The Download: three-person babies, and tracking “AI readiness” in the US

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.

Researchers announce babies born from a trial of three-person IVF

Eight babies have been born in the UK thanks to a technology that uses DNA from three people: the two biological parents plus a third person who supplies healthy mitochondrial DNA. The babies were born to mothers who carry genes for mitochondrial diseases and risked passing on severe disorders. 

In the team’s approach, patients’ eggs are fertilized with sperm, and the DNA-containing nuclei of those cells are transferred into donated fertilized eggs that have had their own nuclei removed. The new embryos contain the DNA of the intended parents along with a tiny fraction of mitochondrial DNA from the donor, floating in the embryos’ cytoplasm.

The study, which makes use of a technology called mitochondrial donation, has been described as a “tour de force” and “a remarkable accomplishment” by others in the field. But not everyone sees the trial as a resounding success. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

These four charts show where AI companies could go next in the US

No one knows exactly how AI will transform our communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. Because it’s hard to predict the impact AI will have on jobs, many workers and local governments are left trying to read the tea leaves to understand how to prepare and adapt.

A new interactive report released by the Brookings Institution attempts to map how embedded AI companies and jobs are in different regions of the United States in order to prescribe policy treatments to those struggling to keep up. Here are four charts to help understand the issues.

—Peter Hall

In defense of air-conditioning

—Casey Crownhart

I’ll admit that I’ve rarely hesitated to point an accusing finger at air-conditioning. I’ve outlined in many stories and newsletters that AC is a significant contributor to global electricity demand, and it’s only going to suck up more power as temperatures rise.

But I’ll also be the first to admit that it can be a life-saving technology, one that may become even more necessary as climate change intensifies. And in the wake of Europe’s recent deadly heat wave, it’s been oddly villainized. Read our story to learn more.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump is cracking down on “dangerous science”
But the scientists affected argue their work is essential to developing new treatments. (WP $)
+ How MAHA is infiltrating states across the US. (The Atlantic $)

2 The US Senate has approved Trump’s request to cancel foreign aid 
The White House is determined to reclaim around $8 billion worth of overseas aid. (NYT $)
+ The bill also allocates around $1.1 billion to public broadcasting. (WP $)
+ HIV could infect 1,400 infants every day because of US aid disruptions. (MIT Technology Review)

3 American air strikes only destroyed one Iranian nuclear site 
The remaining two sites weren’t damaged that badly, and could resume operation within months. (NBC News)

4 The US is poised to ban Chinese technology in submarine cables
The cables are critical to internet connectivity across the world. (FT $)
+ The cables are at increasing risk of sabotage. (Bloomberg $)

5 The US measles outbreak is worsening
Health officials’ tactics for attempting to contain it aren’t working. (Wired $)
+ Vaccine hesitancy is growing, too. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A new supercomputer is coming
The Nexus machine will search for new cures for diseases. (Semafor)

7 Elon Musk has teased a Grok AI companion inspired by Twilight
No really, you shouldn’t have… (The Verge)
+ Inside the Wild West of AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Future farms could be fully autonomous
Featuring AI-powered tractors and drone surveillance. (WSJ $)
+ African farmers are using private satellite data to improve crop yields. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Granola is Silicon Valley’s favorite new tool
No, not the tasty breakfast treat. (The Information $)

10 WeTransfer isn’t going to train its AI on our files after all
After customers reacted angrily on social media. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.”

—Andrew Schulz, a comedian and podcaster who interviewed Donald Trump last year, explains why he’s starting to lose faith in the President to Wired.

One more thing

The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last?

In May 2023 a leaked memo reported to have been written by Luke Sernau, a senior engineer at Google, said out loud what many in Silicon Valley must have been whispering for weeks: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Big Tech’s grip on AI.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. AI won’t thrive if just a few mega-rich companies get to gatekeep this technology or decide how it is used. But this open-source boom is precarious, and if Big Tech decides to shut up shop, a boomtown could become a backwater. Read the full story.

—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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Happy birthday David Hasselhoff, 73 years young today!
+ The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things is here, and things are getting weird.
+ Windows 95, you will never be bettered.
+ I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a fridge cigarette.

The Download: combating audio deepfakes, and AI in the classroom

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 text-to-speech programs could one day “unlearn” how to imitate certain people

The news: A new technique known as “machine unlearning” could be used to teach AI models to forget specific voices.

How it works: Currently, companies tend to deal with this issue by checking whether the prompts or the AI’s responses contain disallowed material. Machine unlearning instead asks whether an AI can be made to forget a piece of information that the company doesn’t want it to know. It works by taking a model and the specific data to be redacted then using them to create a new model—essentially, a version of the original that never learned that piece of data.

Why it matters: This could be an important step in stopping the rise of audio deepfakes, where someone’s voice is copied to carry out fraud or scams. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

AI’s giants want to take over the classroom

School’s out and it’s high summer, but a bunch of teachers are plotting how they’re going to use AI this upcoming school year. God help them.

On July 8, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic announced a $23 million partnership with one of the largest teachers’ unions in the United States to bring more AI into K–12 classrooms. They will train teachers at a New York City headquarters on how to use AI both for teaching and for tasks like planning lessons and writing reports, starting this fall.

