The Download: attempting to track AI, and the next generation of nuclear power

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 is the most misunderstood graph in AI

Every time OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic drops a new frontier large language model, the AI community holds its breath. It doesn’t exhale until METR, an AI research nonprofit whose name stands for “Model Evaluation & Threat Research,” updates a now-iconic graph that has played a major role in the AI discourse since it was first released in March of last year. 

The graph suggests that certain AI capabilities are developing at an exponential rate, and more recent model releases have outperformed that already impressive trend.

That was certainly the case for Claude Opus 4.5, the latest version of Anthropic’s most powerful model, which was released in late November. In December, METR announced that Opus 4.5 appeared to be capable of independently completing a task that would have taken a human about five hours—a vast improvement over what even the exponential trend would have predicted.

But the truth is more complicated than those dramatic responses would suggest. Read the full story.

—Grace Huckins

This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains: our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.

Three questions about next-generation nuclear power, answered

Nuclear power continues to be one of the hottest topics in energy today, and in our recent online Roundtables discussion about next-generation nuclear power, hyperscale AI data centers, and the grid, we got dozens of great audience questions.

These ran the gamut, and while we answered quite a few (and I’m keeping some in mind for future reporting), there were a bunch we couldn’t get to, at least not in the depth I would have liked. So let’s answer a few of your questions about advanced nuclear power.

—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 Anthropic’s new coding tools are rattling the markets 
Fields as diverse as publishing and coding to law and advertising are paying attention. (FT $)
+ Legacy software companies, beware. (Insider $)
+ Is “software-mageddon” nigh? It depends who you ask. (Reuters)

2 This Apple setting prevented the FBI from accessing a reporter’s iPhone
Lockdown Mode has proved remarkably effective—for now. (404 Media)
+ Agents were able to access Hannah Natanson’s laptop, however. (Ars Technica)

3 Last month’s data center outage disrupted all TikTok categories
Not just the political content that some users claimed. (NPR)

4 Big Tech is pouring billions into AI in India
A newly-announced 20-year tax break should help to speed things along. (WSJ $)
+ India’s female content moderators are watching hours of abuse content to train AI. (The Guardian)
+ Officials in the country are weighing up restricting social media for minors. (Bloomberg $)
+ Inside India’s scramble for AI independence. (MIT Technology Review)

5 YouTubers are harassing women using body cams
They’re abusing freedom of information laws to humiliate their targets. (NY Mag $)
+ AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Jokers have created a working version of Jeffrey Epstein’s inbox
Complete with notable starred threads. (Wired $)
+ Epstein’s links with Silicon Valley are vast and deep. (Fast Company $)
+ The revelations are driving rifts between previously-friendly factions. (NBC News)

7 What’s the last thing you see before you die?
A new model might help to explain near-death experiences—but not all researchers are on board. (WP $)
+ What is death? (MIT Technology Review)

8 A new app is essentially TikTok for vibe-coded apps
Words which would have made no sense 15 years ago. (TechCrunch)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)

9 Rogue TV boxes are all the rage
Viewers are sick of the soaring prices of streaming services, and are embracing less legal means of watching their favorite shows. (The Verge)

10 Climate change is threatening the future of the Winter Olympics
Artificial snow is one (short term) solution. (Bloomberg $)
+ Team USA is using AI to try and gain an edge on its competition. (NBC News)

Quote of the day

“We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI.”

—Ajit Varma, head of Mozilla’s web browser Firefox, explains why the company is reversing its previous decision to transform Firefox into an “AI browser,” PC Gamer reports.

One more thing

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data

Millions of images of passports, credit cards, birth certificates, and other documents containing personally identifiable information are likely included in one of the biggest open-source AI training sets, new research has found.

Thousands of images—including identifiable faces—were found in a small subset of DataComp CommonPool, a major AI training set for image generation scraped from the web. Because the researchers audited just 0.1% of CommonPool’s data, they estimate that the real number of images containing personally identifiable information, including faces and identity documents, is in the hundreds of millions. 

The bottom line? Anything you put online can be and probably has been scraped. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo

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.)

+ If you’re crazy enough to be training for a marathon right now, here’s how to beat boredom on those long, long runs.
+ Mark Cohen’s intimate street photography is a fascinating window into humanity.
+ A seriously dedicated gamer has spent days painstakingly recreating a Fallout vault inside the Sims 4.
+ Here’s what music’s most stylish men are wearing right now—from leather pants to khaki parkas.

The Download: the future of nuclear power plants, and social media-fueled AI hype

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 AI companies are betting on next-gen nuclear

AI is driving unprecedented investment for massive data centers and an energy supply that can support its huge computational appetite. One potential source of electricity for these facilities is next-generation nuclear power plants, which could be cheaper to construct and safer to operate than their predecessors.

We recently held a subscriber-exclusive Roundtables discussion on hyperscale AI data centers and next-gen nuclear—two featured technologies on the MIT Technology Review 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026 list. You can watch the conversation back here, and don’t forget to subscribe to make sure you catch future discussions as they happen.

How social media encourages the worst of AI boosterism

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, summed it up in three words: “This is embarrassing.”

Hassabis was replying on X to an overexcited post by Sébastien Bubeck, a research scientist at the rival firm OpenAI, announcing that two mathematicians had used OpenAI’s latest large language model, GPT-5, to find solutions to 10 unsolved problems in mathematics.

Put your math hats on for a minute, and let’s take a look at what this beef from mid-October was about. It’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with AI right now.

—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 paints, coatings, and chemicals making the world a cooler place

It’s getting harder to beat the heat. During the summer of 2025, heat waves knocked out power grids in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Global warming means more people need air-­conditioning, which requires more power and strains grids.

