The Download: tripping with AI, and blocking crawler bots

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.

People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics

A growing number of people are using AI chatbots as “trip sitters”—a phrase that traditionally refers to a sober person tasked with monitoring someone who’s under the influence of a psychedelic—and sharing their experiences online.

It’s a potent blend of two cultural trends: using AI for therapy and using psychedelics to alleviate mental-health problems. But this is a potentially dangerous psychological cocktail, according to experts. While it’s far cheaper than in-person psychedelic therapy, it can go badly awry. Read the full story.

—Webb Wright

Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites

The news: The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has announced that it will start blocking AI bots from visiting websites it hosts by default.

What bots? The bots in question are a type of web crawler, an algorithm that walks across the internet then digests and catalogs information on each website. In the past, web crawlers were most commonly associated with gathering data for search engines, but developers now use them to gather data they need to build and use AI systems.

So, are all bots banned? Not quite. Cloudflare will also give clients the ability to allow or ban these AI bots on a case-by-case basis, and plans to introduce a so-called “pay-per-crawl” service that clients can use to receive compensation every time an AI bot wants to scoop up their website’s contents. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits?

Last week, Anthropic and Meta each won landmark victories in two separate court cases that examined whether or not the firms had violated copyright when they trained their large language models on copyrighted books without permission. The rulings are the first we’ve seen to come out of copyright cases of this kind. This is a big deal!

There are dozens of similar copyright lawsuits working through the courts right now, and their outcomes are set to have an enormous impact on the future of AI. In effect, they will decide whether or not model makers can continue ordering up a free lunch. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

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 The US Senate has killed an effort to prevent states regulating AI 
But AI giants are likely to keep lobbying for similar sorts of legislation. (Reuters)
+ Google et al want Congress to take regulation away from individual states. (Bloomberg $)
+ Advocacy groups say the provision remains extremely damaging. (Wired $)
+ OpenAI has upped its lobbying efforts nearly sevenfold. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Apple is considering using rival AI tech to bolster Siri
In a massive U-turn, it’s reported to have held talks with Anthropic and OpenAI. (Bloomberg $)
+ Apple seems to have accepted that its in-house efforts simply can’t compete. (The Verge)

3 DOGE has access to data that may boost Elon Musk’s businesses
His rivals are worried their proprietary information could be exposed. (WP $)
+ Donald Trump has floated tasking DOGE with reviewing Musk’s subsidies. (FT $)
+ Relations between Musk and Trump are still pretty strained. (NY Mag $)

4 Amazon’s robot workforce is approaching a major milestone
It’s on the verge of equalling the number of humans working in its warehouses. (WSJ $)
+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review)

5 China’s clean energy boom is going global
Just as the US doubles down on fossil fuels. (NYT $)
+ The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The AI talent wars are massively inflating pay packages
Wages for a small pool of workers have risen sharply in the past three years. (FT $)
+ Meta, in particular, isn’t afraid to splash its cash. (Wired $)
+ The vast majority of consumers aren’t paying for AI, though. (Semafor)

7 Microsoft claims its AI outperforms doctors’ diagnoses
Its system “solved” eight out of 10 cases, compared to physicians’ two out of 10. (The Guardian)
+ Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer. (MIT Technology Review) 

8 What the future of satellite internet could look like
Very crowded, for one. (Rest of World)
+ How Antarctica’s history of isolation is ending—thanks to Starlink. (MIT Technology Review)

9 What is an attosecond?
A load of laser-wielding scientists are measuring the units. (Knowable Magazine)

10 AI is Hollywood’s favorite villain
Where 2001, The Terminator, and The Matrix led, others follow. (Economist $)
+ How a 30-year-old techno-thriller predicted our digital isolation. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Right now, AI companies are less regulated than sandwich shops.”

—Ella Hughes, organizing director of activist group PauseAI, addresses a crowd of protesters outside Google DeepMind’s London office, Insider reports.

One more thing

Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible

Since the 1970s, we’ve sent a lot of big things to Mars. But when NASA successfully sent twin Mars Cube One spacecraft, the size of cereal boxes, in November 2018, it was the first time we’d ever sent something so small.

Just making it this far heralded a new age in space exploration. NASA and the community of planetary science researchers caught a glimpse of a future long sought: a pathway to much more affordable space exploration using smaller, cheaper spacecraft. Read the full story.

—David W. Brown

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 South of France is jam-packed with stunning beaches.
+ These fountain pen drawings really capture the beauty of nature.
+ Yogurt soup?! Why not?
+ Happy birthday to the timeless Debbie Harry—80 years young today.

The Download: meet RFK Jr’s right-hand man, and inside OpenAI

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 Jim O’Neill, the longevity enthusiast who is now RFK Jr.’s right-hand man

When Jim O’Neill was nominated to be the second in command at the US Department of Health and Human Services, longevity enthusiasts were excited.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new right-hand man, O’Neill is expected to wield authority at health agencies that fund biomedical research and oversee the regulation of new drugs. And while O’Neill doesn’t subscribe to Kennedy’s most contentious beliefs—and supports existing vaccine schedules—he may still steer the agencies in controversial new directions.

O’Neill is well-known in the increasingly well-funded and tight-knit longevity community. In speaking with more than 20 people who work in the longevity field and are familiar with O’Neill, it’s clear that they share a genuine optimism about his leadership. Read our story all about him and what he believes.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Inside OpenAI’s empire with Karen Hao

AI journalist Karen Hao’s newly released book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, tells the story of OpenAI’s rise to power and its far-reaching impact all over the world.