But these companies could face an uphill battle. There’s a lack of clear evidence that AI can be a net benefit for students, and it’s hard to trust that the AI companies funding this initiative will give honest advice on when not to use AI in the classroom. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

The must-reads

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

1 Nvidia says the US has lifted its ban on AI chip sales to China
Jensen Huang has sweet-talked Donald Trump into reversing his three-month old ban. (BBC)
+ The company will start selling its H20 chip to China. (WSJ $)
+ America may slap tariffs on a raw material used for chips and solar panels. (FT $)

2 China has launched its digital ID system
It’ll give the country even greater powers to surveil and censor its internet users. (WP $)

3 xAI has secured a contract with the US Department of Defense
Just days after its Grok chatbot had an anti-Semitic meltdown. (The Guardian)
+ EU officials are holding talks with X representatives after the outburst. (Bloomberg $)

4 Meta’s data centers are on the verge of triggering a major water shortage
Local residents in Newton County, Georgia are suffering. (NYT $)
+ But Zuckerberg wants to build gigawatt-size centers anyway. (Bloomberg $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The Trump administration is incinerating tons of emergency food
Rather than sending it to people in need. (The Atlantic $)

6 The US is attempting to revive its rare-earth industry
The Pentagon has invested more than $1 billion in American firm MP Materials. (WSJ $)
+ It’s all part of a plan to counter China’s critical mineral dominance. (FT $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI nudifying apps are big business
They’re making millions of dollars a year, and rely on tech built by US companies. (Wired $)
+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Can anything save the web at this point?
Traffic is dropping, and AI use is rising. (Economist $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Bytedance is working on its own mixed reality goggles
A couple of years after it scaled back its work on an AR and VR headset. (The Information $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Minecraft has birthed a generation of entrepreneurs
The game encourages players to learn to program. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“I suddenly felt pure, unconditional love.”

—Faeight, a woman ‘married’ to a chatbot named Gryff, describes her strong feelings for a previous AI partner, the Guardian reports.

One more thing

End of life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help?

End-of-life decisions can be extremely upsetting for surrogates—the people who have to make those calls on behalf of another person. Friends or family members may disagree over what’s best for their loved one, which can lead to distressing situations.

David Wendler, a bioethicist at the US National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues have been working on an idea for something that could make things easier: an artificial intelligence-based tool that can help surrogates predict what the patients themselves would want in any given situation.

Wendler hopes to start building their tool as soon as they secure funding for it, potentially in the coming months. But rolling it out won’t be simple. Critics wonder how such a tool can ethically be trained on a person’s data, and whether life-or-death decisions should ever be entrusted to AI. Read the full story.

—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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Did you know the shark in the Jaws poster isn’t actually a great white?
+ Japan’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was ahead of its time.
+ I love the Public Domain Image Archive.
+ Forums are far from dead—here are some of the best that are still alive and kicking.

The Download: California’s AI power plans, and and why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

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.

California is set to become the first US state to manage power outages with AI

California’s statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned. 

At an industry summit in Minneapolis tomorrow, the California Independent System Operator is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. 

The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights. Read the full story.

—Alexander C. Kaufman

Why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

There are plenty of stories about AI that’s caused harm when deployed in sensitive situations, and in many of those cases, the systems were developed without much concern to what it meant to be fair or how to implement fairness.

But the city of Amsterdam did spend a lot of time and money to try to create ethical AI—in fact, it followed every recommendation in the responsible AI playbook. But when it deployed it in the real world, it still couldn’t remove biases. So why did Amsterdam fail? And more importantly: Can this ever be done right?

Join our editor Amanda Silverman, investigative reporter Eileen Guo and Gabriel Geiger, an investigative reporter from Lighthouse Reports, for a subscriber-only Roundtables conversation at 1pm ET on Wednesday July 30 to explore if algorithms can ever be fair. Register here!

The must-reads

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

1 Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is already hurting sick children
And hundreds of hospitals are likely to close, too. (New Yorker $)
+ His administration is going after easy targets, which includes sick children. (Salon $)

2 The US overseas worker purge is hitting Amazon hard
Its warehouse employees are losing their right to work in the US. (NYT $)
+ The US State Department has fired more than 1,350 workers so far. (Reuters)

3 Nvidia’s CEO claims China’s military probably won’t use its AI chips
But then he would say that, wouldn’t he. (Bloomberg $)
+ Even after the Trump administration has eased chip software tool export restrictions. (FT $)
+ Rival Huawei is planning a major AI chip overhaul. (The Information $)

4 Scientists are reportedly hiding LLM instructions in their papers 
Instructing models to give their work positive peer reviews. (The Guardian)

5 Amazon is dragging its heels launching its web version of Alexa
It appears the company underestimated just how much work they had to do. (WP $)

6 SpaceX’s revenue is on the up 
As Tesla continues to struggle. (WSJ $)
+ Musk is not in favor of merging Tesla with xAI. (Reuters)
+ Trump is still planning to slash NASA’s budget. (The Atlantic $)
+ Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The Air India crash was caused by a cut in the plane’s fuel supply
Cockpit voice recordings reveal that one pilot asked another why he’d cut off the supply. (CNN)

8 The UK’s attempt to ape DOGE isn’t going well
Councils are already blocking Reform UK’s attempts to access sensitive data. (FT $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Even crypto executives can fall for crypto scams
Just ask the top brass from MoonPay, which lost $250,000 worth of Ethereum. (The Verge)
+ The people using humour to troll their spam texts. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Why landline phones refuse to die
The business world still loves them. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“We don’t like to work like that. I’m a Buddhist, so I believe in karma. I don’t want to steal anyone’s money.”