But a millennia-old idea (plus 21st-century tech) might offer an answer: radiative cooling. Paints, coatings, and textiles can scatter sunlight and dissipate heat—no additional energy required. Read the full story.

—Becky Ferreira

This story is from the most recent print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine, which shines a light on the exciting innovations happening right now. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: China figured out how to sell EVs. Now it has to deal with their aging batteries.

As early electric cars age out, hundreds of thousands of used batteries are flooding the market, fueling a gray recycling economy even as Beijing and big manufacturers scramble to build a more orderly system.

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 Europe is edging closer towards banning social media for minors
Spain has become the latest country to consider it. (Bloomberg $)
+ Elon Musk called the Spanish prime minister a “tyrant” in retaliation. (The Guardian)
+ Other European nations considering restrictions include Greece, France and the UK. (Reuters)

2 Humans are infiltrating the social network for AI agents
It turns out role-playing as a bot is surprisingly fun. (Wired $)
+ Some of the most viral posts may actually be human-generated after all. (The Verge)

3 Russian spy spacecraft have intercepted Europe’s key satellites
Security officials are confident Moscow has tapped into unencrypted European comms. (FT $)

4 French authorities raided X’s Paris office
They’re investigating a range of potential charges against the company. (WSJ $)
+ Elon Musk has been summoned to give evidence in April. (Reuters)

5 Jeffrey Epstein invested millions into crypto startup Coinbase
Which suggests he was still able to take advantage of Silicon Valley investment opportunities years after pleading guilty to soliciting sex from an underage girl. (WP $)

6 A group of crypto bros paid $300,000 for a gold statue of Trump
It’s destined to be installed on his Florida golf complex, apparently. (NYT $)

7 OpenAI has appointed a “head of preparedness”
Dylan Scandinaro will earn a cool $555,000 for his troubles. (Bloomberg $)

8 The eternal promise of 3D-printed batteries
Traditional batteries are blocky and bulky. Printing them ourselves could help solve that. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 What snow can teach us about city design
When icy mounds refuse to melt, they show us what a less car-focused city could look like. (New Yorker $)
+ This startup thinks slime mold can help us design better cities. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Please don’t use AI to talk to your friends
That’s what your brain is for. (The Atlantic $)
+ Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone. We will no longer accept that.”

—Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez proposes a social media ban for children aged under 16 in the country, following in Australia’s footsteps, AP News reports.

One more thing

A brain implant changed her life. Then it was removed against her will.

Sticking an electrode inside a person’s brain can do more than treat a disease. Take the case of Rita Leggett, an Australian woman whose experimental brain implant designed to help people with epilepsy changed her sense of agency and self.

Leggett told researchers that she “became one” with her device. It helped her to control the unpredictable, violent seizures she routinely experienced, and allowed her to take charge of her own life. So she was devastated when, two years later, she was told she had to remove the implant because the company that made it had gone bust.

The removal of this implant, and others like it, might represent a breach of human rights, ethicists say in a paper published earlier this month. And the issue will only become more pressing as the brain implant market grows in the coming years and more people receive devices like Leggett’s. 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.)

+ Why Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is still such an undisputed banger.
+ Did you know that one of the world’s most famous prisons actually served as a zoo and menagerie for over 600 years?
+ Banana nut muffins sound like a fantastic way to start your day.
+ 2026 is shaping up to be a blockbuster year for horror films.

The Download: squeezing more metal out of aging mines, and AI’s truth crisis

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.

Microbes could extract the metal needed for cleantech

In a pine forest on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the only active nickel mine in the US is nearing the end of its life. At a time when carmakers want the metal for electric-vehicle batteries, nickel concentration at Eagle Mine is falling and could soon drop too low to warrant digging.

Demand for nickel, copper, and rare earth elements is rapidly increasing amid the explosive growth of metal-intensive data centers, electric cars, and renewable energy projects. But producing these metals is becoming harder and more expensive because miners have already exploited the best resources. Here’s how biotechnology could help.

—Matt Blois

What we’ve been getting wrong about AI’s truth crisis

—James O’Donnell

What would it take to convince you that the era of truth decay we were long warned about—where AI content dupes us, shapes our beliefs even when we catch the lie, and erodes societal trust in the process—is now here?

A story I published last week pushed me over the edge. And it also made me realize that the tools we were sold as a cure for this crisis are failing miserably. 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.

TR10: Hyperscale AI data centers

In sprawling stretches of farmland and industrial parks, supersized buildings packed with racks of computers are springing up to fuel the AI race.

These engineering marvels are a new species of infrastructure: supercomputers designed to train and run large language models at mind-­bending scale, complete with their own specialized chips, cooling systems, and even energy supplies. But all that impressive computing power comes at a cost.

Read why we’ve named hyperscale AI data centers as of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year, and check out the rest of the list.

The must-reads

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

1 Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired xAI
The deal values the combined companies at a cool $1.25 trillion. (WSJ $)
+ It also paves the way for SpaceX to offer an IPO later this year. (WP $)
+ Meanwhile, OpenAI has accused xAI of destroying legal evidence. (Bloomberg $)

2 NASA has delayed the launch of Artemis II
It’s been pushed back to March due to the discovery of a hydrogen leak. (Ars Technica)
+ The rocket’s predecessor was also plagued by fuel leaks. (Scientific American)

3 Russia is hiring a guerilla youth army online
They’re committing arson and spying on targets across Europe. (New Yorker $)

4 Grok is still generating undressed images of men
Weeks after the backlash over it doing the same to women. (The Verge)
+ How Grok descended into becoming a porn generator. (WP $)
+ Inside the marketplace powering bespoke AI deepfakes of real women. (MIT Technology Review)

5 OpenAI is searching for alternatives to Nvidia’s chips
It’s reported to be unhappy about the speed at which it powers ChatGPT. (Reuters)