Hao, a former MIT Technology Review senior editor, will join our executive editor Niall Firth in an intimate subscriber-exclusive Roundtable conversation exploring the AI arms race, what it means for all of us, and where it’s headed. Register here to join us at 9am ET today!

Special giveaway: Attendees will have the chance to receive a free copy of Hao’s book. See the registration form for details.

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump claims to have found buyers for TikTok
But will China agree to sell to them? That’s the real hurdle. (FT $)
+ They have between now and the September 17 deadline to thrash it all out. (CNBC)

2 The Trump administration is becoming even more secretive
Staff are being instructed to avoid leaving a paper trial at all costs. (WP $)

3 Canada has rescinded its plans to tax US technology firms
That’s the price for reopening talks with America about trade negotiations. (Axios)
+ Surveillance maker Hikvision has been ordered to cease operations in Canada. (Bloomberg $)
+ The tax had been due to come into effect today. (NPR)

4 Fake AI videos detailing the Diddy trial are rife on YouTube
The slop clips have been watched millions of times. (The Guardian)

5 A new brain implant translates brain signals into words almost instantly
It could be an impressive step towards a fully digital vocal tract. (Ars Technica)
+ This patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Meta wants to train its AI on photos you haven’t even uploaded yet 
And while it’s not doing so yet, it could in the future. (The Verge)
+ It’s started asking users for access permission. (TechCrunch)

7 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is narrowing its remit
It’s focusing purely on science, rather than politics, education and housing. (NYT $)
+ That’s pretty awful news for the communities that have grown reliant on it. (WP $)

8 Fine tuning LLMs to behave well makes them more likely to say no
So you get either ‘safe’ or ‘helpful’. Both simultaneously seems to be too much to ask. (404 Media)
+ This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Your next home could be made from superwood
The engineered material is stronger than steel—and bulletproof. (WSJ $)
+ Inside the quest to engineer climate-saving “super trees.” (MIT Technology Review)

10 Have emoji made our communication better? Or worse?
Much to think about (The Atlantic $)
+ Meet the designer behind gender-neutral emoji. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”

—Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, reacts to Meta poaching some of the startup’s top talent to join its AI lab, Wired reports.

One more thing

Inside the strange limbo facing millions of IVF embryos

Millions of embryos created through IVF sit frozen in time, stored in cryopreservation tanks around the world. The number is only growing thanks to advances in technology, the rising popularity of IVF, and improvements in its success rates.

At a basic level, an embryo is simply a tiny ball of a hundred or so cells. But unlike other types of body tissue, it holds the potential for life. Many argue that this endows embryos with a special moral status, one that requires special protections.

The problem is that no one can really agree on what that status is. So while these embryos persist in suspended animation, patients, clinicians, embryologists, and legislators must grapple with the essential question of what we should do with them. What do these embryos mean to us? Who should be responsible for them? 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.)

+ Have we settled on a song of the summer yet?
+ Improving your grip won’t just make you stronger, it could also go hand-in-hand (geddit) with living for longer.
+ What’s in Bruce Springsteen’s vault? Let’s peer inside.
+ How to find the good in the bad, even when it feels impossible.

The Download: how to clean up AI data centers, and weight-loss drugs’ side effects

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 battery recycling company is now cleaning up AI data centers

In a sandy industrial lot outside Reno, Nevada, rows of battery packs that once propelled electric vehicles are now powering a small AI data center.

Redwood Materials, one of the US’s largest battery recycling companies, showed off this array of energy storage modules, sitting on cinder blocks and wrapped in waterproof plastic, during a press tour at its headquarters on June 26.

The event marked the launch of the company’s new business line, Redwood Energy, which will initially repurpose (rather than recycle) batteries with years of remaining life to create renewable-powered microgrids. Such small-scale energy systems can operate on or off the larger electricity grid, providing electricity for businesses or communities. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We’re learning more about what weight-loss drugs do to the body

Weight-loss drugs are this decade’s blockbuster medicines. Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro help people with diabetes get their blood sugar under control and help overweight and obese people reach a healthier weight. And they’re fast becoming a trendy must-have for celebrities and other figure-conscious individuals looking to trim down.

They became so hugely popular so quickly that not long after their approval for weight loss, we saw global shortages of the drugs. Prescriptions have soared over the last five years, but even people who don’t have prescriptions are seeking these drugs out online.

We know they can suppress appetite, lower blood sugar, and lead to dramatic weight loss. We also know that they come with side effects, which can include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. But we are still learning about some of their other effects. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this 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 The Supreme Court has paved the way to defund Planned Parenthood 
By allowing South Carolina to block the organization from its Medicaid program. (WP $)
+ Other red states are likely to follow suit. (CNN)
+ Planned Parenthood may be able to challenge the ban under state law. (Politico)

2 Iran is back online
The country appeared to cut connectivity in a bid to thwart foreign attacks. (Economist $)

3 ICE is using a new facial recognition app
It’s capable of recognizing someone from their fingerprints, too. (404 Media)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Denmark has a potential solution for malicious deepfakes
By giving its residents copyright to their own body, facial features, and voice. (The Guardian)
+ An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Impossible Foods wants to bring its plant-based burgers to Europe
After sales started falling in America. (Bloomberg $)
+ Sales of regular old meat are booming in the States. (Vox)

6 The Three Mile Island nuclear plant’s restart is being fast tracked
It’s currently scheduled to start operating a year earlier than anticipated. (Reuters)
+ But bringing the reactor back online is no easy task. (The Register)
+ Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI may be making research too easy
New research suggests that using LLMs results in weaker grasps of topics. (WSJ $)
+ It could also be making our thoughts less original. (New Yorker $)

8 Climate tech companies are struggling to weather Trump’s cuts
A lot of startups are expected to fold as a result. (Insider $)
+ The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Billions of Facebook and Google passwords have been leaked
And people in developing nations are most at risk. (Rest of World)

10 Inside a couples retreat with humans and their AI companions
Chaos ensured. (Wired $)
+ The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“[The internet blackout] makes us invisible. And still, we’re here. Still trying to connect with the free world.”

