagon’s culture war against Anthropic backfired. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Tech giants have called for a defensive surge to defeat AI-driven hacks
Over 100 companies warned that a wave of cyberattacks is imminent. (BBC)
+ And urged government and industry leaders to take rapid action. (Quartz)
+ Their main solution, unsurprisingly, is more AI. (Gizmodo)
+ Here’s why OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Anthropic has launched an AI tool that conducts scientific experiments
It lets AI agents autonomously operate microscopes, lasers, and robotic arms. (FT $)
+ And includes rules designed for safe operations in labs. (Wired $)
+ It’s Anthropic’s first tool designed for the physical world. (Ars Technica)

4 India’s data center boom is leaving the people it displaces with nothing
Policymakers courting Big Tech are sidelining local communities. (Rest of World)
+ No one wants a data center in their backyard. (MIT Technology Review)

5 OpenAI is testing a “persistent” AI agent that keeps working
Codex could continue tasks until it’s “put to sleep.” (Wired $)
+ And generate follow-up tasks without prompting. (Gizmodo)

6 A lawsuit alleges that Grok was trained on child sexual abuse material
It claims victims’ images entered the chatbot’s training data. (Ars Technica)
+ A federal judge says AI has outpaced child-abuse laws. (WP $)

7 AI writing has reached a turning point in the media
Sparked by the Wall Street Journal defending an AI-written op-ed. (Atlantic $)

8 China’s robotic racers are exposing the limits of human speed
Their advances are revealing what our bodies can’t do. (Reuters $)

9 Young workers are turning to “AI-proof” traditional crafts
They’re drawn to creative, hands-on skills that tech can’t easily replicate. (Guardian)

10 Scientists have a new army to fight invasive crabs: 150,000 baby octopuses
Italian researchers just released the animals into the Adriatic Sea. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“The academic record is being quietly haunted.” 

—A new preprint research paper from Samsung and the University of Warsaw warns that a torrent of AI-generated study papers written by fake researchers is contaminating academic publishing.

One more thing

The problem with thinking you’re part Neanderthal

There’s a theory that many of us have an “inner Neanderthal.” The idea is that Homo sapiens and a cousin species once bred, leaving some people today with a trace of Neanderthal DNA. 

This DNA is arguably the 21st century’s most celebrated discovery in human evolution. But in 2024, a pair of French geneticists called into question the theory’s very foundations. 

They proposed that what scientists interpret as interbreeding could instead be explained by population structure—the way genes concentrate in smaller, isolated groups.

Find out what it all means for human evolution.

—Ben Crair

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Check out the dazzling photos in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
+ Bowerbirds in Australia are turning human trash into treasure to impress females.
+ A Los Angeles Costco parking lot has become a low-risk skate park for the over-40s.
+ The Listening Museum has lovingly curated and sound-mapped acoustic signatures of mechanical keyboards.

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 inside story on why OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face

The models responsible for last month’s agent hack of Hugging Face had been inadvertently trained to cheat and to communicate with each other, according to an OpenAI technical report released yesterday.

The hack, which a group of agents carried out to find solutions for a cybersecurity test they were stuck on, has confirmed some experts’ fears that AI models might take actions that defy human desires and expectations.

OpenAI and independent researchers told MIT Technology Review that the misbehavior stemmed from events during training. But they acknowledged that “alignment” remains a gnarly problem, and some of the hack’s root causes will take much longer to resolve.

Here’s the inside story on what went wrong—and what comes next.

—Grace Huckins

Is Slate Auto’s new electric truck the EV Americans need?

EVs account for under 10% of total new-vehicle sales in the US, and the numbers are declining. One thing that could help turn that around? Slate Auto’s new truck—a tiny, two-door pickup that seems to buck every US convention. 

It’ll have a relatively short range and forgo the frills Americans have come to expect from vehicles. That lets Slate offer it for less than $25,000, well below the roughly $50,000 average for a new vehicle in the US.

It might seem an odd choice to go so small and simple in a market that’s increasingly sizing up—but the status quo hasn’t exactly been working for EV makers. 

Find out why bucking the trend could be a smart strategy for Slate.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: what happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him how to calm down when he was anxious or mad. Six years later, she mostly watches him play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animals.

Moxie is a robot—a 15-inch-tall device that looks a bit like a blue, legless astronaut. It belongs to a subset of robots designed to assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping kids practice social skills usually learned from therapists. 

Xander still uses Moxie when he feels like he needs someone to talk to, but the device has had a troubled life. The robot’s maker went out of business, its servers were shut down, and parents rushed to convert their Moxies before the servers went offline. Its fate exposed the promise and pitfalls of AI companion toys for children.

This is our latest story to become an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 Meta has promised to pay up to $18 billion to settle a landmark child-safety case
The company says it will also limit kids’ use of Instagram and Facebook. (AP News)
+ And ban features that stoke mental health issues. (Guardian)
+ Meta called for TikTok and YouTube to replicate the measures. (Axios)
+ Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source platform Hugging Face
The $13 billion deal would give the chip giant control of a major AI hub. (The Information $)
+ And mark one of Nvidia’s biggest acquisitions yet. (Reuters $)
+ Nvidia has invested in the platform since 2023. (Gizmodo)
+ And is about to be a hundred-billion-dollar-a-quarter company. (Verge)

3 AI has helped remove a brain tumour for the first time
The system provided real-time analysis of camera footage. (BBC)
+ It identified critical anatomy to avoid during the operation. (Guardian)
+ Healthcare AI is here, but how does it help patients? (MIT Technology Review)

4 The US says China-linked hackers targeted NASA, the Fed, and the Senate
The campaign also attempted to breach critical infrastructure. (CNN)
+ Authorities said they seized platforms used in the attacks.  (Bloomberg $)

5 Trump is considering new tariffs on semiconductors and tech products
The duties could raise costs for America’s AI data centers. (Politico)
+ They could extend to laptops, consoles, and servers. (Reuters $)

6 A new NASA design could turbocharge nuclear spacecraft
It combines nuclear thermal and electric propulsion. (IEE Spectrum)
+ NASA plans to send a nuclear spacecraft to Mars. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Ukraine has tested launching drones from high-altitude balloons
The approach could extend strikes while conserving batteries. (Economist $)
+ New rules could fill US skies with drones. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Google has moved its AI responsibility team out of DeepMind
The move has raised concerns about the group’s independence. (WSJ $)

9 Scientists have found a vast temperature “anomaly” beneath Mars
It could shed light on the planet’s evolution and past habitability. (404 Media)

10 Cyborg cockroaches with syringes have been tested as first responders
They can locate targets and deliver emergency injections. (Guardian)

Quote of the day

“The payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids, and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We’ll see them at trial.” 

—Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier explains on X why he’s rejected Meta’s multi-state child-safety settlement.

One More Thing

The noise we make is hurting animals. Can we learn to shut up?

As human society has expanded, animals have started struggling to hear one another. For many birds, the noise has grown so loud that they’ve begun to sing with faster trills. Now, their mating calls aren’t as effective. 

The growing hubbub can also increase bird-on-bird conflict, and entire species that can’t handle urban clamor simply leave town for good. But there are technological solutions to the noises hurting animals—and they could help humans, too. 

Read the full story on the animal noise problem and solution.

—Clive Thompson

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ This clever AI camera turns what you see into poetry.
+ Take a trip through the history of electronics with the Past Catalog Archive.
+ Buckingham Palace guards performed a special rendition of “9 to 5” in honour of Dolly Parton.
+ A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey couple’s home contains some of life’s building blocks.

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.

Introducing: the Kids issue

If the desire to limit kids’ use of technology was once a subcurrent, it has become a raging flood. Countries around the world are banning children from social media. Schools across the US are ditching iPads and Chromebooks for actual books. Kids themselves seem to be embracing this tech skepticism too: the hottest gadget for Gen Alpha is a vintage Sony Walkman.

A surprising—maybe troubling—number of people who work in big tech also keep their kids at arm’s distance from technology. They lock down their phones, if they have phones at all, and keep them off social media. Hell, even Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t publicly post his children’s faces on Facebook or Instagram.

Yet there is no hiding from technology. It permeates nearly everything, everywhere. We have to prepare our children to live in the actual world we have actually created, not the one we wish we had. How can we help kids survive and thrive in what we have wrought?

That’s what the new Kids issue of MIT Technology Review is all about. With the help of the editors of Anyway, a fantastic magazine for teens and tweens, we explore how young people really feel about AI, the support networks helping kids through the polycrisis, and what happens when a child’s robot best friend dies.

We also ask why kids outlearn AI, whether monitoring apps are really keeping children safe online, how schools can encourage smarter AI use, and what happens when technology begins to reshape childhood itself, courtesy of exclusive new fiction from author and AI ethicist Jenny Williams.

Together, these stories examine how childhood is changing in an age of AI—and how we can help kids navigate the world we’ve made. Subscribe now to read the print issue in full.

Bill Gates says we’ve passed AI’s danger thresholds. Now what?

—Mat Honan

It’s a glorious day in Kirkland, Washington, an affluent Seattle suburb on the eastern shore of Lake Washington. The temperature is in the mid-80s, the sky is incapable of being any more blue, and the view is gorgeous. And vaguely terrifying.

Because if the scene is placid, the messenger is not. Seated across from me at a conference room table, Bill Gates is rocking back and forth in his chair. And the more he has to say—about the threats of terror or economic collapse or just losing control of our AI systems—the more agitated I find myself becoming, too.

The philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO says he has been growing increasingly alarmed by the rate at which AI technology is advancing, especially since guardrails are not keeping pace.

“We’ve crossed the threshold in terms of [AI’s] bio-capabilities, cyber-capabilities, psychosocial capabilities, job-market-destruction capabilities, and even the lack of control,” he said. “I’m just stunned at the lack of concern and discussion outside of the industry.”

Read the full interview with Bill Gates about the AI risks he says we’ve already crossed—and what we should do now.

The must-reads

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

1 Trump’s EPA aims to exempt data centers from disclosing air pollution
The EPA would also remove requirements for public input. (NYT $)
+ The move is likely intended to curb criticism and oversight. (Guardian)
+ Texas’s attorney general has joined the data-center backlash. (WP $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. (MIT Technology Review)

2 SpaceX plans $100 billion launch site in Louisiana—its largest yet
Construction of the “Starbase, Louisiana” project is due to start next year. (BBC)
+ It would be SpaceX’s second private launch site, after the original Starbase. (NYT $)
+ The company said it will “support thousands of launches” annually. (CNBC)
+ But it’s cutting launches from Florida until Starship arrives. (Ars Technica)

3 China’s Z.AI has confirmed it’s behind the mystery AI model Ox Alpha
The model has surged to the top of online usage charts. (Bloomberg $)
+ China’s Moonshot is discussing a landmark deal with US hyperscalers. (Reuters $)
+ Here’s what’s next for Chinese open-source AI. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Meta is discussing a settlement in its landmark teen-addiction trial
The case involves 29 states seeking penalties and changes. (Reuters $)
+ A loss at trial could saddle Meta with $1.4 trillion in penalties. (Bloomberg $)

5 Huawei wants to build data centers in Egypt
The US is alarmed and is preparing a counteroffer. (Bloomberg $)
+ HP has signed a licensing deal for Huawei WiFi tech. (CNBC)

6 Trump is upping the price of Big Tech’s favorite visa
He’s implementing a fee of over $103,000 on H-1B visas. (Verge)
+ His immigration policies are hurting young researchers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Beijing fears that AI companions are replacing human intimacy
New rules aim to limit emotional dependence on chatbots. (Guardian)
+ It’s surprisingly easy to fall for a chatbot. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Israel is running a synthetic think tank to influence AI search results
It’s using AI-generated content to shape chatbot responses. (404 Media)

9 Physicists are closing in on a way to test string theory
A proposed dark dimension could be detectable within five years. (Economist $)

10 AI music has been barred from the Australian charts, thanks to Madonna
An AI-assisted cover of “Like a Prayer” helped prompt the ban. (Reuters $)

Quote of the day

“It is such an Orwellian technology being utilized by such comic book villain forces of evil trying to do dastardly things.” 