6 The latest attempt to study a notoriously unstable glacier has failed
Scientists lost their equipment within Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier over the weekend. (NYT $)
+ Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier” (MIT Technology Review)

7 The world is trying to wean itself off American technology
Governments are growing increasingly uneasy about their reliance on the US. (Rest of World)

8 AI’s sloppy writing is driving demand for real human writers
Long may it continue. (Insider $)

9 This female-dominated fitness community hates Mark Zuckerberg
His decision to shut down three VR studios means their days of playing their favorite workout game are numbered. (The Verge)
+ Welcome to the AI gym staffed by virtual trainers. (MIT Technology Review)

10 This cemetery has an eco-friendly solution for its overcrowding problem
If you’re okay with your loved one becoming gardening soil, that is. (WSJ $)
+ Why America is embracing the right to die now. (Economist $)
+ What happens when you donate your body to science. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale…I mean, space is called ‘space’ for a reason.”

—Elon Musk explains his rationale for combining SpaceX with xAI in a blog post.

One more thing

On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop

Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue in the fight against Russia. It’s how troops in battle zones stay connected with faraway HQs; it’s how many of the drones essential to Ukraine’s survival hit their targets; it’s even how soldiers stay in touch with spouses and children back home.

However, Donald Trump’s fickle foreign policy and reports suggesting Elon Musk might remove Ukraine’s access to the services have cast the technology’s future in the country into doubt.

For now Starlink access largely comes down to the unofficial community of users and engineers, including the expert “Dr. Starlink”—famous for his creative ways of customizing the systems—who have kept Ukraine in the fight, both on and off the front line. He gave MIT Technology Review exclusive access to his unofficial Starlink repair workshop in the city of Lviv. Read the full story.

—Charlie Metcalfe

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 Norwegian countryside sure looks beautiful.
+ Quick—it’s time to visit these food destinations before the TikTok hordes descend.
+ Rest in power Catherine O’Hara, our favorite comedy queen.
+ Take some time out of your busy day to read a potted history of boats

The Download: inside a deepfake marketplace, and EV batteries’ future

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 marketplace powering bespoke AI deepfakes of real women

Civitai—an online marketplace for buying and selling AI-generated content, backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—is letting users buy custom instruction files for generating celebrity deepfakes. Some of these files were specifically designed to make pornographic images banned by the site, a new analysis has found.

The study, from researchers at Stanford and Indiana University, looked at people’s requests for content on the site, called “bounties.” The researchers found that between mid-2023 and the end of 2024, most bounties asked for animated content—but a significant portion were for deepfakes of real people, and 90% of these deepfake requests targeted women. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

What’s next for EV batteries in 2026

Demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them has never been hotter.

In 2025, EVs made up over a quarter of new vehicle sales globally, up from less than 5% in 2020. Some regions are seeing even higher uptake: In China, more than 50% of new vehicle sales last year were battery electric or plug-in hybrids. In Europe, more purely electric vehicles hit the roads in December than gas-powered ones. (The US is the notable exception here, dragging down the global average with a small sales decline from 2024.)

As EVs become increasingly common on the roads, the battery world is growing too. Here’s what’s coming next for EV batteries in 2026 and beyond.

—Casey Crownhart

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

TR10: Base-edited baby

Kyle “KJ” Muldoon Jr. was born with a rare, potentially fatal genetic disorder that left his body unable to remove toxic ammonia from his blood. The University of Pennsylvania offered his parents an alternative to a liver transplant: gene-editing therapies.

The team set to work developing a tailored treatment using base editing—a form of CRISPR that can correct genetic “misspellings” by changing single bases, the basic units of DNA. KJ received an initial low dose when he was seven months old, and later received two higher doses. Today, KJ is doing well. At an event in October last year, his happy parents described how he was meeting all his developmental milestones.

Others have received gene-editing therapies intended to treat conditions including sickle cell disease and a predisposition to high cholesterol. But KJ was the first to receive a personalized treatment—one that was designed just for him and will probably never be used again. Read why we made it one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year, and check out the rest of the list.

The must-reads

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

1 A social network for AI agents is vulnerable to abuse
A misconfiguration meant anyone could take control of any agent. (404 Media)
+ Moltbook is loosely modeled on Reddit, but humans are unable to post. (FT $)

2 Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor
It helped a military worker to analyze drone footage, a whistleblower has claimed. (WP $)

3 Capgemini is selling its unit linked to ICE
After the French government asked it to clarify its work for the agency. (Bloomberg $) 
+ The company has signed $12.2mn in contracts under the Trump administration. (FT $)
+ Here’s how to film ICE activities as safely as possible. (Wired $)

4 China has a plan to prime its next generation of AI experts 
Thanks to its elite genius class system. (FT $)
+ The country is going all-in on AI healthcare. (Rest of World)
+ The State of AI: Is China about to win the race? (MIT Technology Review)

5 Indonesia has reversed its ban on xAI’s Grok
After it announced plans to improve its compliance with the country’s laws. (Reuters)
+ Indonesia maintains a strict stance against pornographic content. (NYT $)
+ Malaysia and the Philippines have also lifted bans on the chatbot. (TechCrunch)

6 Don’t expect to hitch a ride on a Blue Origin rocket anytime soon
Jeff Bezos’ venture won’t be taking tourists into space for at least two years. (NYT $)
+ Artemis II astronauts are due to set off for the moon soon. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Commercial space stations are on our list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2026. (MIT Technology Review)

7 America’s push for high-speed internet is under threat
There aren’t enough skilled workers to meet record demand. (WSJ $)

8 Can AI help us grieve better?
A growing cluster of companies are trying to find out. (The Atlantic $)
+ Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? (MIT Technology Review)

9 How to fight future insect infestations
A certain species of fungus could play a key role. (Ars Technica)
+ How do fungi communicate? (MIT Technology Review)

10 What a robot-made latte tastes like, according to a former barista
Damn fine, apparently. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

 “It feels like a wild bison rampaging around in my computer.”

