The Download: IVF embryo limbo, and Anthropic on 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.

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. To some, they’re human cells and nothing else. To others, they’re morally equivalent to children. Many feel they exist somewhere between those two extremes.

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

Anthropic’s chief scientist on 5 ways agents will be even better in 2025

Agents are the hottest thing in tech right now. Top firms from Google DeepMind to OpenAI to Anthropic are racing to augment large language models with the ability to carry out tasks by themselves. 

In October, Anthropic showed off one of the most advanced agents yet: an extension of its Claude large language model called computer use. As the name suggests, it lets you direct Claude to use a computer much as a person would, by moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text. Instead of simply having a conversation with Claude, you can now ask it to carry out on-screen tasks for you.

Computer use is a glimpse of what’s to come for agents. To learn what’s coming next, MIT Technology Review talked to Anthropic’s cofounder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan. Here are five ways that agents are going to get even better in 2025.

—Melissa Heikkilä & Will Douglas Heaven

Small language models: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025

Make no mistake: Size matters in the AI world. When OpenAI launched GPT-3 back in 2020, it was the largest language model ever built. The firm showed that supersizing this type of model was enough to send performance through the roof. That kicked off a technology boom that has been sustained by bigger models ever since.

But as the marginal gains for new high-end models trail off, researchers are figuring out how to do more with less. For certain tasks, smaller models that are trained on more focused data sets can now perform just as well as larger ones—if not better. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Small language models is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, MIT Technology Review’s annual list of tech to watch. Check out the rest of the list, and cast your vote for the honorary 11th breakthrough.

The must-reads

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

1 Blue Origin’s rocket launch has been cancelled 
Its engineers were unable to fix an issue with the New Glenn rocket’s vehicle subsystem. (BBC)
+ It’s also likely that ice blocked an essential vent line designed to expel gas. (Ars Technica)
+ The company is yet to announce a rescheduled launch date. (The Verge)

2 How is Donald Trump planning to save TikTok, exactly?
It’s unclear whether his supposed deal-making prowess will hold any sway here. (WP $)
+ TikTok founder Zhang Yiming might have a few ideas. (WSJ $)
+ It looks as though the US Supreme Court is leaning towards banning the app. (Forbes $)
+ The depressing truth about TikTok’s impending ban. (MIT Technology Review)

3 The Biden administration’s final chip export curb is here
The policy is designed to make it harder for China to circumvent restrictions. (FT $)
+ Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan won’t be restricted under the new rules. (CNN)
+ Nvidia thinks all these sanctions are only backfiring on the US. (Quartz)

4 Big Tech’s leaders are lining up to attend Trump’s inauguration
Silicon Valley’s sucking up continues. (Bloomberg $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg appears to be doing his best to secure an invite. (NYT $)
+ He seems to be entering ‘Founder Mode’ in a bid to impress Trump. (The Verge)

5 AI financial advisers are going after broke young people 
Its money management tips come with a hefty price tag. (Wired $)

6 Neuralink has implanted a brain device in a third person, according to Musk
Ahead of its plans to insert up to 30 devices this year. (Fortune $)
+ Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The future of self-driving cars is cleaved in two
Companies are divided over whether we’ll hail or own future autonomous vehicles. (NY Mag $)
+ How Wayve’s driverless cars will meet one of their biggest challenges yet. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Smartwatches are out, old-school watches are in
It’s hard to beat a wristwatch when it comes to luxury status symbols. (The Guardian)

9 Notre-Dame cathedral is full of hidden speakers
And you can fit out your home with them too—for a price. (FT $)

10 How to free up space on your iPhone
Don’t be afraid to purge those ancient duplicate photos. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“I’m worried about everything.”

—Jeff Bezos describes his (well-placed) nerves to Ars Technica ahead of his rocket company Blue Origin’s first orbital launch—which was later called off over technical issues.

The big story

AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened?

April 2024

When police departments first started buying and deploying bodycams in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a decade ago, activists hoped it would bring about real change.

Years later, despite what’s become a multibillion-dollar market for these devices, the tech is far from a panacea. Most footage they generate goes unwatched.  Officers often don’t use them properly. And if they do finally provide video to the public, it usually doesn’t tell the complete story. 

A handful of AI startups see this problem as an opportunity to create what are essentially bodycam-to-text programs for different players in the legal system, mining this footage for misdeeds. But like the bodycams themselves, the technology still faces procedural, legal, and cultural barriers to success. Read the full story.

—Patrick Sisson

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 first big fashion trend of 2025? We’re all going basic.
+ Spoilers ahead—this list of the best film endings is great fun—including that infamous lingering final shot from Psycho.
+ If parts of your life could be better, it’s time to embrace the tiny changes that can make a real difference.
+ This Brazilian banana bread recipe sounds beyond delicious.

The Download: what’s next for AI, and stem-cell therapies

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

What’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’re on a roll, and we’re doing it again.

How did we score last time round? Our four hot trends to watch out for in 2024 pretty much nailed it by including what we called customized chatbots (we didn’t know it yet, but we were talking about what everyone now calls agents, the hottest thing in AI right now), generative video, and more general-purpose robots that can do a wider range of tasks.

So what’s coming in 2025? Here are five picks from our AI team.

—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.

Stem-cell therapies that work: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025

A quarter-century ago, researchers isolated powerful stem cells from embryos created through in vitro fertilization. These cells, theoretically able to morph into any tissue in the human body, promised a medical revolution. Think: replacement parts for whatever ails you. 