—A man forced to work in an online scam center in Myanmar recounts his experience to Nikkei.

One more thing

China wants to restore the sea with high-tech marine ranches

A short ferry ride from the port city of Yantai, on the northeast coast of China, sits Genghai No. 1, a 12,000-metric-ton ring of oil-rig-style steel platforms, advertised as a hotel and entertainment complex.

Genghai is in fact an unusual tourist destination, one that breeds 200,000 “high-quality marine fish” each year. The vast majority are released into the ocean as part of a process known as marine ranching.

The Chinese government sees this work as an urgent and necessary response to the bleak reality that fisheries are collapsing both in China and worldwide. But just how much of a difference can it make? Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ You can easily make ice cream at home with just two ingredients. 
+ Pink Floyd fans, this lecture is for you. 
+ Lose yourself for a few minutes in the story behind an ancient Indian painting. (NYT $)
+ Remember the days of idly surfing the web? Here’s how you can still recreate them.

The Download: cybersecurity’s shaky alert system, and mobile IVF

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.

Cybersecurity’s global alarm system is breaking down

Every day, billions of people trust digital systems to run everything from communication to commerce to critical infrastructure. But the global early warning system that alerts security teams to dangerous software flaws is showing critical gaps in coverage—and most users have no idea their digital lives are likely becoming more vulnerable.

Over the past eighteen months, two pillars of global cybersecurity have been shaken by funding issues: the US-backed National Vulnerability Database (NVD)—relied on globally for its free analysis of security threats—and the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program, the numbering system for tracking software flaws. 

Although the situation for both has stabilized, organizations and governments are confronting a critical weakness in our digital infrastructure: Essential global cybersecurity services depend on a complex web of US agency interests and government funding that can be cut or redirected at any time. Read the full story. 

—Matthew King

The first babies have been born following “simplified” IVF in a mobile lab

This week I’m sending congratulations to two sets of new parents in South Africa. Babies Milayah and Rossouw arrived a few weeks ago. All babies are special, but these two set a new precedent. They’re the first to be born following “simplified” IVF performed in a mobile lab.

This new mobile lab is essentially a trailer crammed with everything an embryologist needs to perform IVF on a shoestring. It was designed to deliver reproductive treatments to people who live in rural parts of low-income countries, where IVF can be prohibitively expensive or even nonexistent. And best of all: it seems to work! Read our story about why it’s such an exciting development. 

—Jessica Hamzelou 

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here.

The must-reads

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

1 Trump is seeking huge cuts to basic scientific research
If he gets his way, federal science funding will be slashed by a third for the next fiscal year. (NYT $)
+ The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Senators are getting ready to push back against proposed NASA cuts. (Bloomberg $)

2 Conspiracy theorists are starting to turn on Trump
He whipped them all up over the supposed existence of Epstein’s client list, and now they’re mad nothing’s being released. (The Atlantic $)

3 AI actually slows experienced software developers down
They end up wasting lots of time checking and correcting AI models’ output. (Reuters $)

4 The Pentagon is becoming the largest shareholder in a rare earth minerals company
It shows just how much competition is hotting up to secure a steady supply of these materials. (Quartz $)
+ The race to produce rare earth elements. (MIT Technology Review) 

5 Solar power is starting to truly transform the world’s energy system 
Globally, roughly a third more power was generated from the sun this spring than last. (New Yorker $)

6 Cops’ favorite AI tool auto-deletes evidence of AI being used 
A pretty breathtaking attempt to avoid any sort of audit, transparency or accountability. (Ars Technica)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Why Chinese EV brands are being forced to go global
Competition at home is becoming so intense that many have no choice but to seek profits elsewhere. (Rest of World)
+ China’s EV giants are betting big on humanoid robots. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Which Big Tech execs are closest to the White House? 
Check out this scorecard showing how they’re all doing trying to stay in Trump’s good graces. (WSJ $)

9 Elon Musk says Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles
Yes, that’s the same Grok that keeps being racist. Shareholders must be delighted. (Insider $)
+ X is basically becoming a strip mine for AI training data. (Axios)

10 Trump Mobile is charging people’s credit cards without explanation
But I’m sure it’s all perfectly explicable and above board, right? Right?! (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“It has been nonstop pandemonium.”

—Augustus Doricko, who founded a cloud seeding startup two years ago, tells the Washington Post he’s received a deluge of fury online from conspiracy theorists who blame him for the catastrophic Texas floods.