—’Amir,’ a student in Iran, tells the Guardian why young Iranians are working to overcome the country’s internet shutdowns.

One more thing

Maybe you will be able to live past 122

How long can humans live? This is a good time to ask the question. The longevity scene is having a moment, thanks to a combination of scientific advances, public interest, and an unprecedented level of investment. A few key areas of research suggest that we might be able to push human life spans further, and potentially reverse at least some signs of aging.

Researchers can’t even agree on what the exact mechanisms of aging are and which they should be targeting. Debates continue to rage over how long it’s possible for humans to live—and whether there is a limit at all.

But it looks likely that something will be developed in the coming decades that will help us live longer, in better health. 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.)

+ This ancient amphibian skull is pretty remarkable.
+ A new Phantom of the Opera spin-off is coming—but no one really knows what it is.
+ Stop panicking, it turns out Marge Simpson isn’t dead after all.
+ I love these owls in towels

The Download: Google DeepMind’s DNA AI, and heatwaves’ impact on the grid

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.

Google’s new AI will help researchers understand how our genes work

When scientists first sequenced the human genome in 2003, they revealed the full set of DNA instructions that make a person. But we still didn’t know what all those 3 billion genetic letters actually do.

Now Google’s DeepMind division says it’s made a leap in trying to understand the code with AlphaGenome, an AI model that predicts what effects small changes in DNA will have on an array of molecular processes, such as whether a gene’s activity will go up or down.

It’s just the sort of question biologists regularly assess in lab experiments, and is an attempt to further smooth biologists’ work by answering basic questions about how changing DNA letters alters gene activity and, eventually, how genetic mutations affect our health. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

It’s officially summer, and the grid is stressed

It’s crunch time for the grid this week. Large swaths of the US have reached or exceeded record-breaking temperatures. Spain recently went through a dramatic heat wave too, as did the UK, which is bracing for another one soon.

We rely on electricity to keep ourselves comfortable, and more to the point, safe. These are the moments we design the grid for: when need is at its very highest. The key to keeping everything running smoothly during these times might be just a little bit of flexibility. But demand for electricity from major grids is already peaking, and that’s a good reason to be a little nervous. 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.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How did China come to dominate the world of electric cars?

From generous government subsidies to support for lithium batteries, here are the keys to understanding how China managed to build a world-leading industry in electric vehicles.

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.

Inside OpenAI’s empire with Karen Hao

Journalist Karen Hao’s newly released book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, tells the story of OpenAI’s rise to power and its far-reaching impact all over the world.

Hao, a former MIT Technology Review senior editor, will join our executive editor Niall Firth in an intimate subscriber-exclusive Roundtable conversation exploring the AI arms race, what it means for all of us, and where it’s headed. Register here to join us at 9am ET on Monday June 30th June.

Special giveaway: Attendees will have the chance to receive a free copy of Hao’s book. See registration form for details.

The must-reads

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

1 Meta has won an AI copyright case against authors
The judge said the authors hadn’t presented enough evidence to back up their case. (TechCrunch)
+ It’s not an entirely decisive victory for Meta, though. (Wired $)
+ It’s the second lawsuit in favor of AI giants this week. (Insider $)

2 The US will stop contributing towards a global vaccine alliance
RFK Jr made unsubstantiated claims about Gavi’s safety record. (WP $)
+ Kennedy’s newly-assembled vaccine panel is reviewing its guidelines for children. (Vox)
+ Experts are worried the once-influential panel will cause irreparable harm. (Ars Technica)
+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Jeff Bezos is cozying up to Donald Trump
If the Trump administration happens to need a new space company, he’s ready and willing to supply it. (WSJ $)
+ Meanwhile, a private astronaut mission is on its way to the ISS. (CNN)

4 Taiwan is working on suicide drones to defend itself from China
The country is taking a leaf out of Ukraine’s defense book. (FT $)
+ This giant microwave may change the future of war. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Biohackers are feeling emboldened by the Trump administration
They welcome lower barriers to entry for their unorthodox treatments. (Wired $)
+ The first US hub for experimental medical treatments is coming. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A UK cyberattack on a health firm contributed to a patient’s death
The ransomware attack disrupted blood services at London hospitals. (BBC)
+ A Russian hacking gang is to blame for the incident. (Bloomberg $)

7 Take a look inside Amazon’s colossal new data center
Four construction teams are working around the clock to finish it. (NYT $)
+ Generating video is the most energy-intensive AI prompt. (WSJ $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The debate around dark energy is intensifying
New research suggests it evolves over time. But not everyone agrees. (Undark)

9 Trump Mobile is no longer claiming to be ‘made in the USA’
It’s now “designed with American values in mind” instead. (Ars Technica)

10 It’s official: The Social Network is getting a sequel
Zuck goes MAGA? (Deadline $)

Quote of the day

“By training generative AI models with copyrighted works, companies are creating something that often will dramatically undermine the market for those works, and thus dramatically undermine the incentive for human beings to create things the old-fashioned way.”