—A user who signed up to AI agent Moltbot remarks on the bot’s unpredictable behavior, Rest of World reports.

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.)

+ These intrepid Scottish bakers created the largest ever Empire biscuit (a classic shortbread cookie covered in icing)
+ My, what big tentacles you have!
+ If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck in a rut lately, this advice could be exactly what you need to overcome it.
+ These works of psychedelic horror are guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.

The Download: US immigration agencies’ AI videos, and inside the Vitalism movement

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.

DHS is using Google and Adobe AI to make videos

The news: The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared with the public, a new document reveals. The document, released on Wednesday, provides an inventory of which commercial AI tools DHS uses for tasks ranging from generating drafts of documents to managing cybersecurity.

Why it matters: It comes as immigration agencies have flooded social media with content to support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda—some of which appears to be made with AI—and as workers in tech have put pressure on their employers to denounce the agencies’ activities. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

How the sometimes-weird world of lifespan extension is gaining influence

—Jessica Hamzelou

For the last couple of years, I’ve been following the progress of a group of individuals who believe death is humanity’s “core problem.” Put simply, they say death is wrong—for everyone. They’ve even said it’s morally wrong.

They established what they consider a new philosophy, and they called it Vitalism.

Vitalism is more than a philosophy, though—it’s a movement for hardcore longevity enthusiasts who want to make real progress in finding treatments that slow or reverse aging. Not just through scientific advances, but by persuading influential people to support their movement, and by changing laws and policies to open up access to experimental drugs. And they’re starting to make progress.

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 AI Hype Index: Grok makes porn, and Claude Code nails your job

Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Take a look at this month’s edition of the index here.

The must-reads

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

1 Capgemini is no longer tracking immigrants for ICE
After the French company was queried by the country’s government over the contract. (WP $)
+ Here’s how the agency typically keeps tabs on its targets. (NYT $)
+ US senators are pushing for answers about its recent surveillance shopping spree. (404 Media)
+ ICE’s tactics would get real soldiers killed, apparently. (Wired $)

2 The Pentagon is at loggerheads with Anthropic
The AI firm is reportedly worried its tools could be used to spy on Americans. (Reuters)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

3 It’s relatively rare for AI chatbots to lead users down harmful paths
But when it does, it can have incredibly dangerous consequences. (Ars Technica)
+ The AI doomers feel undeterred. (MIT Technology Review)

4 GPT-4o’s days are numbered
OpenAI says just 0.1% of users are using the model every day. (CNBC)
+ It’s the second time that it’s tried to turn the sycophantic model off in under a year. (Insider $)
+ Why GPT-4o’s sudden shutdown left people grieving. (MIT Technology Review)

5 An AI toy company left its chats with kids exposed
Anyone with a Gmail account was able to simply access the conversations—no hacking required. (Wired $)
+ AI toys are all the rage in China—and now they’re appearing on shelves in the US too. (MIT Technology Review)

6 SpaceX could merge with xAI later this year
Ahead of a planned blockbuster IPO of Elon Musk’s companies. (Reuters)
+ The move would be welcome news for Musk fans. (The Information $)
+ A SpaceX-Tesla merger could also be on the cards. (Bloomberg $)

7 We’re still waiting for a reliable male contraceptive
Take a look at the most promising methods so far. (Bloomberg $)

8 AI is bringing traditional Chinese medicine to the masses
And it’s got the full backing of the country’s government. (Rest of World)

9 The race back to the Moon is heating up 
Competition between the US and China is more intense than ever. (Economist $)

10 What did the past really smell like?
AI could help scientists to recreate history’s aromas—including mummies and battlefields. (Knowable Magazine)

Quote of the day

“I think the tidal wave is coming and we’re all standing on the beach.”

—Bill Zysblat, a music business manager, tells the Financial Times about the existential threat AI poses to the industry. 

One more thing

Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered.

Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one of their online sessions, so Declan suggested they turn off their video feeds. Instead, his therapist began inadvertently sharing his screen.

For the rest of the session, Declan was privy to a real-time stream of ChatGPT analysis rippling across his therapist’s screen, who was taking what Declan was saying, putting it into ChatGPT, and then parroting its answers.

But Declan is not alone. In fact, a growing number of people are reporting receiving AI-generated communiqués from their therapists. Clients’ trust and privacy are being abandoned in the process. Read the full story.

—Laurie Clarke

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.)

+ Sinkholes are seriously mysterious. Is there a way to stay one step ahead of them?
+ This beautiful pixel art is super impressive.
+ Amid the upheaval in their city, residents of Minneapolis recently demonstrated both their resistance and community spirit in the annual Art Sled Rally (thanks Paul!)
+ How on Earth is Tomb Raider 30 years old?!

The Download: inside the Vitalism movement, and why AI’s “memory” is a privacy problem

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

Meet the Vitalists: the hardcore longevity enthusiasts who believe death is “wrong”

Last April, an excited crowd gathered at a compound in Berkeley, California, for a three-day event called the Vitalist Bay Summit. It was part of a longer, two-month residency that hosted various events to explore tools—from drug regulation to cryonics—that might be deployed in the fight against death.

One of the main goals, though, was to spread the word of Vitalism, a somewhat radical movement established by Nathan Cheng and his colleague Adam Gries a few years ago. Consider it longevity for the most hardcore adherents—a sweeping mission to which nothing short of total devotion will do.