One more thing

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | LUMMI

What’s next for AI in 2025

For the last couple of years we’ve had a go at predicting what’s coming next in AI. A fool’s game given how fast this industry moves. But we gave it a go anyway back in January. As we sail pass this year’s halfway mark, it’s a good time to ask: how well did we do? Check out our predictions, and see for yourself!

—James O’Donnell, Will Douglas Heaven & Melissa Heikkilä

This piece is part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series, looking across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Let’s have more pop culture references in journal article titles, please.
+ Here’s some inspiration for things to cook this month (or, if it’s hot, just assemble).
+ There’s something so relaxing about gazing at these (award-winning!) landscape photos. 
+ If you like birds, you’ll enjoy this artist’s work

The Download: flaws in anti-AI protections for art, and an AI regulation vibe shift

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 tool strips away anti-AI protections from digital art

The news: A new technique called LightShed will make it harder for artists to use existing protective tools to stop their work from being ingested for AI training. It’s the next step in a cat-and-mouse game—across technology, law, and culture—that has been going on between artists and AI proponents for years. 

How it works: Protective tools like Glaze and Nightshade change enough pixels to affect an image, so if it’s scraped up by AI models, they see it as something it’s not. LightShed essentially works by spotting just the “poison” on poisoned images. To be clear, the researchers behind it aren’t trying to steal artists’ work. They just don’t want people to get a false sense of security.  Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

Why the AI moratorium’s defeat may signal a new political era

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 was chock full of controversial policies. But one highly contested provision was missing. Just days earlier, during a late-night voting session, the Senate had killed the bill’s 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. 

The bipartisan vote was seen as a victory by many, and may signal a bigger political shift, with a broader and more diverse coalition in favor of AI regulation starting to form. After years of relative inaction, politicians are getting concerned about the risks of unregulated artificial intelligence. Read the full story. 

—Grace Huckins

China’s energy dominance in three charts

China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today. It’s pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into putting renewable sources like wind and solar, manufacturing millions of electric vehicles, and building out capacity for energy storage, nuclear power, and more. This investment has been transformational for the country’s economy and has contributed to establishing China as a major player in global politics. 

So while we all try to get our heads around what’s next for climate tech in the US and beyond, let’s look at just how dominant China is when it comes to clean energy, as documented in three charts. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The must-reads

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

1 Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X
She managed to last almost exactly two years reporting to owner Elon Musk.  (Axios)
+ She was planning to leave before Grok’s anti-Semitic rants, apparently. (NYT $)
+ Turkey has banned Grok after it insulted President Erdoğan. (Politico)

2 OpenAI is planning to release its own web browser
If it works out, it’ll give it the same advantage as Google: direct ownership over users’ data. (Reuters $)
+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 McDonald’s hiring chatbot exposed millions of applicants’ data to hackers
Adding the insult of carelessness to an already pretty dystopian process! (Wired $)

4 AI-generated images of child sexual abuse are proliferating online
This is going to make an already very hard job for law enforcement even harder. (NYT $)

5 Autonomous fighter jets are on the horizon
European defense start-up Helsing just completed two successful test flights. (FT $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

6 What happened to all the human bird flu cases?
Since February, the CDC has not recorded a single new case in the US. (Undark)

7 An interstellar object is cruising through the solar system
And it’s giving astronomers a chance to test out early theories of interstellar-object-ology (yes, that’s what it’s called!) (The Economist $)
+ Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Apple is planning its first upgrade to its Vision Pro headset
But no matter what upgrades it’s got, it’s going to be a real struggle to revive its flagging fortunes. (Bloomberg $)

9 Where have all the mundane social media posts gone?
Normies used to be what made social media good. We miss them and their photos of their breakfasts. (New Yorker $)
+ It’s heartening to see that ‘missed connection’ posts are making a comeback, though. (The Guardian)

10 A global shortage is turning MatchaTok sour
But it’s pretty easy to explain why it’s in short supply: the whole world’s started going mad for it. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

 “You’ll be hard pressed to find someone that really believes in our AI mission. To most, it’s not even clear what our mission is.”

—Tijmen Blankevoort, an AI researcher at Meta, explains why he thinks expensive hires alone might not cure the company’s woes, The Information reports.

One more thing

MIKE MCQUADE

The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age

There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands grabbing at the cool grass. It was taken on a digital camera in 2013, when she was almost one, but now lives on Google Photos.

But what if, one day, Google ceased to function? What if I lost my treasured photos forever? For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.

The endeavor raises complex questions. What is important to us? How and why do we decide what to keep—and what do we let go? And how will future generations make sense of what we’re able to save? Read the full story.

—Niall Firth

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Why Hollywood is so hell-bent on making sequels.
+ I love this sweet little town building program.
+ What makes Severance’s opening credits so darn good?
+ This ranking of HBO’s finest shows is fun.

The Download: a conversation with Karen Hao, and how did life begin?

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.

Inside OpenAI’s empire: A conversation with Karen Hao

In a wide-ranging Roundtables conversation for MIT Technology Review subscribers, journalist and author Karen Hao recently spoke about her new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.