—US district judge Vince Chhabria, who presided over a copyright lawsuit brought against Meta by a group of authors, warns of the implications of the company’s actions, the Guardian reports.

One more thing

Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution

Editing human embryos is restricted in much of the world—and making an edited baby is fully illegal in most countries surveyed by legal scholars. But advancing technology could render the embryo issue moot.

New ways of adding CRISPR, the revolutionary gene editing tool, to the bodies of people already born could let them easily receive changes as well. It’s possible that in 125 years, many people will be the beneficiaries of multiple rare, but useful, gene mutations currently found in only small segments of the population. 

These could protect us against common diseases and infections, but eventually they could also yield improvements in other traits, such as height, metabolism, or even cognition. But humanity won’t necessarily do things the right way. 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.)

+ Amazing things are happening in New York’s Central Park.
+ A newly-discovered species of dinosaur has gone on display in London, and it’s small but perfectly formed.
+ Cool—Bob Dylan is releasing a new art book, this time of his drawings.
+ Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris has a secret second career—as a footballer

The Download: Introducing the Power issue

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 Power issue

Energy is power. Those who can produce it, especially lots of it, get to exert authority in all sorts of ways. 

The world is increasingly powered by both tangible electricity and intangible intelligence. Plus billionaires. The latest issue of MIT Technology Review explores those intersections, in all their forms. 

Here’s just a taster of what you can expect from our latest issue:

+ Are we ready to hand AI agents the keys? We’re starting to give AI agents real autonomy, and we’re not prepared for what could happen next. Read the full story.

+ In Nebraska, a publicly owned electricity distribution system is an effective lens through which to examine the grid of the near future.

+ Cases of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses are on the rise in the area surrounding Puerto Rico’s only coal-fired power station. So why has it just been given permission to stay open for at least another seven years? Read the full story.

+ How AI is shaking up urban planning and helping make cities better.

+ Tech billionaires are making a risky bet with humanity’s future. They say they want to save humanity by creating superintelligent AI—but a new book argues that they’re steering humanity in a dangerous direction.

The Bank Secrecy Act is failing everyone. It’s time to rethink financial surveillance.

—Katie Haun is the CEO and founder of Haun Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on frontier technologies.

The US is on the brink of enacting rules for digital assets, with growing bipartisan momentum to modernize its financial system. But amid all the talk about innovation and global competitiveness, one issue has been glaringly absent: financial privacy.

As we build the digital infrastructure of the 21st century, we need to talk about not just what’s possible but what’s acceptable. That means confronting the expanding surveillance powers quietly embedded in our financial system, which today can track nearly every transaction without a warrant. 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 Copyrighted books are fair use for AI training
According to a federal court in the US. (WP $)
+ The court compared the way AI learns to how humans consume books. (WSJ $)
+ But pirating is still illegal, apparently. (404 Media)

2 Recruiters are drowning in AI-generated résumés
Fake identities, agent-led applications, and identical résumés abound. (NYT $)

3 Extreme heat in the US is a growing threat
Alaska recently issued its first-ever heat advisory. (Vox)
+ And the heatwave is only going to intensify. (The Guardian)
+ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Big Balls no longer works for DOGE
One of the department’s most prominent hires has resigned. (Wired $)
+ What will he do next? (NYT $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

5 One of America’s best hackers is a bot
It’s the first time an AI has topped a hacking leaderboard by reputation. (Bloomberg $)
+ Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Way fewer people are dying of heart attacks in the US
But deaths from chronic heart conditions are on the up. (New Scientist $)

7 TikTok’s moderators have had enough
Groups are unionizing across the world to push for better treatment. (Rest of World)
+ How an undercover content moderator polices the metaverse. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Donald Trump’s social media use is even more erratic than usual
He keeps signing off “thank you for your attention to this matter!” (The Atlantic $)
+ He’s also misspelling his name as ‘Donakd.’ (Fast Company $)

9 Finally, a use for your old smartphone
It could have a second life as a teeny tiny data center. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 AI models don’t understand Gen Alpha slang
Let him cook! (404 Media)
+ That’s not stopping youngsters from using models as advisors, though. (Fast Company $)

Quote of the day

“Humans are wired to bond, and when we feel seen and soothed—even by a machine—we connect.”

—Psychiatrist Nina Vasan explains why humans may end up falling in love with AI systems to the Wall Street Journal.

One more thing

How Wi-Fi sensing became usable tech

Wi-Fi sensing is a tantalizing concept: that the same routers bringing you the internet could also detect your movements. But, as a way to monitor health, it’s mostly been eclipsed by other technologies, like ultra-wideband radar. 

Despite that, Wi-Fi sensing hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has quietly become available in millions of homes, supported by leading internet service providers, smart-home companies, and chip manufacturers. 

Soon it could be invisibly monitoring our day-to-day movements for all sorts of surprising—and sometimes alarming—purposes. Read the full story. 

—Meg Duff

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.)

+  How to keep your cool in a heatwave.
+ Roblox fans can’t get enough of, err, gardening.
+ Kate Moss, you are the reigning queen of festival fashion.
+ A couple of intrepid brown bears managed to escape from a wildlife park in the UK—to consume a week’s worth of honey

The Download: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s first pictures, and reframing privacy

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.