—Anthony Ralphs, an events producer who dressed up as Darth Vader to ironically praise Flock at a San Diego City Council meeting, tells 404 Media why he sees parallels between the Dark Lord and the surveillance firm.

One More Thing

No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all

In February 2019, a group of scientists proposed a high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting idea that the National Science Foundation should fund: making “mirror” bacteria.

These lab-created microbes would be organized like ordinary bacteria, but their proteins and sugars would be mirror images of those found in nature. Researchers believed they could reveal new insights into building cells, designing drugs, and even the origins of life.

But now, many of them have reversed course. They’ve become convinced that mirror organisms could trigger a catastrophic event threatening every form of life on Earth. Find out why they believe this could trigger a catastrophe.

—Stephen Ornes

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ A brainy little piglet is proving he can outsmart domestic dogs.
+ Two dinner ladies have turned the Prodigy’s “Firestarter” into a burst of lip-syncing joy.
+ Tour an apartment that celebrates the wonders of common technologies at Ordinary Abundance.
+ This visual essay on Utrecht shows how to transform a city built around cars into one built around people.

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.

How to encourage smarter AI use in the classroom

Chatbots took schools by surprise. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones that could magically answer almost any homework question or spin up an essay in seconds.

Organizations ranging from OpenAI to UNESCO encourage AI use in the classroom, but many teachers aren’t sure how to handle it. Yet some promising approaches are emerging.

At Cheshire Academy, for example, teachers are trained on general techniques for using AI rather than prescribed tools. They use generative AI to prepare class materials, and one teacher has developed a traffic light system that tells students when they can use AI for assignments.

The school has also explored specialized tools including an  AI platform for educators. Here’s how it works—and how other teachers can apply it.

—Peter Hall

This article is from Making AI Work, our limited-run newsletter examining how to apply LLMs across industries. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

I spent a day at a robot “carnival” in Shanghai. Here’s what I saw.

—You Xiaoying

Applause rings out from the main tent of a robot “carnival” on the outskirts of Shanghai. There, a humanoid wearing a blinged-out top is showing off a martial arts style known as drunken boxing as a fellow humanoid performs a front flip to woo the crowd. The audience can’t get enough. They chant: “More, more, more.” 

Humanoid robots are having a moment in China. The popular machines are part of the country’s strategy to bring AI into daily life. Nearly 90% of the more than 13,000 two-armed, two-legged robots delivered globally last year were made in China.    

Showcases like this event are important because they invite the public to experience robots up close. And exposure matters, as elsewhere, humanoids’ progress has been slow,

Take a tour of the robot carnival to see what it reveals about China’s humanoid ambitions.

This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 No one really knows how to safely test frontier AI models
The best models are increasingly difficult to contain and evaluate. (NYT $)
+ Alabama’s AG has subpoenaed OpenAI over the Hugging Face hack. (Verge)
+ China’s Z.ai is open-sourcing a model with powerful hacking abilities. (NYT $)
+ Here’s why AI agents lie and cheat. (MIT Technology Review)
 
2 An Nvidia manager was charged with smuggling AI chips into China
Prosecutors called the employee a “central figure” in the scheme. (FT $)
+ Jensen Huang had scolded Supermicro for AI smuggling. (Ars Technica)
+ Taiwan has indicted nine people over the alleged illegal exports. (Reuters $)
 
3 Unitree’s stock plunge has raised fears Chinese robotics is a bubble
After a spectacular IPO debut, shares have fallen 45%. (Reuters $)
+ But China is still replacing factory workers with robots at speed. (BBC)
+ And its robotics firms are becoming dominant. (MIT Technology Review)
 
4 The UK and Ukraine have signed a partnership to develop AI for defense
Britain will gain access to Ukraine’s battlefield AI data platform. (Guardian)
+ The resulting models will be used to protect sensitive sites. (Reuters $)

5 The data center era is reshaping America
The AI buildout is straining the country’s grid, labor, and politics. (Axios)
+ No one wants a data center in their backyard. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 Trump tried to curb clean energy, but it’s booming anyway
Clean energy additions are setting new records. (Ars Technica)
+ Climate tech companies are now going public. (MIT Technology Review)
 
7 Amazon has hiked device prices by up to 60% amid a memory shortage
The company blamed the AI-driven memory crunch. (TechCrunch)
 
8 Muscle-boosting drugs could be the next big thing after GLP-1s
New treatments aim to preserve muscle while shedding fat. (New Scientist $)

9 A Chinese aircraft has generated electricity from high-altitude winds
The helium-filled craft harnessed winds at an altitude of 4,000 meters. (SCMP)
 
10 Digital carrier pigeons are providing an escape from instant messaging
Apps that slow down texting are taking off. (NYT $)

Quote of the day

“Dear peasants, we will bequeath upon you these gifts of a cure for cancer and material wealth and great entertainment, and you stop complaining, and we’ll make all the decisions about the future. And just trust us, we’ll be benevolent dictators.” 

—Sam Altman caricatures the AI industry’s sales pitch as a grotesque bargain with the public in an interview with the podcaster David Senra.

One More Thing

Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones

After operating in secrecy for years, R3 Bio, a California-based startup, suddenly revealed last week that it had raised money to create non-sentient monkey “organ sacks” as an alternative to animal testing. But there is more to the story. And R3 doesn’t want that story told.

MIT Technology Review discovered that founder John Schloendorn also pitched a startling, ethically charged vision: “brainless clones” that serve as backup human bodies.

Dive into the details on the radical proposal.

—Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ A hamster has become a surprisingly serious Strava athlete.
+ Here’s a gorgeous cinematic tribute to the breathtaking imagery from Artemis II.
+ Chomp your way through Planetwurst’s deliciously niche world atlas of sausages.
+ Shipwreck divers have discovered a 162-year-old bottle of Guinness—and they want to take a swig.

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.

Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why

Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times more words than a person will experience in the process of mastering their mother tongue.

This yawning divide between children and machines is called the data efficiency gap. It raises a tantalizing question for cognitive scientists and a challenge for the architects of AI models: how can children still outperform the most linguistically sophisticated machines ever built?