But stem-cell science didn’t go smoothly. Even though scientists soon learned to create these make-anything cells without embryos, coaxing them to become truly functional adult tissue proved harder than anyone guessed. Now, though, stem cells are finally on the brink of delivering. Read the full story.

Stem-cell therapies is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, MIT Technology Review’s annual list of tech to watch. Check out the rest of the list, and cast your vote for the honorary 11th breakthrough—you have until 1 April!

The must-reads

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

1 Meta will no longer employ fact-checkers 
Instead, it will outsource fact verification to its users. (NYT $)
+ What could possibly go wrong!? (WSJ $)
+ The third party groups it employed say they were blindsided by the decision. (Wired $)

2 American workers are increasingly worried about robots
The wave of automation threatening their jobs is only growing stronger. (FT $)
+ Will we ever trust robots? (MIT Technology Review)

3 NASA isn’t sure how to bring Martian rocks and soil to Earth
It’s enormously expensive, and we can’t guarantee it’ll contain the first evidence of extraterrestrial life we hope it does. (WP $)
+ NASA is letting Trump decide how to do it…(NYT $)

4 Meta has abandoned its Quest Pro headset
What does this tell us about the state of consumer VR? Nothing good. (Fast Company $)
+ Turns out people don’t want to spend $1,000 on a headset. (Forbes $)

5 The man who blew up a Cybertruck used ChatGPT to plan the attack
He asked the chatbot how much explosive was needed to trigger the blast. (Reuters)

6 Hackers claim to have stolen a huge amount of location data
It’s a nightmare scenario for privacy advocates. (404 Media) 

7 A bitcoin investor has been ordered to disclose secret codes
Frank Richard Ahlgren III has been sentenced for tax fraud, and owes the US government more than $1 million. (Bloomberg $)

8 The world is far more interconnected than we realized
Networks of bacteria in the ocean are shedding new light on old connections. (Quanta Magazine)

9 The social web isn’t made for everyone 
Its constant updates are a nightmare for people with cognitive decline. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Is Elon Musk really one of the world’s top Diablo players?
His ranking suggests he plays all day, every day. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“We have completely lost the plot.”

—A Meta employee laments the company’s decision to hire new board member Dana White, 404 Media reports.

The big story

How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

June 2024

To make them feel alive, open-world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 are inhabited by vast crowds of computer-controlled characters. These animated people—called NPCs, for “nonplayer characters”—make these virtual worlds feel lived in and full. Often—but not always—you can talk to them.

After a while, however, the repetitive chitchat (or threats) of a passing stranger forces you to bump up against the truth: This is just a game. It’s still fun, but the illusion starts to weaken when you poke at it. 

It may not always be like that. Just as it is upending other industries, generative AI is opening the door to entirely new kinds of in-game interactions that are open-ended, creative, and unexpected. The game may not always have to end. 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 Feathers McGraw is cinema’s most sinister villain, bar none. ($)
+ Intrepid supper clubs sound terrible, but these other travel trends for 2025 are intriguing.
+ Steve Young is a literal pinball wizard, restoring 70-year old machines for the future generations to enjoy.
+ It’s time to pay our respects to a legend: Perry, the donkey who inspired Shrek’s four-legged sidekick, is no more.

The Download: how AI is changing internet search, and the future of privacy 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.

AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it

We all know what it means, colloquially, to google something. You pop a few words in a search box and in return get a list of blue links to the most relevant results. Fundamentally, it’s just fetching information that’s already out there on the internet and showing it to you, in a structured way.

But all that is up for grabs. We are at a new inflection point.

The biggest change to the way search engines deliver information to us since the 1990s is happening right now. No more keyword searching. Instead, you can ask questions in natural language. And instead of links, you’ll increasingly be met with answers written by generative AI and based on live information from across the internet, delivered the same way. 

Not everyone is excited for the change. Publishers are completely freaked out. And people are also worried about what these new LLM-powered results will mean for our fundamental shared reality. Read the full story.

—Mat Honan

This story is from the latest print edition of MIT Technology Review—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive future copies.

What’s next for our privacy?

Every day, we are tracked hundreds or even thousands of times across the digital world. All of this is collected, packaged together with other details, and used to create highly personalized profiles that are then shared or sold, often without our explicit knowledge or consent.

A consensus is growing that Americans need better privacy protections—and that the best way to deliver them would be for Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation.

So what can Americans expect for their personal data in 2025? We spoke to privacy experts and advocates about what’s on their mind regarding how our digital data might be traded or protected moving forward. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo

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.

How optimistic are you about AI’s future?

The start of a new year, and maybe especially this one, feels like a good time for a gut check: How optimistic are you feeling about the future of technology? 

Our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, published on Friday, might help you decide. Artificial intelligence powers four of the breakthroughs featured on the list, and I expect your feelings about them will vary widely. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

This story is from the Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

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

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, MIT Technology Review’s annual list of tech to watch. Check out the rest of the list, and cast your vote for the honorary 11th breakthrough—you have until 1 April!