See the stunning first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The first spectacular images taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have been released for the world to peruse: a panoply of iridescent galaxies and shimmering nebulas.

Much has been written about the observatory’s grand promise: to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos by revealing a once-hidden population of far-flung galaxies, erupting stars, interstellar objects, and elusive planets. And thanks to its unparalleled technical prowess, few doubted its ability to make good on that. But over the past decade, during its lengthy construction period, everything’s been in the abstract.

Today, that promise has become a staggeringly beautiful reality. Read the full story.

—Robin George Andrews

Back in January, we selected the Vera C. Rubin Observatory as one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025. Read more about why it’s such a promising tool for enhancing our understanding of the universe.

Why we need to think differently about privacy 

Privacy only matters to those with something to hide. So goes one of the more inane and disingenuous justifications for mass government and corporate surveillance. It remains a popular way to rationalize or excuse what’s become standard practice in our digital age: the widespread and invasive collection of vast amounts of personal data.

One common response to this line of reasoning is that everyone, in fact, has something to hide, whether they realize it or not. If you’re unsure of whether this holds true for you, three new books examine the rise of the surveillance state, its infiltration of higher education, and why we need a new framework for thinking about privacy. Read the full story.

—Bryan Gardiner

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live this Wednesday, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the 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 Satellite images reveal the damage America’s bombs caused in Iran
The attack focused on three nuclear sites in the country. (Wired $) 
+ Iran has insisted its nuclear program will not be stopped. (The Guardian)
+ Here’s how the US bunker-busting bombs work. (Economist $)
+ The risks of a nuclear accident appear low, for now. (New Scientist $)

2 Tesla has launched its Texas robotaxi service
But for now, at least, it’s pretty restricted. (NYT $)
+ Elon Musk says the firm is “super paranoid about safety.” (WP $)
+ But there’s still plenty of unanswered questions around how it’ll work. (TechCrunch)

3 OpenAI and Jony Ive’s startup are facing a trademark dispute
It appears to be over their use of the IO name. (Bloomberg $)
+ OpenAI has scrubbed all mention of the partnership online. (Insider $) 

4 Meta is throwing tens of millions of dollars at top AI talent
Mark Zuckerberg is on a personal mission to recruit for its Superintelligence lab. (WSJ $)
+ Alexandr Wang of Scale will lead the charge. (Fortune $)

5 Elon Musk wants to retrain xAI’s Grok
Foundation AI models contain too much garbage, apparently. (Insider $)
+ Investors aren’t keen to sink money into xAI. (Reuters)
+ Why does AI hallucinate? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Donald Trump’s phone network is based in Florida
Seven-year old Liberty Mobile Wireless buys network capacity from bigger players. (FT $)

7 Reddit is reportedly considering using World ID to verify users
The controversial firm claims to preserve users’ anonymity while also confirming they are human. (Semafor)
+ How the startup recruited its first half a million test users. (MIT Technology Review)

8 What happens inside the phones of 25 teenagers
Life isn’t always easy for the first generation of social media natives. (The Guardian)
+ What it’s like to have never owned a smartphone. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to log off. (MIT Technology Review)

9 A dead NASA satellite let off a powerful radio pulse
So powerful, it briefly outshone everything else in the sky. (New Scientist $)

10 What does AI mean for the future of fonts?
They could eventually swim into focus, or shift during the day. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“We’re not playing a kid’s game here. We’re not naming Care Bears.”

—Ira Winkler, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm CYE Security, decries cybersecurity’s obsession with cutesy names to the Wall Street Journal.

One more thing

What is death?

Just as birth certificates note the time we enter the world, death certificates mark the moment we exit it. This practice reflects traditional notions about life and death as binaries. We are here until, suddenly, like a light switched off, we are gone.

But while this idea of death is pervasive, evidence is building that it is an outdated social construct, not really grounded in biology. Dying is in fact a process—one with no clear point demarcating the threshold across which someone cannot come back.

Scientists and many doctors have already embraced this more nuanced understanding of death. And as society catches up, the implications for the living could be profound. Read the full story. 

—Rachel Nuwer

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.)+ Have you booked your tickets to 28 Years Later yet?
+ If you happen to be planning a flying visit to Rome, here’s a guide to cramming in as much of its breathtaking art as possible.
+ What community gardens can give us.
+ Who really runs New York? The bodega cats ($)

The Download: talking dirty with DeepSeek, and the risks and rewards of calorie restriction

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.

It’s pretty easy to get DeepSeek to talk dirty

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty. DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too.

Huiqian Lai, a PhD student at Syracuse University, found vast differences in how mainstream models process sexual queries, from steadfast rejection to performative refusal followed by the requested sexually explicit content.

The findings highlight inconsistencies in LLMs’ safety boundaries that could, in certain situations, become harmful. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Calorie restriction can help animals live longer. What about humans?

Living comes with a side effect: aging. Despite what you might hear on social media, there are no drugs that are known to slow or reverse human aging. But there’s some evidence to support another approach: cutting back on calories.

Reducing your intake of calories and fasting can help with weight loss. But they may also offer protection against some health conditions. And some believe such diets might even help you live longer—a finding supported by new research out this week.

However, the full picture is not so simple. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits—and risks—of caloric restriction.