She talked with executive editor Niall Firth about how she first covered the company in 2020 while on staff at MIT Technology Review. They discussed how the AI industry now functions like an empire and went on to examine what ethically-made AI looks like.

Read the transcript of the conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed. And, if you’re already a subscriber, you can watch the on-demand recording of the event here. 

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How did life begin?

How life begins is one of the biggest and hardest questions in science. All we know is that something happened on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, and it may well have occurred on many other worlds in the universe as well. Could AI help us to unpick the mysteries around the origins of life and detect signs of it on other worlds?

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which 
we’re publishing 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 xAI’s Grok went on an anti-Semitic rant 
Days after Elon Musk said new updates would lessen its reliance on mainstream media. (WP $)
+ The chatbot started to call itself ‘MechaHitler.’ (WSJ $)
+ What Grok’s neo-Nazi turn tells us about xAI. (The Atlantic $)

2 Musk loyalists are fighting to keep DOGE running
As officials seek to diminish the department’s role. (WSJ $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

3 An imposter used AI to successfully impersonate Marco Rubio
They were able to send voice and text messages to fellow politicians. (WP $)
+ It’s not the first time Rubio has been targeted like this. (FT $)

4 Terrorist groups are using AI to recruit and plan
Counter-terror agencies are struggling to keep up. (The Guardian)

5 How the crypto faithful won over the President
The industry’s successful Trump courtship sparked a lobbying bonanza. (NYT $)

6 Wanted: 115,000 Nvidia chips for China’s data centers
But the US doesn’t seem to know how many restricted chips are already in the country. (Bloomberg $)

7 For startups, protecting companies from AI threats isn’t big business
Smaller firms are only making modest gains—for now. (The Information $)
+ Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Inside Zimbabwe’s dangerous EV lithium mines
Many residents worry that China is exploiting them. (Rest of World)
+ How one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies. (MIT Technology Review)

9 ‘The Milk Guy’ is delivering raw dairy around NYC
Mmm, delicious listeria, salmonella, and E. coli. (NY Mag $)
+ RFK Jr barred Democrats from being vaccine advisors. (Ars Technica)
+ The Department of Health and Human Services is searching for two new vaccines against deadly viruses. (Undark)

10 Take a look at these beautiful star clusters
Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Ars Technica)
+ See the stunning first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“People are going to die.”

—Clement Nkubizi, the country director for the nonprofit Action Against Hunger in South Sudan, tells Wired that their food stock is running critically low in the wake of USAID cuts.

One more thing

The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

Despite President Biden’s assurances that the US is not seeking a new cold war, one is brewing between the world’s autocracies and democracies—and technology is fueling it.

Authoritarian states are following China’s lead and are trending toward more digital rights abuses by increasing the mass digital surveillance of citizens, censorship, and controls on individual expression.

And while democracies also use massive amounts of surveillance technology, it’s the tech trade relationships between authoritarian countries that’s enabling the rise of digitally enabled social control. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ The UK is deep in the grip of Oasis-mania right now.
+ Take a look back over the legacy of iconic Indian director and actor Guru Dutt.
+ These are the best foods to help keep you hydrated in this heat.
+ Artificial flowers are cool now? Hmm

The Download: hunting an asteroid, and unlocking the human mind

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.

Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever

If you were told that the odds of something were 3.1%, it might not seem like much. But for the people charged with protecting our planet, it was huge.

On February 18, astronomers determined that a 130- to 300-foot-long asteroid had a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032. Never had an asteroid of such dangerous dimensions stood such a high chance of striking the planet. Then, just days later on February 24, experts declared that the danger had passed. Earth would be spared.

How did they do it? What was it like to track the rising danger of this asteroid, and to ultimately determine that it’d miss us?

This is the inside story of how a sprawling network of astronomers found, followed, mapped, planned for, and finally dismissed the most dangerous asteroid ever found—all under the tightest of timelines and, for just a moment, with the highest of stakes. Read the full story.

—Robin George Andrews

This article is part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting. The stories in the series take a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here.

How scientists are trying to use AI to unlock the human mind 

Today’s AI landscape is defined by the ways in which neural networks are unlike human brains. A toddler learns how to communicate effectively with only a thousand calories a day and regular conversation; meanwhile, tech companies are reopening nuclear power plants, polluting marginalized communities, and pirating terabytes of books in order to train and run their LLMs.

Despite that, it’s a common view among neuroscientists that building brainlike neural networks is one of the most promising paths for the field, and that attitude has started to spread to psychology. 

Last week, the prestigious journal Nature published a pair of studies showcasing the use of neural networks for predicting how humans and other animals behave in psychological experiments. However, predicting a behavior and explaining how it came about are two very different things. Read the full story.

—Grace Huckins

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first every Monday, sign up here.

Why the US and Europe could lose the race for fusion energy

—Daniel F. Brunner, Edlyn V. Levine, Fiona E. Murray, & Rory Burke

Fusion energy holds the potential to shift a geopolitical landscape that is currently configured around fossil fuels. Harnessing fusion will deliver the energy resilience, security, and abundance needed for all modern industrial and service sectors.

But these benefits will be controlled by the nation that leads in both developing the complex supply chains required and building fusion power plants at scales large enough to drive down economic costs. 