Although interest in longevity has certainly taken off in recent years, not everyone in the broader longevity space shares Vitalists’ commitment to actually making death obsolete. And the Vitalists feel that momentum is building, not just for the science of aging and the development of lifespan-extending therapies, but for the acceptance of their philosophy that defeating death should be humanity’s top concern. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This is the latest in our Big Story series, the home for MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting. You can read the rest of the series here. 

What AI “remembers” about you is privacy’s next frontier

—Miranda Bogen, director of the AI Governance Lab at the Center for Democracy & Technology, & Ruchika Joshi, fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology specializing in AI safety and governance

The ability to remember you and your preferences is rapidly becoming a big selling point for AI chatbots and agents.

Personalized, interactive AI systems are built to act on our behalf, maintain context across conversations, and improve our ability to carry out all sorts of tasks, from booking travel to filing taxes.

But their ability to store and retrieve increasingly intimate details about their users over time introduces alarming, and all-too-familiar, privacy vulnerabilities––many of which have loomed since “big data” first teased the power of spotting and acting on user patterns. Worse, AI agents now appear poised to plow through whatever safeguards had been adopted to avoid those vulnerabilities. So what can developers do to fix this problem? Read the full story.

How the grid can ride out winter storms

The eastern half of the US saw a monster snowstorm over the weekend. The good news is the grid has largely been able to keep up with the freezing temperatures and increased demand. But there were some signs of strain, particularly for fossil-fuel plants.

One analysis found that PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, saw significant unplanned outages in plants that run on natural gas and coal. Historically, these facilities can struggle in extreme winter weather.

Much of the country continues to face record-low temperatures, and the possibility is looming for even more snow this weekend. What lessons can we take from this storm, and how might we shore up the grid to cope with extreme weather? Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

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

The must-reads

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

1 Telegram has been flooded with deepfake nudes 
Millions of users are creating and sharing falsified images in dedicated channels. (The Guardian)

2 China has executed 11 people linked to Myanmar scam centers
The members of the “Ming family criminal gang” caused the death of at least 14 Chinese citizens. (Bloomberg $)
+ Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there. (MIT Technology Review)

3 This viral personal AI assistant is a major privacy concern
Security researchers are sounding the alarm on Moltbot, formerly known as Clawdbot. (The Register)
+ It requires a great deal more technical know-how than most agentic bots. (TechCrunch)

4 OpenAI has a plan to keep bots off its future social network
It’s putting its faith in biometric “proof of personhood” promised by the likes of World’s eyeball-scanning orb. (Forbes)
+ We reported on how World recruited its first half a million test users back in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Here’s just some of the technologies ICE is deploying
From facial recognition to digital forensics. (WP $)
+ Agents are also using Palantir’s AI to sift through tip-offs. (Wired $)

6 Tesla is axing its Model S and Model X cars
Its Fremont factory will switch to making Optimus robots instead. (TechCrunch)
+ It’s the latest stage of the company’s pivot to AI… (FT $)
+ …as profit falls by 46%. (Ars Technica)
+ Tesla is still struggling to recover from the damage of Elon Musk’s political involvement. (WP $)

7 X is rife with weather influencers spreading misinformation
They’re whipping up hype ahead of massive storms hitting. (New Yorker $)

8  Retailers are going all-in on AI
But giants like Amazon and Walmart are taking very different approaches. (FT $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg has hinted that Meta is working on agentic commerce tools. (TechCrunch)
+ We called it—what’s next for AI in 2026. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Inside the rise of the offline hangout
No phones, no problem. (Wired $)

10 Social media is obsessed with 2016
…why, exactly? (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“The amount of crap I get for putting out a hobby project for free is quite something.”

—Peter Steinberger, the creator of the viral AI agent Moltbot, complains about the backlash his project has received from security researchers pointing out its flaws in a post on X.

One more thing

The flawed logic of rushing out extreme climate solutions

Early in 2022, entrepreneur Luke Iseman says, he released a pair of sulfur dioxide–filled weather balloons from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, in the hope that they’d burst miles above Earth.

It was a trivial act in itself, effectively a tiny, DIY act of solar geoengineering, the controversial proposal that the world could counteract climate change by releasing particles that reflect more sunlight back into space.

Entrepreneurs like Iseman invoke the stark dangers of climate change to explain why they do what they do—even if they don’t know how effective their interventions are. But experts say that urgency doesn’t create a social license to ignore the underlying dangers or leapfrog the scientific process. 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.)

+ The hottest thing in art right now? Vertical paintings.
+ There’s something in the water around Monterey Bay—a tail walking dolphin!
+ Fed up of hairstylists not listening to you? Remember these handy tips the next time you go for a cut.
+ Get me a one-way ticket to Japan’s tastiest island.

The Download: A bid to treat blindness, and bridging the internet divide

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 first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin “shortly”

Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup founded by Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair, has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers.

The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called “reprogramming” that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

Stratospheric internet could finally start taking off this year

Today, an estimated 2.2 billion people still have either limited or no access to the internet, largely because they live in remote places. But that number could drop this year, thanks to tests of stratospheric airships, uncrewed aircraft, and other high-altitude platforms for internet delivery.

Although Google shuttered its high-profile internet balloon project Loon in 2021, work on other kinds of high-altitude platform stations has continued behind the scenes. Now, several companies claim they have solved Loon’s problems—and are getting ready to prove the tech’s internet beaming potential starting this year. Read the full story.

—Tereza Pultarova

OpenAI’s latest product lets you vibe code science

OpenAI just revealed what its new in-house team, OpenAI for Science, has been up to. The firm has released a free LLM-powered tool for scientists called Prism, which embeds ChatGPT in a text editor for writing scientific papers.