—Jessica Hamzelou

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

How a 30-year-old techno-thriller predicted our digital isolation

Thirty years ago, Irwin Winkler’s proto–cyber thriller, The Net, was released. It was 1995, commonly regarded as the year Hollywood discovered the internet. Sandra Bullock played a social recluse and computer nerd for hire named Angela Bennett, who unwittingly uncovers a sinister computer security conspiracy. She soon finds her life turned upside down as the conspiracists begin systematically destroying her credibility and reputation.

While the villain of The Net is ultimately a nefarious cybersecurity software company, the film’s preoccupying fear is much more fundamental: If all of our data is digitized, what happens if the people with access to that information tamper with it? Or weaponize it against us? Read the full story.

—Tom Humberstone

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the 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 Donald Trump has extended TikTok’s deadline for a third time 
He’s granted it yet another 90-day reprieve. (WSJ $)
+ He says he needs more time to broker a deal. (AP News)
+ But it’s not clear if Trump’s orders are even legal. (Bloomberg $)

2 A SpaceX rocket exploded on the test stand
Sending a giant fireball into the Texas sky. (CNN)
+ It’s the fourth SpaceX explosion this year. (WP $)
+ The company has a lot of issues to resolve before it can ever reach Mars. (Ars Technica)

3 Checking a web user’s age is technologically possible
An Australian trial may usher in a ban on under-16s accessing social media. (Bloomberg $)
+ The findings are a blow to social media firms who have been fighting to avoid this. (Reuters)

4 Chinese companies are urgently searching for new markets
And Brazil is looking like an increasingly attractive prospect. (NYT $)
+ Chinese carmaker BYD is sending thousands of EVs there. (Rest of World)

5 How Mark Zuckerberg came to love MAGA
His recent alignment with the manosphere hasn’t come as a shock to insiders. (FT $)

6 We shouldn’t be using AI for everything
Using chatbots without good reason is putting unnecessary strain on the planet. (WP $)
+ AI companies are remaining tight-lipped over their energy use. (Wired $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

7 This Chinese courier company is out-delivering Amazon
J&T Express fulfills orders from giants like Temu and Shein. (Rest of World)

8 How Amazon plans to overhaul Alexa
With AI, AI, and some more AI. (Wired $)

9 How smart should today’s toys be?
The last AI-powered Barbie was not a resounding success. (Vox)

10 This French app allows you to rent household appliances
No raclette machine? No problem. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“So Mr “Art of the Deal” has not made a TikTok deal (again).”

—Adam Cochran, founder of venture capital firm Cinneamhain Ventures, questions Donald Trump’s credentials in a post on X.

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.)

+ How many art terms are you familiar with? Time to brush up.
+ They can make a museum out of pretty much anything these days.
+ Beekeeping isn’t just beneficial for the bees—it could help your mental health, too
+ The Sculptor galaxy is looking ridiculously beautiful right now.

The Download: future grids, and bad boy bots

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.

Before we embark on our usual programming we’re thrilled to share that The Download won Best Technology Newsletter at this year’s Publisher Newsletter Awards! Thank you to all of you for reading, subscribing, and supporting us—you’re the best.

Is this the electric grid of the future?

Lincoln Electric System, a publicly owned utility in Nebraska, is used to weathering severe blizzards. But what will happen soon—not only at Lincoln Electric but for all electric utilities—is a challenge of a different order.

Utilities must keep the lights on in the face of more extreme and more frequent storms and fires, growing risks of cyberattacks and physical disruptions, and a wildly uncertain policy and regulatory landscape. They must keep prices low amid inflationary costs. And they must adapt to an epochal change in how the grid works, as the industry attempts to transition from power generated with fossil fuels to power generated from renewable sources like solar and wind.

The electric grid is bracing for a near future characterized by disruption. And, in many ways, Lincoln Electric is an ideal lens through which to examine what’s coming. Read the full story.

—Andrew Blum

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

OpenAI can rehabilitate AI models that develop a “bad boy persona”

A new paper from OpenAI shows a little bit of bad training can make AI models go rogue—but also demonstrates that this problem is generally pretty easy to fix.

Back in February, a group of researchers discovered that fine-tuning an AI model by training it on code that contains certain security vulnerabilities could cause the model to respond with harmful content, even when the user inputs completely benign prompts.

An OpenAI team claims that this behavior occurs when a model essentially shifts into an undesirable personality type—like the “bad boy persona,” a description their misaligned reasoning model gave itself—by training on untrue information.

However, the researchers found they could detect evidence of this misalignment, and they could even shift the model back to its regular state. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

Inside the US power struggle over coal

Coal power is on life support in the US. It used to carry the grid with cheap electricity, but now plants are closing left and right.

There are many reasons to let coal continue its journey to the grave. Carbon emissions from coal plants are a major contributor to climate change. And those facilities are also often linked with health problems in nearby communities, as reporter Alex Kaufman explored in a feature story on Puerto Rico’s only coal-fired power plant.

But the Trump administration wants to keep coal power alive, and the US Department of Energy recently ordered some plants to stay open past their scheduled closures. Here’s why there’s a power struggle over coal.