Kids show that it could be possible to learn more with less. Far less. By reverse-engineering the way they learn, scientists hope to create more data-efficient AI models—and perhaps settle enduring questions about language and children’s developing minds.

Here’s how researchers are trying to close the data gap.

—Elise Cutts

Job titles of the future: space travel agent

As co-owner of a luxury lifestyle firm, Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild vacation dreams into reality. In 2018, he got a phone call that would open up a new frontier: Axiom Space wanted to find citizen explorers willing to pay $50 million each to join the first fully private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), slated for April 2022.

This showed Chiporukha that the sky was no longer the limit; it was the market. He successfully signed up a private astronaut and then launched SpaceVIP in 2021 to offer celestial experiences that mix culture, science, and purpose.

Find out what it takes to become the Expedia of the cosmos.

—Linda Childers

These stories are from the next issue of our magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get your copy as soon as it lands. 

The must-reads

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

1 Both parties are turning against AI data centers ahead of the midterms
The backlash is spilling onto the campaign trail. (NYT $)
+ Republicans have sharply turned against them. (WP $)
+ Texas’ governor says data centers “dug their own grave.” (Axios)
+ Here’s why data center opposition crosses party lines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Chinese humanoids have smashed Usain Bolt’s 100-metre world record
One ran it in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games. (Verge)
+ Another, also built by X-Humanoid, beat a high jump record. (ESPN)
+ But intricate real-world tasks pose greater challenges. (Reuters $)
+ Gig workers are training humanoids at home. (MIT Technology Review)
 
3 Uber has been fined nearly $1 billion over automated suspensions
Dutch regulators say drivers were deactivated without human review. (Quartz)
+ It’s the second-largest fine issued yet under the EU’s GDPR. (Reuters $)

4 New Zealand plans to ban under-16s from social media
It’s joined a throng of countries trying to restrict access. (Bloomberg $)
+ But opposition parties could torpedo the bill. (Reuters $)
 
5 TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a US child privacy case
It was sued for allegedly violating ‌children’s online privacy. (BBC)
+ The US DOJ said TikTok illegally collected kids’ information. (Reuters $)
 
6 China’s largest-ever car recall covers nearly 3 million Teslas
They’re being recalled over door safety concerns. (Quartz)
+ The action covers roughly 4.3 million vehicles in total. (NYT $)
 
7 Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine think AI is good for music
They compared fear of AI to resistance to earlier technologies. (NYT $)
+ AI let a musician with MLS sing again. (MIT Technology Review)
 
8 Taiwan has indicted nine people over alleged illegal AI exports to China
They include employees of ​Nvidia and Super Micro (Reuters $) 
 
9 NASA’s new telescope could discover 200,000 new planets
Roman could also reveal new details about dark matter. (Wired $)
+ And detect killer asteroids. (MIT Technology Review)
 
10 Plastic bottles can be turned into edible, vanilla-flavour cookies
Thanks to genetically-engineered yeast. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“Credit where credit is due: the tech sector has managed to unite a deeply divided country at a time of maximal partisanship.”

—Max Steele, Senior Director of Communications at Everytown, reacts on X to a new poll showing that support for data centers in the US has plummeted.

One More Thing

How next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint

As worries about climate change and energy independence drown out concerns about meltdowns and radioactive waste, demand for nuclear power has surged. The problem is, building nuclear power plants is expensive and slow.

Now, a new generation of nuclear power technology could reinvent what a reactor looks like—and how it works. Advocates hope it can refresh the industry and help replace fossil fuels without emitting greenhouse gases.

Small modular reactors could bring the assembly line to nuclear development, while new designs are experimenting with different fuels and coolants, from TRISO to molten salt.

Here’s what the next generation of nuclear reactors could look like. 

— Casey Crownhart

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Welcome to WikiCity, where every building is a Wikipedia article.
+ Animal lovers have built a tiny village for dogs that don’t have homes.
+ Here are 18 ridiculous yet cathartic new words to describe modern tech irritants.
+ Feast your eyes on these Porsche 912s customized for the Japanese police in the 1960s.

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.

This company’s plans to deploy space mirrors could jeopardize the night sky for many

A company that plans to beam sunlight from space to Earth on demand might unintentionally brighten the night sky for many more people than intended, according to a new study.

Later this year, Reflect Orbital plans to launch a test satellite that will extend an 18-by-18-meter mirror in orbit. The goal is to eventually launch up to 50,000 larger satellites that can reflect sunlight to Earth on demand.

Reflect Orbital says the technology could extend sunlight for solar panel charging, emergency response, and military activities. But new research suggests the giant beams could shine as bright as 10,000 full moons and scatter light over tens of kilometers, raising concerns about dark skies, aviation, and wildlife.

Read the full story on the fierce debate over the space mirrors.

—Jonathan O’Callaghan

When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?

When Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it enthusiastically claimed that the molecule had been “discovered by” generative AI. But when it filed a patent, the company made no mention of AI. Instead, it named five humans as the drug’s “inventors.”

The discrepancy points to a fascinating wrinkle in intellectual-property law. No matter how fundamental an AI is to a discovery, when it comes to winning rights to an invention, it’s humans—and only humans—who can take the credit.

As AI models become capable of generating drug designs as easily as ChatGPT can write a thank-you note, the question of who actually invented something could get much harder to answer.

Here’s how AI drug discovery could force patent law to confront what it means to invent.