The must-reads

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

1 A Louisiana man has died of bird flu
He’s the first person known to have died from the virus in the US. (WP $)
+ He was over 65 years old and had underlying health conditions. (NYT $)
+ The risk of a bird flu pandemic is rising. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Meta is shifting towards the right
Appointing Trump ally Dana White to its board is the latest in a string of political moves. (NYT $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg has overhauled Meta’s board in the last five years. (Bloomberg $)
+ The company recently donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. (WSJ $)

3 The Pentagon is blacklisting China’s biggest EV battery firm
CATL and other companies will be barred from doing business with it. (WP $)
+ The US is convinced they’re working with China’s military. (CNN)

4 Nvidia is working on a ‘personal AI supercomputer’
Project Digits will go on sale in May, priced at a whopping $3,000. (TechCrunch)
+ It’s based on a super secret chip, apparently. (VentureBeat)
+ CEO Jensen Huang has his sights set on humanoid robots, too. (FT $)

5 Doctors are turning to AI for note taking during appointments
It could save them hours each day—if it doesn’t mess up, that is. (FT $)
+ Artificial intelligence is infiltrating health care. We shouldn’t let it make all the decisions. (MIT Technology Review)

6 U-Haul is a treasure trove of personal user data
And hackers are exploiting it to dox or hack their victims. (404 Media)

7 New York drivers are already trying to evade congestion pricing
Subtly obscuring license plates can trick tracking cameras. (New York Post)
+ Reaction to the new charge is decidedly mixed. (NY Mag $)
+ Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Frustrated workers are complaining about their bosses on LinkedIn
Try this at your own risk. (Insider $)

9 Men are notoriously poor at replying to text messages
And their failure to communicate could be making them lonely. (The Atlantic $)

10 You can now play Doom on a captch
What better way to prove you’re not a bot? (Vice)
+ Death to captchas. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“We have glitches that need stitches.”

—Tech entrepreneur Mike Johns describes his experience of becoming trapped in a malfunctioning self-driving car to the Guardian, nearly causing him to miss a flight.

The big story

What happens when your prescription drug becomes the center of covid misinformation

September 2021

By the time Joe Rogan mentioned ivermectin as one ingredient in an experimental cocktail he was taking to treat his covid infection, the drug was a meme. In the weeks leading up to the popular podcaster’s revelation, the drug had already become a flashpoint in the covid culture wars.

But Ivermectin isn’t some new or experimental drug: in addition to its use as an anti-parasite treatment for livestock, it’s commonly employed in humans to treat a form of rosacea, among other things. So for those of us who have been using it for years, its sudden infamy was unexpected and unwelcome. Read the full story.

—Abby Ohlheiser

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.)

+ RIP the bar cart, we barely knew you.
+ If you’ve ever wondered what happens to your unclaimed luggage, now you’ll finally have an answer.
+ This motorbike-sized tuna is a thing of beauty.
+ Happy birthday to the one and only Michael Stipe, who turned 65 over the weekend.

The Download: our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025

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: MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025

Each year, we spend months researching and discussing which technologies will make the cut for our 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. We try to highlight a mix of items that reflect innovations happening in various fields. We look at consumer technologies, large industrial­-scale projects, biomedical advances, changes in computing, climate solutions, the latest in AI, and more.

We’ve been publishing this list every year since 2001 and, frankly, have a great track record of flagging things that are poised to hit a tipping point. It’s hard to think of another industry that has as much of a hype machine behind it as tech does, so the real secret of the TR10 is really what we choose to leave off the list.

Check out the full list of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, which is front and center in our latest print issue. It’s all about the exciting innovations happening in the world right now, and includes some fascinating stories, such as:

+ How digital twins of human organs are set to transform medical treatment and shake up how we trial new drugs.

+ What will it take for us to fully trust robots? The answer is a complicated one.

+ Wind is an underutilized resource that has the potential to steer the notoriously dirty shipping industry toward a greener future. Read the full story.

+ After decades of frustration, machine-learning tools are helping ecologists to unlock a treasure trove of acoustic bird data—and to shed much-needed light on their migration habits. Read the full story. 

+ How poop could help feed the planet—yes, really. Read the full story.

Roundtables: Unveiling the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025

Last week, Amy Nordrum, our executive editor, joined our news editor Charlotte Jee to unveil our 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025 in an exclusive Roundtable discussion. Subscribers can watch their conversation back here. And, if you’re interested in previous discussions about topics ranging from mixed reality tech to gene editing to AI’s climate impact, check out some of the highlights from the past year’s events.

This international surveillance project aims to protect wheat from deadly diseases

For as long as there’s been domesticated wheat (about 8,000 years), there has been harvest-devastating rust. Breeding efforts in the mid-20th century led to rust-resistant wheat strains that boosted crop yields, and rust epidemics receded in much of the world.

But now, after decades, rusts are considered a reemerging disease in Europe, at least partly due to climate change. 

An international initiative hopes to turn the tide by scaling up a system to track wheat diseases and forecast potential outbreaks to governments and farmers in close to real time. And by doing so, they hope to protect a crop that supplies about one-fifth of the world’s calories. Read the full story.

—Shaoni Bhattacharya

The must-reads

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

1 Meta has taken down its creepy AI profiles 
Following a big backlash from unhappy users. (NBC News)
+ Many of the profiles were likely to have been live from as far back as 2023. (404 Media)
+ It also appears they were never very popular in the first place. (The Verge)

2 Uber and Lyft are racing to catch up with their robotaxi rivals
After abandoning their own self-driving projects years ago. (WSJ $)
+ China’s Pony.ai is gearing up to expand to Hong Kong.  (Reuters)

3 Elon Musk is going after NASA 
He’s largely veered away from criticising the space agency publicly—until now. (Wired $)
+ SpaceX’s Starship rocket has a legion of scientist fans. (The Guardian)
+ What’s next for NASA’s giant moon rocket? (MIT Technology Review)

4 How Sam Altman actually runs OpenAI
Featuring three-hour meetings and a whole lot of Slack messages. (Bloomberg $)
+ ChatGPT Pro is a pricey loss-maker, apparently. (TechCrunch)

5 The dangerous allure of TikTok
Migrants’ online portrayal of their experiences in America aren’t always reflective of their realities. (New Yorker $)

6 Demand for electricity is skyrocketing
And AI is only a part of it. (Economist $)
+ AI’s search for more energy is growing more urgent. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The messy ethics of writing religious sermons using AI
Skeptics aren’t convinced the technology should be used to channel spirituality. (NYT $)

8 How a wildlife app became an invaluable wildfire tracker
Watch Duty has become a safeguarding sensation across the US west. (The Guardian)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Computer scientists just love oracles  
Hypothetical devices are a surprisingly important part of computing. (Quanta Magazine)

10 Pet tech is booming
But not all gadgets are made equal. (FT $)
+ These scientists are working to extend the lifespan of pet dogs—and their owners. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“The next kind of wave of this is like, well, what is AI doing for me right now other than telling me that I have AI?”

—Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, tells Wired a lot of companies’ AI claims are overblown.

The big story

Broadband funding for Native communities could finally connect some of America’s most isolated places

September 2022

Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by.

The covid-19 pandemic underscored the problem as Native communities locked down and moved school and other essential daily activities online. But it also kicked off an unprecedented surge of relief funding to solve it. Read the full story.

—Robert Chaney

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.)

+ Rollerskating Spice Girls is exactly what your Monday morning needs.
+ It’s not just you, some people really do look like their dogs!
+ I’m not sure if this is actually the world’s healthiest meal, but it sure looks tasty.
+ Ah, the old “bitten by a rabid fox chestnut.”

The Download: feeding the world with poop, and 2024’s performing stories

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 poop could help feed the planet

A new industrial facility in suburban Seattle is giving off a whiff of futuristic technology. It can safely treat fecal waste from people and livestock while recycling nutrients that are crucial for agriculture but in increasingly short supply across the nation’s farmlands. 

Making fertilizer from the nutrients that we and other animals excrete has a long and colorful history; for generations it helped Indigenous cultures around the world create exceptionally fertile soil.

These systems fell out of favor in Western culture. But, if researchers and engineers across several companies get their way, that could be about to change. Read the full story.

—Bryn Nelson

This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive future copies.

If you’re interested in poop’s wider scientific potential, check out the latest entry in our Jobs of the Future series: stool bank manager. Pediatric gastroenterologist Nikhil Pai is helping to treat children with a common bacterial infection of the large intestine by transplanting healthy stool into a patient’s gut—a highly effective, albeit unconventional, treatment. Read the full story.

Here are MIT Technology Review’s best-performing stories of 2024

MIT Technology Review published hundreds of stories in 2024, covering everything from AI, climate tech, and biotech, to robotics, space, and more. 

As the new year begins, take a look at a small selection of the stories that resonated most with you, our readers. Read the full story.

—Abby Ivory-Ganja

Unveiling the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025

Each year, MIT Technology Review selects the top ten breakthrough technologies that will have the greatest impact on how we live and work in the future. In the past, we’ve selected breakthrough technologies such as weight-loss drugs, a malaria vaccine, and GPT-3 (the precursor to ChatGPT).

Amy Nordrum, our executive editor, will join our news editor Charlotte Jee to unveil the new list live during an exclusive Roundtable discussion for subscribers at 12.30pm ET today. Register here to be among the first to know.

The must-reads

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

1 A US appeals court has struck down net neutrality rules 
It’s the end of a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband providers. (NYT $)
+ Net neutrality has been in danger for a while, truthfully. (The Verge)
+ It’s bad news for the Biden administration as it prepares to hand over to Trump. (WP $)

2 Car rental app Turo is under scrutiny
But concerns over the app’s safety practices are nothing new. (WSJ $)
+ The app was used to book vehicles used in both the New Orleans attack and Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion. (NYT $)
+ Turo staff have been pulled off vacation to respond to the aftermath. (Bloomberg $)

3 Nick Clegg is leaving Meta
The former British deputy prime minister is making way for prominent Republican Joel Kaplan. (Semafor)
+ It’s part of the company’s desire to align itself with the incoming Trump administration. (WSJ $)
+ How tech is turning MAGA. (Economist $)

4 Yandex has been ordered to hide maps of a Russian oil refinery
In response to repeated attacks from Ukrainian drones. (Reuters)
+ The Ryazan refinery was hit four times last year alone. (Bloomberg $)
+ The uneasy coexistence of Yandex and the Kremlin. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Apple has agreed to settle a $95 million class-action lawsuit
Over claims the company violated user privacy by sharing Siri recordings. (WP $)

6 Several Californian AI laws have gone into effect
A new year means new regulations. (The Information $)
+ There are more than 120 AI bills in Congress right now. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Our understanding of genetic diseases is changing
Cell mutations suggest we’re far more genetically varied than we previously realized. (The Atlantic $)
+ ​​DeepMind is using AI to pinpoint the causes of genetic disease. (MIT Technology Review)

8 African content creators are struggling to make money
But it appears as though the tide may be slowly turning. (The Guardian)
+ What Africa needs to do to become a major AI player. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Get the new year off to a starry start
There’s a meteor shower due tonight! (Wired $)

10 How to build a more sustainable refrigerator
A new kind of heat-absorbing crystal could hold the key. (New Scientist $)
+ The future of urban housing is energy-efficient refrigerators. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“He is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time!”

—Nick Clegg, Meta’s outgoing chief policy executive, wishes his replacement Joel Kaplan the best in a post on X.

The big story

Is it possible to really understand someone else’s mind?