—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 The US State Department is restarting student visa interviews 
All students will be required to have their social media accounts set to public for scrutiny. (WP $)
+ Officials are searching for any “indications of hostility” towards America. (BBC)
+ It’s not just social media either: they’ll be vetting an applicant’s entire web presence. (Reuters)

2 DARPA is partnering math experts with AI “co-authors”
In a bid to speed up the pace of progress in pure math. (NYT $)
+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Tech executives are joining the US Army
Open AI, Meta, and Palantir leaders will serve as mid-level officers to build a stronger relationship with the military. (Insider $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Tesla is in desperate need of a comeback
Sales are plummeting. Can Elon Musk reverse its fortunes? (The Atlantic $)
+ The company’s robotaxi service is poised to launch in Texas. (NYT $)

5 America’s biggest companies are becoming more “agile”
In other words, laying people off. (WSJ $)
+ Microsoft is planning to let thousands of people go, particularly in sales. (Bloomberg $)

6 JFK Jr wants to wage war on vaccines
Physicians, epidemiologists, and public health advocates are increasingly worried. (The Verge)

7 People are sick of AI being added to everything
Sadly that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop. (WP $)
+ AI is everywhere—but that doesn’t mean it works. (WSJ $)
+ Meta’s WhatsApp AI assistant gave out an ordinary person’s private number. (The Guardian)
+ Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Sam Altman is turning to ChatGPT for child-rearing advice
Watch out for those hallucinations, please! (TechCrunch)
+ What the future holds for those born today. (MIT Technology Review)

9 China doesn’t know what to do with all its drones
It’s searching for new use cases for them. (FT $)

10 A brief history of the jpeg
It rose to become the internet’s primary image format. But it wasn’t always that way. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“Welcome to the US, where public debate is “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open”! Remember not to say anything mean about any Americans and enjoy your stay!”

—Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School, takes aim at the US State Department’s stringent new rules for overseas students in a post on Bluesky.

One more thing

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is ready to transform our understanding of the cosmos

High atop Chile’s 2,700-meter Cerro Pachón, the air is clear and dry, leaving few clouds to block the beautiful view of the stars. It’s here that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will soon use a car-size 3,200-megapixel digital camera—the largest ever built—to produce a new map of the entire night sky every three days.

Findings from the observatory will help tease apart fundamental mysteries like the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two phenomena that have not been directly observed but affect how objects are bound together—and pushed apart.

A quarter-­century in the making, the observatory is poised to expand our understanding of just about every corner of the universe.  Read the full story.

—Adam Mann

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.)

+ Here’s a good metric for assessing things: how ‘alive’ do you feel? 
+ Why walking can do wonders.
+ Kinda obsessed with this beautiful building in Indonesia made out of bamboo. 
+ These photos show life in Norway in all its glory. 

The Download: tackling tech-facilitated abuse, and opening up AI hardware

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.

Why it’s so hard to stop tech-facilitated abuse

After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior. One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.

And Gioia is far from alone. In fact, tech-facilitated abuse now occurs in most cases of intimate partner violence—and we’re doing shockingly little to prevent it. Read the full story. 

—Jessica Klein 

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

Why AI hardware needs to be open

—by Ayah Bdeir, a leader in the maker movement, champion of open source AI, and founder of littleBits, the hardware platform that teaches STEAM to kids through hands-on invention. 

Once again, the future of technology is being engineered in secret by a handful of people and delivered to the rest of us as a sealed, seamless, perfect device. When technology is designed like this, we are reduced to consumers. We don’t shape the tools; they shape us. 

However, this moment creates a chance to do things differently. Because away from the self-centeredness of Silicon Valley, a quiet, grounded sense of resistance is reactivating.  Read the full story.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business

In China, people are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Our story about this trend is the latest 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 Iran is going offline to avoid Israeli cyberattacks
A government spokesperson said it plans to disconnect completely from the global internet this evening. (The Verge)
+ How attacks on Iran’s oil exports could hurt China. (WSJ $)

2 Trump is giving TikTok another reprieve from a US ban
It’s been a full five years since he signed the original executive order telling Bytedance to sell it. (CNN)
+ Why Chinese manufacturers are going viral on TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shooting are all over social media
Whenever there’s an information vacuum, people are all too keen to fill it with noise and nonsense. (NBC) 
+ The shooting suspect allegedly used data broker sites to find targets’ addresses. (Wired $)

4 Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft are starting to boil over 
OpenAI has even threatened to report its formerly close partner to antitrust regulators. (WSJ $)
+ Here are the concessions OpenAI is seeking. (The Information $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review) 

5 California cops are using AI cameras to investigate ICE protests
And sharing license plate data with other agencies, a practice some experts say is illegal. (404 Media)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Social media is now Americans’ primary news source
It’s overtaken TV for the first time. (Reuters)
+ They watched more TV via streaming than cable last month, too. (NYT $)

7 Weight loss drugs may not work quite as well as hoped
Researchers analysed data from 51,085 patients and found bariatric surgery delivered better, more sustainable results. (The Guardian)

8 What is AI doing to reading? 
Here’s what we stand to gain—and lose—when we outsource reading to machines. (New Yorker $) 

9 India is relying on China to build up its EV market
It’s taking a drastically different course to the US. (Rest of World)
+ Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)

10 People are building AI tools to decipher cats’ meows 
Bet at least half of them are “feed me.” (Scientific American $)

Quote of the day

“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

—Remarks made by federal judge Williams G. Young this week as he voided some of the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health grants, saying they were discriminatory, the New York Times reports. 

One more thing

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | GETTY

Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch

Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.

But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.

—Edd Gent

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.)

+ Wait a minute, Will Smith was offered a role in Inception? Much to think about.
+ No pain, no gain? Not necessarily.
+ John Waters, you really are one of a kind.
+ Say it ain’t so—I refuse to believe that young love is dead!