Investing in supply chains and scaling up complex production processes has increasingly been a strength of China’s and a weakness of the West, resulting in the migration of many critical industries from the West to China. With fusion, we run the risk that history will repeat itself. But it does not have to go that way. Read the full story.

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump has announced a range of new tariffs  
Southeast Asia has been hit particularly hard. (Reuters)
+ Some tariffs on other countries have been delayed until next month. (Vox)
+ Investors are hoping to weather the storm. (Insider $)
+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Ukraine’s fiber-optic drones are giving it the edge over Russia
The drones are impervious to electronic attacks. (WSJ $)
+ Trump is resuming sending arms to Ukraine. (CNN)
+ Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense. (MIT Technology Review)

3 OpenAI is seriously scared about spies
It’s upped its security dramatically amid fears of corporate espionage. (FT $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Amazon is asking its corporate staff to volunteer in its warehouses
It’s in desperate need of extra hands to help during its Prime Day event. (The Guardian)

5 Google’s AI-created drugs are almost ready for human trials
Isomorphic Labs has been working on drugs to tackle cancer. (Fortune $)
+ An AI-driven “factory of drugs” claims to have hit a big milestone. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Apple’s AI ambitions have suffered yet another setback
Their executive in charge of AI models has been wooed by Meta. (Bloomberg $)
+ Ruoming Pang’s pay package is likely to be in the tens of millions. (WSJ $)

7 Waymo’s robotaxis are heading to NYC
But its “road trip” announcement is no guarantee it’ll launch there. (TechCrunch)

8 Brands don’t need influencers any more
They’re doing just fine producing their own in-house social media videos. (NYT $)

9 We may age in rapid bursts, rather than a steady decline
New research could shed light on how to slow the process down. (New Scientist $)
+ Aging hits us in our 40s and 60s. But well-being doesn’t have to fall off a cliff. (MIT Technology Review)

10 This open-source software fights back against AI bots
Anubis protects sites from scrapers. (404 Media)
+ Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I think we’ve all had enough of Elon’s political errors and political opinions.”

—Ross Gerber, an investor who was formerly an enthusiastic backer of Elon Musk, tells the Washington Post he wishes the billionaire would simply focus on Tesla.

One more thing

How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy

The internet loves a good neologism, especially if it can capture a purported vibe shift or explain a new trend. In 2013, the columnist Adrian Wooldridge coined a word that eventually did both. Writing for the Economist, he warned of the coming “techlash,” a revolt against Silicon Valley’s rich and powerful, fueled by the public’s growing realization that these “sovereigns of cyberspace” weren’t the benevolent bright-future bringers they claimed to be.

While Wooldridge didn’t say precisely when this techlash would arrive, it’s clear today that a dramatic shift in public opinion toward Big Tech and its leaders did in fact ­happen—and is arguably still happening. It’s worth investigating why, and what we can do to start taking some of that power back. Read the full story.

—Bryan Gardiner

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Struggling to solve a problem? It’s time to take a nap.
+ If any TV show has better midcentury decor than Mad Men, I’ve yet to see it.
+ Sir Antony Gormley’s arresting iron men sculptures have been a fixture on Crosby Beach in the UK for 20 years.
+ Check out this definitive Planet of the Apes timeline.

The Download: China’s winning at advanced manufacturing, and a potential TikTok sale

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 latest threat from the rise of Chinese manufacturing

In 2013, a trio of academics showed convincing evidence that increased trade with China beginning in the early 2000s and the resulting flood of cheap imports had been an unmitigated disaster for many US communities, destroying their manufacturing lifeblood.

The results of what they called the “China shock” were gut-wrenching: the loss of 1 million US manufacturing jobs and 2.4 million jobs in total by 2011.

If in retrospect all that seems obvious, it’s only because the research by David Autor, an MIT labor economist, and his colleagues has become an accepted, albeit often distorted, political narrative these days: China destroyed all our manufacturing jobs! Though the nuances are often ignored, the results help explain at least some of today’s political unrest. It’s reflected in rising calls for US protectionism, President Trump’s broad tariffs on imported goods, and nostalgia for the lost days of domestic manufacturing glory.

Our editor at large David Rotman recently spoke to Autor about what he considers a far more urgent problem——what some are calling China shock 2.0—and the lessons it holds for today’s manufacturing challenges. Read the full story.

Three things I’m into into right now

In each issue of our print magazine, we ask a member of staff to tell us about three things they’re loving at the moment. For our latest edition, which was all about power, I was in the hotseat! Check out my (frankly amazing) recommendations here, and subscribe to catch future editions here.