The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up their work in much the same way that chatbots are now embedded into popular programming editors. It’s vibe coding, but for science. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

MIT Technology Review Narrated: This Nobel Prize–winning chemist dreams of making water from thin air

Most of Earth is covered in water, but just 3% of it is fresh, with no salt—the kind of water all terrestrial living things need. Today, desalination plants that take the salt out of seawater provide the bulk of potable water in technologically advanced desert nations like Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but at a high cost.

Omar Yaghi, is one of three scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in October 2025 for identifying metal-­organic frameworks, or MOFs—metal ions tethered to organic molecules that form repeating structural landscapes. Today that work is the basis for a new project that sounds like science fiction, or a miracle: conjuring water out of thin air.

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 TikTok has settled its social media addiction lawsuit
Just before it was due to appear before a jury in California. (NYT $)
+ But similar claims being made against Meta and YouTube will proceed. (Bloomberg $)

2 AI CEOs have started condemning ICE violence
While simultaneously praising Trump. (TechCrunch)
+ Apple’s Tim Cook says he asked the US President to “deescalate” things. (Bloomberg $)
+ ICE seems to have a laissez faire approach to preserving surveillance footage. (404 Media)

3 Dozens of CDC vaccination databases have been frozen
They’re no longer being updated with crucial health information under RFK Jr. (Ars Technica)
+ Here’s why we don’t have a cold vaccine. Yet. (MIT Technology Review)

4 China has approved the first wave of Nvidia H200 chips
After CEO Jensen Huang’s strategic visit to the country. (Reuters)

5 Inside the rise of the AI “neolab”
They’re prioritizing longer term research breakthroughs over immediate profits. (WSJ $)

6 How Anthropic scanned—and disposed of—millions of books
In an effort to train its AI models to write higher quality text. (WP $)

7 India’s tech workers are burning out
They’re under immense pressure as AI gobbles up more jobs. (Rest of World)
+ But the country’s largest IT firm denies that AI will lead to mass layoffs. (FT $)
+ Inside India’s scramble for AI independence. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Google has forced a UK group to stop comparing YouTube to TV viewing figures
Maybe fewer people are tuning in than they’d like to admit? (FT $)

9 RIP Amazon grocery stores
The retail giant is shuttering all of its bricks and mortar shops. (CNN)
+ Amazon workers are increasingly worried about layoffs. (Insider $)

10 This computing technique could help to reduce AI’s energy demands
Enter thermodynamic computing. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Three big things we still don’t know about AI’s energy burden. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Oh my gosh y’all, IG is a drug.”

—An anonymous Meta employee remarks on Instagram’s addictive qualities in an internal  document made public as part of a social media addiction trial Meta is facing, Ars Technica reports.

One more thing

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral

Wikipedia is the most ambitious multilingual project after the Bible: There are editions in over 340 languages, and a further 400 even more obscure ones are being developed. But many of these smaller editions are being swamped with AI-translated content. Volunteers working on four African languages, for instance, estimated to MIT Technology Review that between 40% and 60% of articles in their Wikipedia editions were uncorrected machine translations.

This is beginning to cause a wicked problem. AI systems learn new languages by scraping huge quantities of text from the internet. Wikipedia is sometimes the largest source of online linguistic data for languages with few speakers—so any errors on those pages can poison the wells that AI is expected to draw from. Volunteers are being forced to go to extreme lengths to fix the issue, even deleting certain languages from Wikipedia entirely. Read the full story. 

—Jacob Judah

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 singing group for people in Amsterdam experiencing cognitive decline is enormously heartwarming ($)
+ I enjoyed this impassioned defense of the movie sex scene.
+ Here’s how to dress like Steve McQueen (inherent cool not included, sorry)
+ Trans women are finding a home in the beautiful Italian town of Torvajanica

The Download: OpenAI’s plans for science, and chatbot age verification

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

Inside OpenAI’s big play for science 

—Will Douglas Heaven

In the three years since ChatGPT’s explosive debut, OpenAI’s technology has upended a remarkable range of everyday activities at home, at work, and in schools.

Now OpenAI is making an explicit play for scientists. In October, the firm announced that it had launched a whole new team, called OpenAI for Science, dedicated to exploring how its large language models could help scientists and tweaking its tools to support them.

So why now? How does a push into science fit with OpenAI’s wider mission? And what exactly is the firm hoping to achieve? I put these questions to Kevin Weil, a vice president at OpenAI who leads the new OpenAI for Science team, in an exclusive interview. Read the full story.

Why chatbots are starting to check your age

How do tech companies check if their users are kids?

This question has taken on new urgency recently thanks to growing concern about the dangers that can arise when children talk to AI chatbots. For years Big Tech asked for birthdays (that one could make up) to avoid violating child privacy laws, but they weren’t required to moderate content accordingly.

Now, two developments over the last week show how quickly things are changing in the US and how this issue is becoming a new battleground, even among parents and child-safety advocates. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

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

TR10: Commercial space stations

Humans have long dreamed of living among the stars, and for two decades hundreds of us have done so aboard the International Space Station (ISS). But a new era is about to begin in which private companies operate orbital outposts—with the promise of much greater access to space than before.

The ISS is aging and is expected to be brought down from orbit into the ocean in 2031. To replace it, NASA has awarded more than $500 million to several companies to develop private space stations, while others have built versions on their own. Read why we made them one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year, and check out the rest of the list.