November 2023

Technically speaking, neuroscientists have been able to read your mind for decades. It’s not easy, mind you. First, you must lie motionless within a fMRI scanner, perhaps for hours, while you watch films or listen to audiobooks.

If you do elect to endure claustrophobic hours in the scanner, the software will learn to generate a bespoke reconstruction of what you were seeing or listening to, just by analyzing how blood moves through your brain.

More recently, researchers have deployed generative AI tools, like Stable Diffusion and GPT, to create far more realistic, if not entirely accurate, reconstructions of films and podcasts based on neural activity. So how close are we to genuine “mind reading?” Read the full story.

—Grace Huckins

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.)

+ Of course The Cure’s Robert Smith is an iPod fanatic.
+ Japan may be associated with tasteful minimalism, but there’s always room for a bit of clutter.
+ Meet the people who release 3,000 pounds of confetti into New York’s Times Square by hand every New Year’s Eve—then clear it all up.
+ How to start a healthy habit, and, crucially, stick to it. ($)

The Download: AI flops, and what the year ahead holds for EVs

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 biggest AI flops of 2024

The past 12 months have been undeniably busy for those working in AI. There have been more successful product launches than we can count, and even Nobel Prizes. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

AI is an unpredictable technology, and the increasing availability of generative models has led people to test their limits in new, weird, and sometimes harmful ways. These were some of 2024’s biggest AI misfires. 

—Rhiannon Williams

If you’re interested in the latest developments in the weird and wonderful world of AI, check out the AI Hype Index—MIT Technology Review’s highly subjective take on what’s for real and what’s just a lot of hallucinatory nonsense. Our latest edition features emotional robotic pets, Pokémon Go, simulated humans, and much more.

Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth this year

It looks as though 2025 will be a solid year for electric vehicles—at least outside the United States. (Inside the US, sales will depend on the incoming administration’s policy choices.)

Globally, these cleaner cars and trucks will continue to eat into the market share of gas-guzzlers as costs decline, consumer options expand, and charging stations proliferate.

But ultimately, the fate of EV sales will depend on the particular dynamics within specific regions. Here’s a closer look at what’s likely to steer the sector in the world’s three largest markets: the US, the EU, and China. Read the full story.

—James Temple

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.

How wind tech could help decarbonize cargo shipping

Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands—a chain of coral atolls in the center of the Pacific Ocean—rely on sea transportation for almost everything. For millennia they sailed largely in canoes, but much of their seafaring movement today involves big, bulky, diesel-fueled cargo ships that are heavy polluters.

They’re not alone. Cargo shipping is responsible for about 3% of the world’s annual greenhouse-­gas emissions, and at the current rate of growth, the global industry could account for 10% of emissions by 2050.

The islands have been disproportionately experiencing the consequences of human-made climate change: warming waters, more frequent extreme weather, and rising sea levels. Now its residents are exploring a surprisingly traditional method of decarbonizing its fleets. Read the full story.

—Sofia Quaglia

This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive future copies.

The must-reads

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

1 A Tesla Cybertruck exploded at Trump’s Las Vegas hotel
Authorities are investigating if the incident is linked to a similar attack in New Orleans. (The Guardian)
+ The Cybertruck’s driver was killed, while seven others were injured. (Reuters)
+ Both vehicles were rented using the same app, called Turo. (Insider $)
+ The New Orleans suspect appears to be inspired by the Islamic State. (Economist $)

2 What five years of covid has taught us
How prepared we are for future pandemics hinges on governments’ willingness to listen. (New Scientist $)+ Covid exposed how vulnerable global health systems are. (The Guardian)

3 America’s tech industry needs imported labor
Escalating tensions over the future of the H-1B visa lays that bare. (WSJ $)
+ Thousands of overseas workers are trapped by the US immigration system. (Insider $)
+ Tech workers had a pretty rough 2024. (Ars Technica)

4 Elon Musk has support in his legal battle with OpenAI
Two major tech investors have joined his cause. (WP $)

5 A science journal’s editors have resigned over its use of AI
The Journal of Human Evolution’s board is protesting how owner Elsevier used te technology to format papers. (Ars Technica)
+ The world’s most expensive artist isn’t a fan of AI, either. (The Guardian)

6 How much will it cost to live forever?
Investment in longevity firms has dropped in recent years. (FT $)
+ Maybe you will be able to live past 122. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Podcasts aren’t restricted to just audio any more
Aspiring podcasters better be prepared to appear on video these days. (NY Mag $)

8 We’re on the verge of living in the ocean
Within five years, this ambitious project hopes to establish permanent underwater colonies. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 What the year ahead holds for tech
Elon Musk attempting to buy TikTok appears pretty inevitable. (The Information $)

10 How to spend less time staring at your phone in 2025
Take back control and break the habit. (Wired $)
+ How to log off. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“It’s nothing other than business as usual for me.”

—Sarah Perl, a Los Angeles-based content creator, tells the Wall Street Journal why she’s not worried about the looming prospect of a US-wide TikTok ban.

The big story

This fuel plant will use agricultural waste to combat climate change

February 2022

A startup called Mote plans to build a new type of fuel-producing plant in California’s fertile Central Valley that would, if it works as hoped, continually capture and bury carbon dioxide, starting from 2024.

It’s among a growing number of efforts to commercialize a concept first proposed two decades ago as a means of combating climate change, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, or BECCS.

It’s an ambitious plan. However, there are serious challenges to doing BECCS affordably and in ways that reliably suck down significant levels of carbon dioxide. Read the full story. 

—James Temple

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.)