The must-reads

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

1 A new TikTok is coming 
It’s reportedly launching a new version in the US in September ahead of a planned sale. (The Information $)
+ It’ll still require the Chinese government’s say-so. (The Verge)

2 Texas Hill Country was caught off guard by the flash floods
But now people are asking: why? (WP $)
+ America’s National Weather Service has been on the receiving end of heavy cuts. (CNN)
+ Bad weather has interrupted ongoing searches for survivors. (WSJ $)

3 Elon Musk is forging ahead with his own political party
To the chagrin of investors in his companies. (The Guardian)
+ Former friend Donald Trump has some thoughts. (Insider $)
+ The America Party is facing an uphill struggle. (WP $)

4 The Trump administration has axed a group focused on birth control safety
They were tasked with advising women which contraceptives to use. (Undark)

5 On-the-job learning is under threat
From a combination of generative AI tools and remote working culture. (FT $)

6 xAI’s ‘improved’ Grok is perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes
It made worrying comments about Jewish executives in Hollywood. (TechCrunch)
+ LLMs become more covertly racist with human intervention. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Taiwan wants to lessen its commercial reliance on China
But it won’t be easy. (NYT $)
+ How underwater drones could shape a potential Taiwan-China conflict. (MIT Technology Review)

8 LLMs have improved rapidly in the past few years
Benchmarking them is notoriously tricky, though. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ A Chinese firm has just launched a constantly changing set of AI benchmarks. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Big Tech’s salary divide is getting worse
Those whopping AI pay packets are at least partly to blame. (Insider $)

10 More than 30 tech unicorns have been minted during 2025
And we could see a far few more before the year is out. (TechCrunch)

Quote of the day

“If you go in with the expectation that the AI is as smart or smarter than humans, you’re quickly disappointed by the reality.”

—Eric Schwartz, chief marketing officer of Clorox, tells the Wall Street Journal that AI can’t be relied upon to come up with truly original or engaging ideas.

One more thing

Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab

Alina Chan started asking questions in March 2020. She was chatting with friends on Facebook about the virus then spreading out of China. She thought it was strange that no one had found any infected animal. She wondered why no one was admitting another possibility, which to her seemed very obvious: the outbreak might have been due to a lab accident.

Chan is a postdoc in a gene therapy lab at the Broad Institute, a prestigious research institute affiliated with both Harvard and MIT. Throughout 2020, Chan relentlessly stoked scientific argument, and wasn’t afraid to pit her brain against the best virologists in the world. Her persistence even helped change some researchers’ minds. Read the full story.

—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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Why 2025 might just be the year of animal escapes.
+ Very cool—an iron age settlement has been uncovered in England thanks to a lucky metal detectorist.
+ This little armadillo is having the time of their life in a paddling pool.
+ Peace and love to Mr Ringo Starr, 85 years young today!

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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.

Inside India’s scramble for AI independence

Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI.

That gap has opened largely because India has chronically underinvested in R&D, institutions, and invention. Meanwhile, since no one native language is spoken by the majority of the population, training language models is far more complicated than it is elsewhere.

So when the open-source foundation model DeepSeek-R1 suddenly outperformed many global peers, it struck a nerve. This launch by a Chinese startup prompted Indian policymakers to confront just how far behind the country was in AI infrastructure—and how urgently it needed to respond. Read the full story.

—Shadma Shaikh

Job titles of the future: Pandemic oracle

Officially, Conor Browne is a biorisk consultant. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he has advanced degrees in security studies and medical and business ethics, along with United Nations certifications in counterterrorism and conflict resolution.

Early in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, international energy conglomerates seeking expert guidance on navigating the potential turmoil in markets and transportation became his main clients. 

Having studied the 2002 SARS outbreak, he predicted the exponential spread of the new airborne virus. In fact, he forecast the epidemic’s broadscale impact and its implications for business so accurately that he has come to be seen as a pandemic oracle. Read the full story.

—Britta Shoot

This story is from the most recent print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. Subscribe here to receive future copies once they drop.

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ has passed 

Which is terrible news for the clean energy industry. (Vox)
+ An energy-affordability crisis is looming in the US. (The Atlantic $)
+ The President struck deals with House Republican holdouts to get it over the line. (WSJ $)
+ The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Daniel Gross is joining Meta’s superintelligence lab 
He’s jumping ship from the startup he co-founded with Ilya Sutskever. (Bloomberg $)
+ Sutskever is stepping into the CEO role in his absence. (TechCrunch)
+ Here’s what we can infer from Meta’s recent hires. (Semafor)

3 AI’s energy demands could destabilize the global supply
That’s according to the head of the world’s largest transformer maker. (FT $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Elon Musk is threatening to start his own political party
Would anyone vote for him, though? (WP $)
+ You’d think his bruising experience in the White House would have put him off. (NY Mag $)

5 The US has lifted exports on chip design software to China
It suggests that frosty relations between the nations may be thawing. (Reuters)

6 Trump officials are going after this ICE warning app
But lawyers say there’s nothing illegal about it. (Wired $)
+ Downloads of ICEBlock are rising. (NBC News)

7 Wildfires are making it harder to monitor air pollutants
Current tracking technology isn’t built to accommodate shifting smoke. (Undark)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Apple’s iOS 26 software can detect nudity on FaceTime calls
The feature will pause the call and ask if you want to continue. (Gizmodo)

9 Threads has finally launched DMs
But users are arguing there should be a way to opt out of them entirely. (TechCrunch)

10 You can hire a robot to write a handwritten note
Or, y’know, pick up a pen and write it yourself. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“It’s almost like we never even spoke.”