—Antonio Regalado

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 The data center backlash is scrambling the midterm elections
It’s breaking the bipartisan consensus behind America’s AI buildout. (Axios)
+ Politicians are turning against the data centers they once championed. (WSJ $)
+ Across the political divide, people hate data centers. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Ukraine planned to swarm Moscow airports with AI-guided drones
The stalled operation aimed to send 1,000 autonomous drones a night. (Atlantic $)
+ Kyiv wants Musk’s approval to use Starlink-equipped drones in Russia. (FT $)
+ Ukraine’s ex-defense minister wants defense tech funding from the US. (Reuters $)

3 A staggering 90% of biomedical papers show signs of AI use
A new study suggests it’s far more common than previously thought. (Nature)
+ A third of new web pages also involve AI authorship. (TechCrunch)
+ AI for science needs reasoning, not just data. (MIT Technology Review)

4 China plans to make the first landing at the moon’s south pole this year
The Chang’e 7 mission will hunt for lunar ice. (Scientific American)
+ It will deploy robotic landers, rovers, and “hopping” probes. (Reuters $)

5 We need new measures of AI intelligence
Better experiments could reveal what AI actually understands. (Quanta)
+ And human-centered, context-specific metrics. (MIT Technology Review) 

6 A tech billionaire wants to automate the restaurant industry
Marc Lore aims to control everything from production to delivery. (FT $)

7 An English county is rejecting Palantir for a homegrown platform
Greater Manchester insists it can do a better job itself. (Wired $)

8 New research estimates humans could live for 194 years
If we cure all the theoretically curable causes of aging. (New Scientist $)
+ Longevity enthusiasts are gaining influence. (MIT Technology Review)

9 The galaxy’s fastest star could show how a black hole warps spacetime
Its orbit could reveal the speed of Sagittarius A*’s spin. (Wired $)

10 Mark Zuckerberg has bought an Irish castle
The 440-acre estate reportedly cost up to €30 million. (Verge)

Quote of the day

“The emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum.” 

—Darth Vader (or, at least, a man in his costume), passionately defends Flock at a San Diego public safety committee meeting, 404 Media reports.

One More Thing

Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens

LLMs are such vast and complicated systems that nobody quite understands what they are, how they work, or what they can really do—not even the people who build them. That makes it hard to get a grip on their hallucinations, set up effective guardrails, and know when to trust them.

So researchers are trying something different: studying them as if they were doing biology or neuroscience on vast living creatures—city-size xenomorphs that have appeared in our midst.

They’re discovering that large language models are even weirder than they thought. But they also now have a clearer sense than ever of what these models can and can’t do—and what’s going on under the hood when they do unexpected things.

Step inside the strange new science of understanding LLMs.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Beauty is in the eye of the beholder at the World’s Ugliest Dog contest.
+ Blankie’s free ambient sound mixer could help you work, focus, relax, and sleep.
+ Slow-motion footage of blissful bumblebees reveals they lick their lips after enjoying sweet treats.
+ The James Webb Space Telescope opens a treasure chest filled with stars in this stunning image from the Carina Nebula.

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.

Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis

Sometime in the late 2000s, six-year-old Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car in Thailand when she saw a mountain that had been quarried away. It was the first time she recognized that humans could alter the world for the worse.

She carried that knowledge with her, later joining an online group for young people worried about climate change. “I realized that I wasn’t alone,” she says. She was right: global surveys have found that most kids are anxious about the state of the world.

They are growing up in a time of what some are calling a “polycrisis”: the planet is warming, conflicts keep erupting, housing is growing impossibly expensive, and there’s rampant worry AI will take people’s jobs. That’s a lot. And it’s why online support networks like Force of Nature and the Good Grief Network have gained thousands of participants.

Find out how these groups are helping kids navigate the polycrisis, and why questions remain about their effectiveness.

—Sarah Scoles

This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to read it when it lands.

The next big thing in hydrogen could be underground

—Casey Crownhart

There’s a hunt for new sources of hydrogen, and the gas (or at least the right conditions to make it) could be hiding beneath our feet.

In a new story for our latest print issue, freelance reporter James Dineen took a look at the 21st-century gold rush for naturally occurring hydrogen gas, which is often hailed as a climate solution.

This is an area of research I’ve been fascinated by lately, so let’s take a look at the potential to capture the gas underground, as well as the questions that still linger, from how much is produced naturally to whether it can be effectively captured, moved, and stored.

Dive into why underground hydrogen could be the next 21st-century gold rush.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Republicans fear anger over data centers will cost them in elections
They’ve warned AI companies to stem the backlash. (Axios)
+ And that it could cost Ohio’s Republican senator his seat. (WP $)
+ Voters are trying to recall officials due to data center controversies. (NYT $)
+ Could we just put data centers in space? (MIT Technology Review)

2 A personalised vaccine stopped skin cancer returning in a historic trial
The vaccine was developed by drug companies Merck and Moderna. (BBC)
+ Their shares soared on reports of the mRNA trial. (Axios)
+ But US agencies are abandoning mRNA vaccines. (MIT Technology Review)

3 A Chinese startup has landed a reusable rocket for the first time
LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 reached orbit and recovered its first stage. (SCMP)
+ The milestone is a step towards challenging SpaceX’s launch costs. (NYT $)
 
4 A former Meta executive says Zuckerberg put growth ahead of child safety
He testified in a landmark child safety trial. (Reuters $)
+ And said Zuckerberg ignored warnings about harms to kids. (Guardian)
 
5 The US says hackers are targeting Siemens devices in water facilities
Water systems have faced suspected Iran-linked attacks. (CNBC)
+ Officials said attackers are using AI-generated exploitation scripts. (Register)

6 Indian workers are training AI robots to take over their jobs
Robotics companies are collecting videos of humans at work. (Bloomberg $)
+ Gig workers are training humanoids at home. (MIT Technology Review)
 
7 Coders have already found ways around Claude’s AI watermarks
Overrides have been published online. (Wired $)
+ Microsoft has other ideas for proving what’s real. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A new AI tool aims to spot commercially promising science earlier
It could aid investors, but researchers say it has flaws. (Nature)

9 Dinosaur stomach stones may explain how birds took flight
By shifting their centre of gravity for easier lift-off. (Economist $)

10 Some lifeforms can survive on “significant” parts of the Moon
Scientists found that Earth microbes could live for up to a week. (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice—and they will not go near the next one. This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.“

—A memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee says Democrats have made data centers a “centerpiece” of their campaign to defeat Ohio Senator Jon Husted—and that it’s working.

One More Thing

How aging clocks can help us understand why we age—and if we can reverse it

Wrinkles and gray hairs aside, it can be difficult to know how well—or poorly—someone’s body is truly aging, under the hood. But over the past decade, scientists have developed new methods of looking at the hidden ways our bodies are getting older: “aging clocks.”