The must-reads

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

1 Tech workers are pressuring their bosses to condemn ICE 
The biggest companies and their leaders have remained largely silent so far. (Axios)
+ Hundreds of employees have signed an anti-ICE letter. (NYT $)
+ Formerly politically-neutral online spaces have become battlegrounds. (WP $)

2 The US Department of Transport plans to use AI to write new safety rules
Please don’t do this. (ProPublica)
+ Failure to catch any errors could lead to civilian deaths. (Ars Technica)

3 The FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking federal agents
But free speech advocates claim the information is legally obtained. (NBC News)
+ A judge has ordered a briefing on whether Minnesota is being illegally punished. (Wired $)

4 TikTok users claim they’re unable to send “Epstein” in direct messages
But the company says it doesn’t know why. (NPR)
+ Users are also experiencing difficulty uploading anti-ICE videos. (CNN)
+ TikTok’s first weekend under US ownership hasn’t gone well. (The Verge)
+ Gavin Newsom wants to probe whether TikTok is censoring Trump-critical content. (Politico)

5 Grok is not safe for children or teens
That’s the finding of a new report digging into the chatbot’s safety measures. (TechCrunch)
+ The EU is investigating whether it disseminates illegal content, too. (Reuters)

6 The US is on the verge of losing its measles-free status
Following a year of extensive outbreaks. (Undark)
+ Measles is surging in the US. Wastewater tracking could help. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Georgia has become the latest US state to consider banning data centers
Joining Maryland and Oklahoma’s stance. (The Guardian)
+ Data centers are amazing. Everyone hates them. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The future of Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city is in peril
The Line was supposed to house 9 million people. Instead, it could become a data center hub. (FT $)
+ We got an exclusive first look at it back in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Where do Earth’s lighter elements go?
New research suggests they might be hiding deep inside its core. (Knowable Magazine)

10 AI-generated influencers are getting increasingly surreal
Featuring virtual conjoined twins, and triple-breasted women. (404 Media)
+ Why ‘nudifying’ tech is getting steadily more dangerous. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.”

—Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sounds the alarm about what he sees as the imminent dangers of AI superintelligence in a new 38-page essay, Axios reports.

One more thing

Why one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids

Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the energy entrepreneur has worked to develop long-haul transmission lines to carry wind power across the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southwest. But so far, he has little to show for the effort.

Skelly has long argued that building such lines and linking together the nation’s grids would accelerate the shift from coal- and natural-gas-fueled power plants to the renewables needed to cut the pollution driving climate change. But his previous business shut down in 2019, after halting two of its projects and selling off interests in three more.

Skelly contends he was early, not wrong. And he has a point: markets and policymakers are increasingly coming around to his perspective. 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.)

+ Cats on the cover of the New Yorker! Need I say more?
+ Here’s how to know when you truly love someone.
+ This orphaned baby seal is just too cute.
+ I always had a sneaky suspicion that Depeche Mode and the Cure make for perfect bedfellows.

The Download: why LLMs are like aliens, and the future of head transplants

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

Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens  

How large is a large language model? We now coexist with machines so vast and so complicated that nobody quite understands what they are, how they work, or what they can really do—not even the people who build them.

That’s a problem. Even though nobody fully understands how it works—and thus exactly what its limitations might be—hundreds of millions of people now use this technology every day. 

To help overcome our ignorance, researchers are studying LLMs as if they were doing biology or neuroscience on vast living creatures—city-size xenomorphs that have appeared in our midst. And they’re discovering that large language models are even weirder than they thought. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

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

And mechanistic interpretability, the technique these researchers are using to try and understand AI models, is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2026. Check out the rest of the list here!

Job titles of the future: Head-transplant surgeon

The Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has been preparing for a surgery that might never happen. His idea? Swap a sick person’s head—or perhaps just the brain—onto a younger, healthier body.

Canavero caused a stir in 2017 when he announced that a team he advised in China had exchanged heads between two corpses. But he never convinced skeptics that his technique could succeed—or to believe his claim that a procedure on a live person was imminent.

Canavero may have withdrawn from the spotlight, but the idea of head transplants isn’t going away. Instead, he says, the concept has recently been getting a fresh look from life-extension enthusiasts and stealth Silicon Valley startups. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

This story is from the latest print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine, which is all about exciting innovations. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land.

The must-reads

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

1 Big Tech is facing multiple high-profile social media addiction lawsuits 
Meta, TikTok and YouTube will face parents’ accusations in court this week. (WP $)
+ It’s the first time they’re defending against these claims before a jury in a court of law. (CNN)

2 Power prices are surging in the world’s largest data center hub
Virginia is struggling to meet record demand during a winter storm, partly because of the centers’ electricity demands. (Reuters)
+ Why these kinds of violent storms are getting harder to forecast. (Vox)
+ AI is changing the grid. Could it help more than it harms? (MIT Technology Review)

3 TikTok has started collecting even more data on its users
Including precise information about their location. (Wired $)

4 ICE-watching groups are successfully fighting DHS efforts to unmask them
An anonymous account holder sued to block ICE from identifying them—and won. (Ars Technica)

5 A new wave of AI companies want to use AI to make AI better
The AI ouroboros is never-ending. (NYT $)
+ Is AI really capable of making bona fide scientific advancements? (Undark)
+ AI trained on AI garbage spits out AI garbage. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Iran is testing a two-tier internet
Meaning its current blackout could become permanent. (Rest of World)

7 Don’t believe the humanoid robot hype
Even a leading robot maker admits that at best, they’re only half as efficient as humans. (FT $)
+ Tesla wants to put its Optimus bipedal machine to work in its Austin factory. (Insider)
+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review)

8 AI is changing how manufacturers create new products
Including thinner chewing gum containers and new body wash odors. (WSJ $)
+ AI could make better beer. Here’s how. (MIT Technology Review)

9 New Jersey has had enough of e-bikes
But will other US states follow its lead? (The Verge)

10 Sci-fi writers are cracking down on AI
Human-produced works only, please. (TechCrunch)
+ San Diego Comic-Con was previously a safe space for AI-generated art. (404 Media)
+ Generative AI is reshaping South Korea’s webcomics industry. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Choosing American digital technology by default is too easy and must stop.”