Richard Wilson, an online dater who is convinced his most recent love interest used a chatbot to converse with him online before they awkwardly met in person, tells the Washington Post about his disappointment.

One more thing

Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business

Once a week, Sun Kai has a video call with his mother, and they discuss his day-to-day life. But Sun’s mother died five years ago, and the person he’s talking to isn’t actually a person, but a digital replica he made of her.

There are plenty of people like Sun who want to use AI to preserve, animate, and interact with lost loved ones as they mourn and try to heal. The market is particularly strong in China, where at least half a dozen companies are now offering such technologies and thousands of people have already paid for them.

But some question whether interacting with AI replicas of the dead is truly a healthy way to process grief, and it’s not entirely clear what the legal and ethical implications of this technology may be. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

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 or skeet ’em at me.)+ There’s nothing cooler than wooden interiors right now.
+ Talented artist Ian Robinson creates beautiful paintings of people’s vinyl collections.
+ You’ll find me in every one of Europe’s top wine destinations this summer.
+ Here’s everything you need to remember before Stranger Things returns this fall.

The Download: how AI could improve construction site safety, and our Roundtables conversation with Karen Hao

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 generative AI could help make construction sites safer

More than 1,000 construction workers die on the job each year in the US, making it the most dangerous industry for fatal slips, trips, and falls.

A new AI tool called Safety AI could help to change that. It analyzes the progress made on a construction site each day, and flags conditions that violate Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules, with what its creator Philip Lorenzo claims is 95% accuracy.

Lorenzo says Safety AI is the first one of multiple emerging AI construction safety tools to use generative AI to flag safety violations. But as the 95% success rate suggests, Safety AI is not a flawless and all-knowing intelligence. Read the full story.

—Andrew Rosenblum

Roundtables: Inside OpenAI’s Empire with Karen Hao

Earlier this week, we held a subscriber-only Roundtable discussion with author and former MIT Technology Review senior editor Karen Hao about her new book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.

You can watch her conversation with our executive editor Niall Firth here—and if you aren’t already, you can subscribe to us here. 

MIT Technology Review Narrated: The tech industry can’t agree on what open-source AI means. That’s a problem.

What counts as ‘open-source AI’? The answer could determine who gets to shape the future of the technology.

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing 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 China’s digital IDs are coming
And they’re unlikely to stay voluntary for long. (Economist $)
+ The country’s AI models are becoming increasingly popular worldwide. (WSJ $)

2 Donald Trump has mused about using DOGE to deport Elon Musk
Musk’s comments about the President’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ have touched a nerve. (Axios)
+ Turns out AI models are quite good at fact checking Trump. (WP $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Google must pay California’s Android users $314.6m
After a jury ruled it had misused their data. (Reuters) 

4 Many AI detectors overpromise and underdeliver
But that hasn’t stopped Californian colleges from investing millions in them. (Undark)
+ What’s next for college writing? Nothing good. (New Yorker $)
+ Educators are working out how to integrate AI into computer science. (NYT $)
+ AI-text detection tools are really easy to fool. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Google is making its first foray into fusion
The world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant is due to come online in the 2030s. (NBC News)
+ Google will buy half its output. (TechCrunch)
+ Inside a fusion energy facility. (MIT Technology Review)

6 China is banning certain portable batteries from flights
In the wake of two major manufacturers recalling millions of power banks. (NYT $)
+ The ban is catching travellers out. (SCMP)

7 The deepfake economy is spiralling out of control
Small business owners are drowning in online scams. (Insider $)

8 Chipmaking companies are attractive prospects for investors
And they’re likely to be better bets. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI has denied that it plans to use Google’s in-house chip. (Reuters)

9 How cancer studies in dogs could help develop treatments for humans
The disease presents very similarly across both species. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Cancer vaccines are having a renaissance. (MIT Technology Review)

10 X is planning to task AI agents with writing Community Notes
Thankfully, humans will still review them. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why does AI hallucinate? (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Missionaries will beat mercenaries.”

—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman takes aim at Meta’s recent spree of attempting to hire his staff, Wired reports.

One more thing

The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space

In September, a unique chase took place in the skies above Easter Island. From a rented jet, a team of researchers captured a satellite’s last moments as it fell out of space and blazed into ash across the sky, using cameras and scientific equipment. Their hope was to gather priceless insights into the physical and chemical processes that occur when satellites burn up as they fall to Earth at the end of their missions.

This kind of study is growing more urgent. The number of satellites in the sky is rapidly rising—with a tenfold increase forecast by the end of the decade. Letting these satellites burn up in the atmosphere at the end of their lives helps keep the quantity of space junk to a minimum. But doing so deposits satellite ash in the Earth’s atmosphere. This metallic ash could potentially alter the climate, and we don’t yet know how serious the problem is likely to be. Read the full story. 

—Tereza Pultarova

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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ The new Running Man film looks pretty good, even if it is without Arnold.
+ Maybe it’s just not worth trying to understand our dogs after all.
+ Cynthia Erivo, who knows a thing or two about belting out a tune, really loves The Thong Song, and who can blame her?
+ Show your face, colossal squid!