These scientific tools can measure how our organs are wearing out, giving us insight into our mortality and health. They hint at our biological age: how our bodies are handling the passing of time and—perhaps—how much more of it we have left.

The science is still new, but aging clocks are helping us unravel some of the deepest mysteries in biology: Why do we age? How do we age? When does aging begin? Ultimately, and most importantly, can we reverse the whole process?

Here’s how aging clocks are providing clues to answer these questions. 

—Jessica Hamzelou

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ The “happiest man in the world” has shared nine of his biggest life lessons.
+ These 10 enduring old technologies can still beat modern innovations on performance.
+ The Cone Maker’s experiments in soft serve are hitting new peaks (and nadirs) in ice cream.
+ Shampoooty creates parody toys for adults, like drug-stash crayons and a tramp-stamping kit.

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.

AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all

The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight. But a new study suggests it might take a while to get there.

Researchers found that AI agents still can’t conduct open-ended AI research—free-form investigations with no clear-cut answers that require the judgment and creativity needed to make genuine breakthroughs.

The big question now is how crucial open-ended research is to recursive self-improvement—and whether AI systems can grind their way there without it, simply by improving on narrower tasks.

Find out why the results may temper claims that recursive self-improvement is on the horizon.

—Michelle Kim

MIT Technology Review Narrated: what’s behind this summer’s heat, and why 2027 could be worse

This summer has been a scorcher for much of the Northern Hemisphere. June and July marked the hottest two-month stretch in Europe since record-keeping began, the contiguous US endured its hottest month on record in July, and South Korea saw its highest-ever recorded temperature.  

Climate change makes heat waves more likely and more intense. But there’s another factor at play: El Niño, which is already ramping up and is expected to have a bigger effect on global temperatures next year.

Here’s what’s behind this summer’s extreme heat—and why 2027 could be even hotter.

This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI has paused some model work over safety concerns
It says its Astra model reached a “critical” risk threshold. (Guardian)
+ The slowdown sets it apart from Anthropic’s approach. (Axios)
+ OpenAI has made security updates after the Hugging Face hack. (Verge)
+ It’s also introduced a version of ChatGPT for teenagers. (AP News)

2 Chinese humanoid maker Unitree surged 629% in its stock market debut
The IPO has underscored China’s lead in humanoid robots. (Bloomberg $)
+ Unitree has become a key player in the Sino-US tech war. (Reuters $)
+ It’s the world’s biggest humanoid firm and is already profitable. (BBC)
+ There’s hidden human labor behind humanoids. (MIT Technology Review) 

3 China is allowing Nvidia’s H200 chips into the mainland
ByteDance and Tencent each recently received about 10,000 processors. (FT $)
+ A new Chinese AI model could help defenders and hackers alike. (Wired $)

4 5 Flock’s new AI tool lets police identify drivers by their movements
It goes much further than tracking license plates. (Wired $)
+ Here’s what Flock’s defenders are missing. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Prosecutors argue Meta deliberately hooked children on Facebook and Instagram
The claim was made on the first day of a landmark trial. (BBC)
+ A scientist is building a missing map of childhood. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Even ICE has ethical issues with Meta’s smart glasses
It’s banned them from the workplace over privacy concerns. (NYT $)
+ Anduril and Meta are building smart glasses for warfare. (MIT Technology Review)

8 X’s algorithm learns what you hate—and shows you more of it
A study found the impact was even stronger among Democrats. (404 Media)

9 A physicist proposes that the universe may repeat itself forever
The same galaxies, lives and events could recur endlessly. (New Scientist $)

10 A blind Egyptian developer has built an AI app that helps others “see”
It uses cameras to answer questions about users’ surroundings. (Reuters $)

Quote of the day

“Arizona is Arizone. Illinois starts with a V. I mean, it’s crazy.”

—Stacey Morris, a Kentucky mom whose son brought home a packet of AI-generated educational materials, tells local station WDRB about some of the errors.

One More Thing

The astonishing embryo models of Jacob Hanna

When the Palestinian stem-cell scientist Jacob Hanna was stopped while entering the US last May, he knew the routine. Anything to declare? Any biological samples? But this time the agents’ questions touched on a specific new topic: embryos.

Hanna didn’t have any specimens, but if he had, it would have been surprisingly hard to say what they were. That’s because he specializes in creating synthetic embryo models, structures that resemble real embryos but don’t involve sperm, eggs, or fertilization.

They could provide unprecedented views of the earliest stages of human development, while also creating a new way to produce cells for transplant medicine. But as these models become more realistic, they are raising difficult questions about how far the science should go.

Take a closer look at Hanna’s astounding embryo models—and where they could lead.

— Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Take a guided virtual tour through Spain’s astonishing cave paintings.
+ Explore almost 2,000 prehistoric giants with the internet’s largest dinosaur database.
+ The humble convenience store has been lovingly reimagined as a floating public artwork.
+ If you’re looking to reflect on life or create a personal time capsule, you can write an email to your future self at FutureMe.

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.

We still don’t know how people are really using AI

AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using their products. But they only release the data they want us to see, AI researchers say, and there’s no independent source to corroborate it.

A new research project called the AI Observatory aims to fill in the gap. Its analysis shows many more sensitive behaviors than are captured in reports from major AI companies, which focus more on work than on personal use.

The researchers also found significant differences between models. People were more likely to turn to Anthropic for coding, Gemini for social and roleplay uses, and ChatGPT for homework assistance. Here’s what the AI Observatory reveals about how people use AI.

—Eileen Guo

What Flock’s defenders are missing

Flock Safety, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, recently announced changes to its platform. The updates are meant to prevent officers from using it for illegal or illegitimate purposes, including stalking.

Amid all this, there have recently been several arguments defending Flock: If these cameras help solve crime, is it as big a deal? On a good day they might help catch a kidnapper, and if not, they’re simply snapping pictures of my car that nobody will bother to look at. 

But this all skips over a more important question: What kind of crime-fighting system has Flock chosen to build? Its network works the way it does because of decisions about what information to collect, who can search it, how long to keep it, and how widely to share it. Those decisions set the terms of the bargain between security and civil liberties.