+ Feel like time’s running away with you? To slow it down, you need to shake things up.
+ Sicily’s cathedral of Monreale houses Italy’s largest Byzantine-style mosaics, and they’re truly awe-inspiring.
+ If you’re looking for some sci-fi short stories to get your year off to a literary start, look no further.
+ How to teach yourself to love winter—even when it’s really freezing.

The Download: AI tracking birds, and a pig kidney transplant

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 is changing how we study bird migration

In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. And there’s another problem: Most birds migrate at night, when it’s more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed.

For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists’ woes. Now, finally, machine-learning tools are unlocking a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Read the full story.

—Christian Elliot

This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive a copy.

A woman in the US is the third person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney

Towana Looney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, has become the third living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. 

Looney, who donated one of her kidneys to her mother back in 1999, developed kidney failure several years later following a pregnancy complication that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December of 2016 and was put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after.

But it was difficult to find a match. So Looney’s doctors recommended the experimental pig organ as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Looney was authorized to receive the kidney. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Roundtables: The Worst Technology Failures of 2024

Each year, MIT Technology Review publishes a list of the worst technologies of the past 12 months.

Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, sat down to discuss 2024’s worst failures with our executive editor Niall Firth in a subscriber-exclusive online Roundtable event yesterday. Watch their conversation about what made the cut here, and to make sure you don’t miss out in the future, subscribe! 

MIT Technology Review Narrated: Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense

Despite it being over 100 years old, radio technology is still critical in almost all aspects of modern warfare—including in the drones that have come to dominate the Russia-Ukraine war. 

Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, who has been obsessed with radios since childhood, has become an unlikely hero of the conflict, sharing advice and intel. His work may determine the future of Ukraine, and wars far beyond it.

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 Conspiracy theories are still circulating about those mysterious drones
What are they? And where have they come from? (NY Mag $)
+ Authorities are attempting to quell public hysteria, but theories abound. (WP $)
+ Realistically, they’re probably just standard drones out for a night-time flight. (AP News)

2 AI poses a major threat to the power grid
That’s according to the US industry watchdog, which is feeling the pressure. (FT $)
+ AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further. (MIT Technology Review)

3 SpaceX and Elon Musk are under investigation 
US federal agencies are probing their repeated failures to comply with reporting rules. (NYT $)

4 Nvidia has unveiled a tiny, affordable AI supercomputer
Which is handy for roboticists looking to bypass connecting to remote data centers. (Gizmodo)
+ While it’s not the company’s most powerful device, it’s pretty speedy. (WSJ $)
+ Microsoft is gobbling up more of Nvidia’s chips than anyone else. (FT $)
+ Blacklisted Chinese AI chip firms gained access to cutting-edge UK tech. (The Guardian)

5 Bitcoin’s value is rocketing even higher
The industry continues to boom in the wake of Trump’s election victory. (Bloomberg $)
+ So much so, luxury brands are weighing up accepting crypto payments. (Reuters)

6 Hepatitis B is an extremely treatable disease
So why are so many people still dying from it? (New Yorker $)
+ We’re starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Earth—briefly—had an extra second moon

And scientists believe it originated from the actual moon we know and love. (New Scientist $) 

8 The future of deep-sea mining
A set of rules governing how we should do it is highly contentious—and up for debate.(Hakai Magazine)
+ These deep-sea “potatoes” could be the future of mining for renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Resist the temptation to outsource your Christmas shopping to a bot 
You never know what you’ll end up with. (Insider $)
+ It’s probably quicker to browse the web yourself. (WP $)

10 Our snacks could soon be designed by AI
Confectionary giant Mondelez is using the tech to tweak recipes and test new ones. (WSJ $)
+ Forget cookies—this creamy vegan cheese was made with AI. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“It takes a lot for an uber-wealthy, creative-type CEO, many of whom lean left, to suck it up and deal with Trump. But what choice do they have?”

—A Washington lobbyist explains to the Financial Times why the steady stream of tech executives paying their respects to US President-elect Donald Trump shows no sign of slowing.

The big story

What does GPT-3 “know” about me?

August 2022

One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it.

These models’ power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If you’ve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the world’s most popular LLMs.

Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review’s AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on her—and how it could be misused. So she put OpenAI’s GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ 2024 was a seriously weird year, as evidenced by this completely bonkers list.
+ Who knew Seal was such a grunge head?
+ These Charli xcx Christmas mashups will haunt my dreams forever, and not in a good way.
+ Next summer I feel the need to level up my sandcastle game.

The Download: 2024’s biggest technology flops, and AI’s search for energy

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 8 worst technology failures of 2024

They say you learn more from failure than success. If so, this is the story for you: MIT Technology Review’s annual roll call of the biggest flops, flimflams, and fiascos in all domains of technology.

Some of the foul-ups were funny, like the “woke” AI which got Google in trouble after it drew Black Nazis. Some caused lawsuits, like a computer error by CrowdStrike that left thousands of Delta passengers stranded. And we also reaped failures among startups that raced to expand from 2020 to 2022, a period of ultra-low interest rates. Check out what made our list of this year’s biggest technology failures.

—Antonio Regalado

Antonio will be discussing this year’s worst failures with our executive editor Niall Firth in a subscriber-exclusive online Roundtable event today at 12.00 ET. Register here to make sure you don’t miss outf you haven’t already, subscribe! 

AI’s search for more energy is growing more urgent

If you drove by one of the 2,990 data centers in the United States, you’d probably think little more than “Huh, that’s a boring-looking building.” You might not even notice it at all. However, these facilities underpin our entire digital world, and they are responsible for tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. New research shows just how much those emissions have skyrocketed during the AI boom.