The Download: power in Puerto Rico, and the pitfalls of AI agents

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.

Puerto Rico’s power struggles

On the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico lies the country’s only coal-fired power station, flanked by a mountain of toxic ash. The plant, owned by the utility giant AES, has long plagued this part of Puerto Rico with air and water pollution.

Before the coal plant opened Guayama had on average just over 103 cancer cases per year. In 2003, the year after the plant opened, the number of cancer cases in the municipality surged by 50%, to 167. In 2022, the most recent year with available data, cases hit a new high of 209. The question is: How did it get this bad? Read the full story.

—Alexander C. Kaufman

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

When AIs bargain, a less advanced agent could cost you

The race to build ever larger AI models is slowing down. The industry’s focus is shifting toward agents—systems that can act autonomously, make decisions, and negotiate on users’ behalf.

But what would happen if both a customer and a seller were using an AI agent? A recent study put agent-to-agent negotiations to the test and found that stronger agents can exploit weaker ones to get a better deal. It’s a bit like entering court with a seasoned attorney versus a rookie: You’re technically playing the same game, but the odds are skewed from the start. Read the full story.

—Caiwei Chen

AI copyright anxiety will hold back creativity

—Nitin Nohria is the George F. Baker Jr. Professor at Harvard Business School and its former dean. 

Last fall, during a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I found myself imagining the painting in front of me as the product of a generative AI model prompted with the query How would van Gogh reinterpret a Japanese woodblock in the style of Keisai Eisen?

And I wondered: If van Gogh had used such an AI tool to stimulate his imagination, would Eisen—or his heirs—have had a strong legal claim?

And the questions don’t stop there. Who, exactly, owns the outputs of a generative model? The user who crafted the prompt? The developer who built the model? The artists whose works were ingested to train it?

The US Copyright Office has begun to tackle the thorny issues of ownership and says that generative outputs can be copyrighted if they are sufficiently human-authored. But it is playing catch-up in a rapidly evolving field. Read the full story.

What does it mean for an algorithm to be “fair”?

—Eileen Guo

Back in February, I flew to Amsterdam to report on a high-stakes experiment the city had recently conducted. Officials had tried to create an effective, fair, and unbiased predictive algorithm to try to detect welfare fraud. But the city fell short of its lofty goals—and, with our partners at Lighthouse Reports and the Dutch newspaper Trouw, we tried to get to the bottom of why.

For an American reporter, it’s been an interesting time to write a story on “responsible AI” in a progressive European city—just as ethical considerations in AI deployments appear to be disappearing in the United States, at least at the national level. 

It has also made me think more deeply about the stakes of deploying AI in situations that directly affect human lives, and about what success would even look like. Read the full story.

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 OpenAI is going to build tools for the US Defense Department
For a chunky $200 million. (CNBC)
+ Spotify founder Daniel Ek is sinking €600 million into a German drone firm. (FT $)
+ OpenAI’s new defense contract completes its military pivot. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Trump has fired the US nuclear regulator
The administration wants to speed up reactor approvals at any cost. (WP $)
+ Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI? (MIT Technology Review)

3 Complaints about tariff evasion in the US are rising sharply
Tipsters are sounding the alarm about alleged duty dodging. (Wired $)
+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Trump’s smartphone plans may be a little too ambitious
It doesn’t seem all that likely it could be made in the USA by August for just $499. (WSJ $)
+ Conflicts of interest, anyone? (Bloomberg $)
+ Even ordering the handset is a massive ordeal. (404 Media $)

5 AI won’t just replace jobs. It’ll create new ones too
Some will be better than others. (NYT $)
+ People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Ads are coming to WhatsApp
It was only ever a matter of time. (The Information $)
+ It’s all part of Meta’s grand plan. (BBC)
+ Thankfully, unless you’re an Updates obsessive, you may never see them. (Ars Technica)

7 AI bots are hammering libraries and museums
Their servers are swamped, and even knocked offline in some cases. (404 Media)

8 Venetians aren’t happy about Jeff Bezos’ upcoming nuptials
They’re protesting around the town square and along the Rialto Bridge. (Insider $)
+ ‘No space for Bezos’ is a pretty snappy slogan. (NBC News)

9 Tinder is resurrecting its Double Date feature
In an effort to let Gen Z daters bring a friend along for emotional support. (Insider $)
+ Double the rejection? No thanks. (TechCrunch)

10 Threads is experimenting with a spoiler feature
Well, that could be one reason to start using it. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“No one who has been paying attention could miss that President Trump considers the presidency a vehicle to grow his family’s wealth. Maybe this example will help more come to see this undeniable truth.”

—Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, tells Reuters why people should be concerned about Trump’s plans to launch a smartphone.

One more thing

Is this the end of animal testing?

Animal studies are notoriously bad at identifying human treatments. Around 95% of the drugs developed through animal research fail in people, but until recently there was no other option.

Now organs on chips, also known as microphysiological systems, may offer a truly viable alternative. It’s only early days, but if they work as hoped, they could solve one of the biggest problems in medicine today. Read the full story.

—Harriet Brown

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.)

+ Brace yourself: there are still plenty of great video games coming later this year.
+ Tradwives are out, radwives are in.
+ I fully endorse this handy guide to sleeping in airports.
+ How artist Andy Vella came up with the beautiful artwork for The Cure’s latest album.