—Nicolas Dufourcq, head of French state-owned investment bank Bpifrance, makes his case for why Big European companies should use European-made software as tensions with the US rise, the Wall Street Journal reports.

One more thing

The return of pneumatic tubes

Pneumatic tubes were once touted as something that would revolutionize the world. In science fiction, they were envisioned as a fundamental part of the future—even in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, where they help to deliver orders for the main character, Winston Smith, in his job rewriting history to fit the ruling party’s changing narrative.

In real life, the tubes were expected to transform several industries in the late 19th century through the mid-20th. For a while, the United States took up the systems with gusto.

But by the mid to late 20th century, use of the technology had largely fallen by the wayside, and pneumatic tube technology became virtually obsolete. Except in hospitals. Read the full story.

—Vanessa Armstrong

We can still have nice things

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

+ You really can’t beat the humble jacket potato for a cheap, comforting meal. 
+ These tips might help you whenever anxiety strikes. ($)
+ There are some amazing photos in this year’s Capturing Ecology awards.
+ You can benefit from meditation any time, anywhere. Give it a go!

The Download: chatbots for health, and US fights over AI regulation

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.

“Dr. Google” had its issues. Can ChatGPT Health do better?  

For the past two decades, there’s been a clear first step for anyone who starts experiencing new medical symptoms: Look them up online. The practice was so common that it gained the pejorative moniker “Dr. Google.” But times are changing, and many medical-information seekers are now using LLMs. According to OpenAI, 230 million people ask ChatGPT health-related queries each week.  

That’s the context around the launch of OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Health product, which debuted earlier this month. The big question is: can the obvious risks of using AI for health-related queries be mitigated enough for them to be a net benefit? Read the full story. 

—Grace Huckins

America’s coming war over AI regulation  

In the final weeks of 2025, the battle over regulating artificial intelligence in the US reached boiling point. On December 11, after Congress failed twice to pass a law banning state AI laws, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order seeking to handcuff states from regulating the booming industry.  

Instead, he vowed to work with Congress to establish a “minimally burdensome” national AI policy. The move marked a victory for tech titans, who have been marshaling multimillion-dollar war chests to oppose AI regulations, arguing that a patchwork of state laws would stifle innovation.

In 2026, the battleground will shift to the courts. While some states might back down from passing AI laws, others will charge ahead. Read our story about what’s on the horizon. 

—Michelle Kim

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

Measles is surging in the US. Wastewater tracking could help.

This week marked a rather unpleasant anniversary: It’s a year since Texas reported a case of measles—the start of a significant outbreak that ended up spreading across multiple states. Since the start of January 2025, there have been over 2,500 confirmed cases of measles in the US. Three people have died. 

As vaccination rates drop and outbreaks continue, scientists have been experimenting with new ways to quickly identify new cases and prevent the disease from spreading. And they are starting to see some success with wastewater surveillance. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou 

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things health and biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 The US is dismantling itself
A foreign enemy could not invent a better chain of events to wreck its standing in the world. (Wired $)  
+ We need to talk about whether Donald Trump might be losing it.  (New Yorker $)

2 Big Tech is taking on more debt to fund its AI aspirations
And the bubble just keeps growing. (WP $)
+ Forget unicorns. 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the “hectocorn.” (The Guardian)
+ Everyone in tech agrees we’re in a bubble. They just can’t agree on what happens when it pops. (MIT Technology Review)

3 DOGE accessed even more personal data than we thought 
Even now, the Trump administration still can’t say how much data is at risk, or what it was used for. (NPR)

4 TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new US entity 
Ending years of uncertainty about its fate in America. (CNN)
+ Why China is the big winner out of all of this. (FT $)

5 The US is now officially out of the World Health Organization 
And it’s leaving behind nearly $300 million in bills unpaid. (Ars Technica) 
+ The US withdrawal from the WHO will hurt us all. (MIT Technology Review)

6 AI-powered disinformation swarms pose a threat to democracy
A would-be autocrat could use them to persuade populations to accept cancelled elections or overturn results. (The Guardian)
+ The era of AI persuasion in elections is about to begin. (MIT Technology Review)

7 We’re about to start seeing more robots everywhere
But exactly what they’ll look like remains up for debate. (Vox $)
+ Chinese companies are starting to dominate entire sectors of AI and robotics. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Some people seem to be especially vulnerable to loneliness
If you’re ‘other-directed’, you could particularly benefit from less screentime. (New Scientist $)

9 This academic lost two years of work with a single click
TL;DR: Don’t rely on ChatGPT to store your data. (Nature)

10 How animals develop a sense of direction 
Their ‘internal compass’ seems to be informed by landmarks that help them form a mental map. (Quanta $)

Quote of the day

“The rate at which AI is progressing, I think we have AI that is smarter than any human this year, and no later than next year.”

—Elon Musk simply cannot resist the urge to make wild predictions at Davos, Wired reports. 

One more thing

ADAM DETOUR

Africa fights rising hunger by looking to foods of the past

After falling steadily for decades, the prevalence of global hunger is now on the rise—nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Africa’s indigenous crops are often more nutritious and better suited to the hot and dry conditions that are becoming more prevalent, yet many have been neglected by science, which means they tend to be more vulnerable to diseases and pests and yield well below their theoretical potential.

Now the question is whether researchers, governments, and farmers can work together in a way that gets these crops onto plates and provides Africans from all walks of life with the energy and nutrition that they need to thrive, whatever climate change throws their way. Read the full story.

—Jonathan W. Rosen

We can still have nice things

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

+ The only thing I fancy dry this January is a martini. Here’s how to make one.
+ If you absolutely adore the Bic crystal pen, you might want this lamp. 
+ Cozy up with a nice long book this winter. ($)
+ Want to eat healthier? Slow down and tune out food ‘noise’. ($)