That leaves a big problem for the world’s leading AI companies, which are caught between pressure to meet their own sustainability goals and the relentless competition in AI that’s leading them to build bigger models requiring tons of energy. And the trend toward ever more energy-intensive new AI models will only send those numbers higher. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

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

The must-reads

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

1 TikTok has asked the US Supreme Court for a lifeline   
It’s asked lawmakers to intervene before the proposed ban kicks in on January 19. (WP $)
+ TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew reportedly met with Donald Trump yesterday. (NBC News)
+ Trump will take office the following day, on January 20. (WSJ $)
+ Meanwhile, the EU is investigating TikTok’s role in Romania’s election. (Politico)

2 Waymo’s autonomous cars are heading to Tokyo
In the first overseas venture for the firm’s vehicles. (The Verge)
+ The cars will require human safety drivers initially. (CNBC)
+ What’s next for robotaxis in 2024. (MIT Technology Review)

3 China’s tech workers are still keen to work in the US
But securing the right to work there is much tougher than it used to be. (Rest of World)

4 Digital license plates are vulnerable to hacking
And they’re already legal to buy in multiple US states. (Wired $)

5 We’re all slaves to the algorithms
From the mundane (Spotify) to the essential (housing applications.) (The Atlantic $)
+ How a group of tenants took on screening systems—and won. (The Guardian)
+ The coming war on the hidden algorithms that trap people in poverty. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How to build an undetectable submarine
The race is on to stay hidden from the competition. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ How underwater drones could shape a potential Taiwan-China conflict. (MIT Technology Review)

7 How Empower became a viable rival to Uber
Its refusal to cooperate with authorities is straight out of Uber’s early playbook. (NYT $)

8 Even airlines are using AirTags to find lost luggage
Which begs the question: how were they looking for missing bags before?(Bloomberg $)
+ Here’s how to keep tabs on your suitcase as you travel. (Forbes $)

9 You’re reading your blood pressure all wrong
Keep your feet flat on the floor and ditch your phone, for a start. (WSJ $)

10 The rise and rise of the group chat 
Expressing yourself publicly on social media is so last year. (Insider $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Where are the adults in the room?”

—Francesca Marano, a long-time contributor to WordPress, lambasts the platform’s decision to require users to check a box reading “Pineapple is delicious on pizza” to log in, 404 Media reports.

The big story

Responsible AI has a burnout problem

October 2022

Margaret Mitchell had been working at Google for two years before she realized she needed a break. Only after she spoke with a therapist did she understand the problem: she was burnt out.

Mitchell, who now works as chief ethics scientist at the AI startup Hugging Face, is far from alone in her experience. Burnout is becoming increasingly common in responsible AI teams.

All the practitioners MIT Technology Review interviewed spoke enthusiastically about their work: it is fueled by passion, a sense of urgency, and the satisfaction of building solutions for real problems. But that sense of mission can be overwhelming without the right support. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

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 timelapse of a pine tree growing from a tiny pinecone is pretty special
+ Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) is one of 2024’s biggest hits. But why has it struck such a chord?
+ All hail London’s campest Christmas tree!
+ Stay vigilant, Oregon’s googly eye bandit has struck again

The Download: AI emissions and Google’s big week

AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further

It’s no secret that the current AI boom is using up immense amounts of energy. Now we have a better idea of how much. 

A new paper, from a team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined 78% of all data centers in the country in the US. These facilities—essentially buildings filled to the brim with rows of servers—are where AI models get trained, and they also get “pinged” every time we send a request through models like ChatGPT. They require huge amounts of energy both to power the servers and to keep them cool. 

Since 2018, carbon emissions from data centers in the US have tripled. It’s difficult to put a number on how much AI in particular is responsible for this surge. But AI’s share is certainly growing rapidly as nearly every segment of the economy attempts to adopt the technology.

Read the full story.

Google’s big week was a flex for the power of big tech

Google has been speeding toward the holiday by shipping or announcing a flurry of products and updates. The combination of stuff here is pretty monumental, not just for a single company, but I think because it speaks to the power of the technology industry—even if it does trigger a personal desire that we could do more to harness that power and put it to more noble uses. Read more here.

This story originally appeared in The Debrief with Mat Honan, our weekly take on what’s really going on behind the biggest tech headlines. The story is subscriber-only so nab a subscription too, if you haven’t already! Or you can sign up to the newsletter for free to get the next edition in your inbox on Friday.

The must-reads

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

1  Mysterious drones have been spotted along the US east coast

People are getting a bit freaked out, to say the least. (BBC)

• Although sometimes they’re just small planes, authorities say. (Wired)
• Trump says they should be shot down. (Politico)

2 TikTok could be gone from app stores by January 19

Last week, a US appeals court upheld a law forcing Bytedance to divest. (Reuters)

• The rationale behind the ban could open the door to other regulations that suppress speech. (Atlantic)
• Influencers are putting together their post-TikTok plans. (Business Insider)
• The long-shot plan to save TikTok. (Verge)
• The depressing truth about the coming ban. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Authorities in Serbia are using phone-cracking tools to install spyware

Activists and journalists found their phone had been tampered with after a run-in with police. (404 Media)

4 Cellphone videos are fueling violence inside US schools

Students are using phones to arrange, provoke and capture brawls in the corridors. (NYT)

5 AI search startup Perplexity says it will generate $10.5 million a month next year
It’s in talks to raise money at a $9 billion valuation. (The Information)

• AI search could break the web. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How Musk’s partnership with Trump could influence science

Even if he can’t cut as much as he’d like, he still stands to make big changes. (Nature)