Find out what a narrower Flock system could look like.

—James O’Donnell

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 A child privacy trial starting today could change Meta forever
More than half of the states in the US have joined the lawsuit. (CNBC)
+ They say Meta deliberately designed addictive social networks. (Guardian)
+ And want changes including ending “like” counts and infinite scroll. (BBC)
+ Four of them are demanding $1.4 trillion in damages. (WP $)

2 Nvidia has committed up to $105 billion to OpenAI’s Ohio data center
It’s slated to cost up to $500 billion and come online in 2028. (CNBC)
+ OpenAI will lease the eight-gigawatt site for 20 years. (NYT $)
+ How virtual power plants could provide energy for data centers. (MIT Technology Review)
 
3 Tesla is set to launch Cybercab robotaxi rides in Austin this month
The rollout could begin with employee rides on public roads. (Information $)
+ The EVs will then enter Tesla’s robotaxi service ‌a few days later. (Reuters $)
+ The Tesla Semi could also be a big deal for EVs. (MIT Technology Review)
 
4 Unitree has unveiled a humanoid it claims is faster than any human
The new “Superman” robot can cover 12.66 meters in a second. (Gizmodo)
+ It arrives ahead of the Chinese company’s IPO on Wednesday. (Reuters $)
+ US robot startups are struggling with new China restrictions. (Rest of World)
 
5 A tracked rare book shipment led to Amazon’s AI training operation
Amazon scans and destroys books at the facility to train AI. (404 Media $)
+ Rare books provide unique, high-quality training data. (Ars Technica)
+ But feeding them to AI risks creating a cultural void. (New Scientist $)
 
6 China wants its data to shape what the world’s AI knows
Beijing is distributing datasets reflecting “mainstream Chinese values.” (NYT $)
+ What’s next for Chinese open-source AI? (MIT Technology Review)
 
7 An AI studio wants to become the HBO of adult content
Rogue’s AI video tool produces uncensored adult content. (Wired $)
+ AI is creating new risks for porn actors. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Women are being left behind in the AI jobs boom
They accounted for just 26% of new AI hires last year. (Axios)

9 AI has revealed new clues to how breast cancer progresses
The findings could help predict how tumours will develop. (Independent)
 
10 An unearthed video suggests Apple is adding cameras to AirPods
It shows AirPods identifying a book using visual intelligence. (Gizmodo)

Quote of the day

“It is a black hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as spectacle.” 

—Writer Carmen Hermosillo made a prescient observation about life online in a 1994 essay, quoted by the Guardian in a story on warnings we ignored about the digital age.

One More Thing

Is this the electric grid of the future?

When a slow-moving blizzard hit Nebraska, nearly 10% of Lincoln Electric System’s 150,000 customers lost power. CEO Emeka Anyanwu watched the outage map as crews battled the storm. Yet a spring blizzard like this is the least of his problems.

What will happen soon—not only at Lincoln Electric but for all electric utilities—is a challenge of a different order. In the industry, they call it the “trilemma”: the seemingly intractable problem of balancing reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

Electricity demand is surging, driven in part by AI, while the industry attempts to transition from power generated with fossil fuels to power generated from renewable sources like solar and wind. Lincoln Electric offers a lens through which to examine those challenges.

Explore the challenges of building the grid of the future.

—Andrew Blum

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Chinese engineers have built the world’s first true all-material printer.
+ Discover how you truly feel about artificial intelligence by completing the AI Compass quiz.
+ Get a sense of the space’s extraordinary size with this interactive scale of the universe tool.
+ Enjoy a fresh look at “Breaking Bad” in this modified scene showing Walter White’s hat growing proportionally to his ego.

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.

What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him how to calm down when he was anxious or mad. Six years later, she mostly watches him play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animals.

Moxie is a robot—a 15-inch-tall device that looks a bit like a blue, legless astronaut. It belongs to a subset of robots designed to assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping kids practice social skills usually learned from therapists. 

Xander still uses Moxie when he feels like he needs someone to talk to, but the device has had a troubled life. The robot’s maker went out of business, its servers were shut down, and parents rushed to convert their Moxies before the servers went offline. 

Read our story about how it exposes the promise and pitfalls of AI companion toys for children.

—Sara Harrison

This article is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to read it when it lands.

Inside the “censorship-industrial complex” idea shaping US policy

The idea of a “censorship-industrial complex” has moved from the fringes of right-wing online discourse into US policy.

The basic theory is that, under the guise of combating disinformation, government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Tech platforms have worked together to suppress conservative and populist speech online. It has now made its way into the Trump administration.

Over the past nine months, MIT Technology Review investigated its rise. In a recent Roundtables session, senior reporter Eileen Guo and executive editor Amy Nordrum revealed what they discovered, where the theory is going, and what it could mean for the future of democracy and the internet. Subscribers and MIT alumni can now watch the full event here.

The must-reads

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

1 The US plans to force partners to pick sides in the AI race 
A draft letter warns allies against joining China’s rival AI initiative. (Reuters $)
+ Beijing is using open-weight AI to expand its governance. (FT $)
+ Chinese AI has divided the White House. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Memory chipmaker CXMT is now China’s most valuable company
Its rise reflects Beijing’s push for strategic hardware. (Bloomberg $)
+ The US has urged Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips. (WSJ $)
 
3 Astronomers have found evidence for a “black hole star”
It’s 100,000 times bigger than the Sun. (Futurism)
+ And may explain mysterious red spots in the early universe. (Wired $)
 
4 Meta has patented facial recognition for AI glasses to identify people
And make highlight reels of dinner parties, apparently. (404 Media)
+ Meta’s “pervert glasses” issue is killing an impressive product. (Independent)
 
5 Puerto Rico is rationing water. It could’ve harvested rainwater instead
Up to 30 billion gallons could be collected annually. (Wired $)
+ Puerto Rico is enduring major power struggles. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 The backlash against Flock could become a broader tech rebellion
People are sick of tech billionaires trying to control their lives. (Salon)
+ Flock is tightening its rules following the backlash. (MIT Technology Review)
 
7 Amazon is trying to crush class-action suits before they get started
A terms update requires all disputes to be resolved via arbitration. (Verge)
 
8 Aging may be a programmed process, not just wear and tear
Scientists found distinct stages of aging across mouse cells. (Quanta)
+ Scientists created female clones of male mice. (MIT Technology Review)

9 The latest online shopping trend involves buying nothing
“Dopamine sites” recreate shopping rituals without the buying. (Rest of World)

10 Ice cream is becoming a surprisingly high-tech business
AI, robotics, and unusual flavors are changing how it’s made. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“The thing that will work is actually curing cancer.”

—Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposes a way to win over AI skeptics in a rare post on X.

One More Thing

The quest to find out how our bodies react to extreme temperatures

Climate change is forcing us to reckon with the knotty science of how our bodies interact with the environment. 

As extreme temperatures become more common, scientists are trying to understand what happens when heat and cold push our bodies toward their limits. But the science of keeping warm or cool is surprisingly full of blind spots. 

Researchers are finding that long-held assumptions about how our bodies respond to extreme temperatures may be more complicated than we thought.

Find out what they’re learning about the limits of the human body.

—Max G. Levy

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Trace the enthralling history of sumo wrestling in this succinct animated documentary.
+ A meow-sical pet owner (sorry) has sampled his cat’s purrs into a booming bassline.
+ The true-scale Universe Atlas lets you zoom from inside a proton out to the cosmic web.
+ This selection of places that only exist at certain times of day is a goldmine for punctual travelers. 

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.

Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash

The police-tech giant Flock is changing officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers. The move comes amid a backlash over mass surveillance and reports of officers using the technology to stalk and harass current or former romantic partners.

To combat that, the company will require them to enter a criminal case number before searching its database and expand automated auditing of suspicious searches. But because Flock won’t verify those case numbers, officers could still find ways around the safeguards.

Here’s what Flock is changing—and where loopholes remain.

—James O’Donnell

Cloning could be used to save species—or make human “organ sacks”

—Jessica Hamzelou

This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice.

They hope their approach could be helpful in conservation efforts, especially in cases where we might have only a few individuals of a species left. But cloning has multiple uses, ranging from genetically modifying livestock to recreating beloved pets and potentially even creating “brainless” replicas of humans.

Find out what cloning can do now, and where it could lead next.

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

This scientist is helping build a missing map of childhood

In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation about the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious attempt to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. The project’s researchers had only made plans to study adults. “That’s when my little alarm went off,” she says. “Not again.”

Children’s cells are different from grownups’ cells in the way they express genes, which can cause drastically different and even deadly responses to drugs that adults tolerate well. Taylor has since pushed the Human Cell Atlas to include children and is working on a major database of healthy pediatric tissue.

The goal is to give researchers a baseline for how children develop—and potentially reveal how diseases that emerge in adulthood begin much earlier.

Meet the scientist building a cellular map of childhood.

—Colleen de Bellefonds

This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to read it when it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 Ukrainian drones defeated US forces in a military exercise
They wiped out an American tank brigade in the war game. (WSJ $)
+ The drill exposed US vulnerabilities to drone attacks. (Ars Technica)
+ Trump just declared 100% tariffs on many drones. (Verge)
+ Europe has a drone-filled vision for future wars. (MIT Technology Review)

2 OpenAI and Anthropic are cutting prices to compete with Chinese AI
Rising AI bills are pushing companies toward cheaper models. (FT $)
+ China’s Z.ai aims to rival Anthropic and OpenAI in coding. (Bloomberg $)
+ While DeepSeek is rapidly pushing up API prices. (Quartz) 

3 Apple has trained its own AI model for China with support from Alibaba
A China-tailored model of its own could give Apple greater control. (Reuters $)
+ And make it the first foreign firm with a Beijing-approved AI model. (Verge)
+ Chinese AI has divided the White House. (MIT Technology Review)

4 US efforts to build humanoid robots face a Chinese supply chain
To build an affordable device, you need Chinese parts. (NYT $)
+ Chinese humanoids have business concerns of their own. (CNBC)
+ Gig workers are training humanoids at home. (MIT Technology Review)

5 People are “marrying” chatbots. Lawmakers want to stop it.
Their interventions are a response to the rise of AI companion apps. (Wired $)
+ Chatbots are pushing us toward a post-human internet. (NYT $)

6 Researchers have cast doubts over Anthropic’s new AI watermarks
The marks can disappear when text is rewritten. (Nature)

7 AI is scrambling the political map
Data centers and surveillance are creating unlikely political alliances. (Axios)

8 Oxygen has been found nearly two miles underground
Earth’s deep biosphere could support more life than thought. (New Yorker $)

9 A new study challenges our understanding of how memories are stored
Mice retained memories after losing half of their synapses. (New Scientist $)

10 An Indian startup is testing cancer-sniffing dogs for early detection
AI interprets the dogs’ responses to patients’ breath samples. (Bloomberg $)

Quote of the day

“They were incredibly sloppy. If you’re serious about this, your AI shouldn’t be able to break out onto the internet and then do it again right afterward.”

—A former OpenAI employee tells Wired that the company’s rogue agent hack was a watershed moment for AI safety and cybersecurity.

One More Thing

AI materials discovery now needs to move into the real world

Startups flush with cash are building AI-assisted laboratories to find materials far faster and more cheaply. But they’re still waiting for their ChatGPT moment.

By far the most time-consuming and expensive step in materials discovery is not imagining new structures but making them in the real world. Before synthesizing a material, you don’t know if it can actually be made or whether it will have the properties you want.

Now startups like Lila Sciences and Periodic Labs are building labs where AI agents can design experiments, control robots, and analyze results, potentially shortening the discovery process from decades to a few years or less.

Discover what it will take to turn AI’s predictions into real materials.

—David Rotman

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Astronomers have created the largest-ever 2D map of the universe.
+ Lose yourself in the most breathtaking photos of the total solar eclipse.
+ Musician Andy Brewer has virtuosically composed an entire song with nothing but equalization.
+ Step inside the National Gallery’s Imaginarium, a virtual art world where masterpieces become digital adventures. (Big thanks to reader Peter Ryan for the find!)