• Is “deleting” the IRS his worst idea yet? (Washington Post)
• The top cybersecurity agency is bracing for Trump. (Wired)
• Trump’s win is a huge loss for the climate. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI firms will scour the globe looking for cheap energy

Low-cost power is an absolute priority. (Wired)

• It’s an insatiably hungry industry. (Bloomberg)

8 Anthropic’s Claude is winning the chatbot battle for tech insiders

It’s not as big as ChatGPT, but it’s got a special something that people like. (NYT)

• A new Character.ai chatbot for teens will no longer talk romance. (Verge)
• How to trust what a chatbot says. (MIT Technology Review)

9 The reaction to the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder could prompt a reckoning

Healthcare’s algorithmic decision-making turns us into numbers on a spreadsheets. (Vanity Fair)

• Luigi Mangione has to mean something. (Atlantic)

10 How China’s satellite megaprojects are challenging Starlink

Between them, Qianfan, Guo Wang and Honghu-3 could have as many satellites. (CNBC)

Quote of the day

“We’ve achieved peak data and there’ll be no more.”

OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, tells the NeurIPS conference that the way AI models will be trained will have to change.

The big story

How to stop a state from sinking

April 2024

In a 10-month span between 2020 and 2021, southwest Louisiana saw five climate-related disasters, including two destructive hurricanes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, more storms are coming, and many areas are not prepared.

But some government officials and state engineers are hoping there is an alternative: elevation. The $6.8 billion Southwest Coastal Louisiana Project is betting that raising residences by a few feet, coupled with extensive work to restore coastal boundary lands, will keep Louisianans in their communities.

Ultimately, it’s something of a last-ditch effort to preserve this slice of coastline, even as some locals pick up and move inland and as formal plans for managed retreat become more popular in climate-­vulnerable areas across the country and the rest of the world. Read the full story.

—Xander Peters

We can still have nice things

The Download: society’s techlash, and Android XR

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 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.

Two new books serve as excellent reminders of why it started in the first place. Together, they chronicle the rise of an industry that is increasingly using its unprecedented wealth and power to undermine democracy, and they outline what we can do to start taking some of that power back. Read the full story.

—Bryan Gardiner

This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive a copy.

The must-reads

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

1 Google has unveiled a new headset and smart glasses OS
Android XR gives wearers hands-free control thanks to the firm’s Gemini chatbot. (The Verge)
+ It also revealed a new Samsung-build headset called Project Moohan. (WP $)
+ Google’s hoping to learn from mistakes it made with Google Glass a decade ago. (Wired $)
+ Its new Project Astra could be generative AI’s killer app. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US and UK are on a AI regulation collision course
Donald Trump’s approach to policing AI is in stark contrast to what the UK is planning. (FT $)
+ The new US FTC chair favors a light regulatory touch. (Reuters)
+ How’s AI self-regulation going? (MIT Technology Review)

3 We don’t quite know what’s causing a global temperature spike
But scientists agree that we should be worried. (New Yorker $)
+ The average global temperature could drop slightly next year, though. (New Scientist $)
+ Who’s to blame for climate change? It’s surprisingly complicated. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Trump’s administration is filling up with tech insiders
More venture capitalists and officials are likely to join their ranks. (The Information $)
+ These crypto kingpins will be keeping a close eye on proceedings. (FT $)

5 What happened after West Virginia revoked access to obesity drugs
Teachers and state workers struggled after a pilot drugs program was deemed too expensive. (The Atlantic $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Would you buy a car from Amazon?
The e-retail giant wants you to sidestep the dealership and purchase from it directly. (Wired $)
+ While it’s limited to Hyundai models, other manufacturers will follow. (Forbes $)

7 Silicon Valley’s perks culture is largely dead
No more free massages or artisanal chocolate, sob. (NYT $)

8 AI is teaching us more about the Berlin Wall’s murals
From the kinds of paint used, to application techniques. (Ars Technica)

9 For $69, you can invest in a rare stegosaurus skeleton
The rare fossil is a pretty extreme example of an alternative investment. (Fast Company $)
+ New Yorkers can swing by the American Museum of Natural History to see it. (AP News)

10 This New Jersey politician faked his Spotify Wrapped
To hide his children’s results and make him appear a bigger Bruce Springsteen fan. (Billboard $)
+ What would The Boss himself make of the controversy? (WP $)

Quote of the day

“It could be far worse than any challenge we’ve previously encountered — and far beyond our capacity to mitigate.”

—Jack Szostak, a professor in the University of Chicago’s chemistry department, tells the Financial Times about the unprecedented danger posed by synthetic bacteria.

The big story

A brief, weird history of brainwashing

April 2024

On a spring day in 1959, war correspondent Edward Hunter testified before a US Senate subcommittee investigating “the effect of Red China Communes on the United States.”

Hunter introduced them to a supposedly scientific system for changing people’s minds, even making them love things they once hated.

Much of it was baseless, but Hunter’s sensational tales still became an important part of the disinformation that fueled a “mind-control race”, with the US government pumping millions of dollars into research on brain manipulation during the Cold War.

But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role in ideological and scientific debates to this day. Read the full story.

—Annalee Newitz

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Deep down in the depths of the Atacama Trench, a new crustacean has been discovered.
+ Living in this picturesque Antarctic settlement comes with a catch—you have to have your appendix removed before you can move in.
+ Just when you thought sweet potato couldn’t get any better, it turns out it makes pretty tasty macaroons.
+ If you’re looking to introduce kids to the joy of sci-fi, these movies are a great place to start.