The Download: defining AI, and China’s driverless ambitions

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 is AI?

AI is sexy, AI is cool. AI is entrenching inequality, upending the job market, and wrecking education. The AI boom will boost the economy, the AI bubble is about to burst. AI will increase abundance and empower humanity to maximally flourish in the universe. AI will kill us all.

What the hell is everybody talking about?

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

If you’re willing to buckle up and come for a ride, I can tell you why nobody really knows, why everybody seems to disagree, and why you’re right to care about it. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

The Chinese government is all in on autonomous vehicles

There’s been so much news coming out of China’s autonomous-vehicle industry lately that it’s hard to keep track.

The government is finally allowing Tesla to bring its Full Self-Driving feature to China. New government permits let companies test driverless cars on the road and allow cities to build smart road infrastructure that will tell these cars where to go.

In short, there are a lot of changes taking place. And they all point in the same direction: The Chinese government is throwing its weight behind the autonomous-vehicle industry and is eager to come out on top while other countries take a more cautious approach. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech and power in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Microsoft and Apple will no longer sit on OpenAI’s board 
The move comes as regulators start to pay close attention to Big Tech’s investments in AI startups. (FT $)
+ Microsoft claims its exit is down to OpenAI’s newfound stability. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI will update its stakeholders with regular meetings, instead. (Bloomberg $)

2 The US has taken down a Russian bot farm on X
The propaganda mill used AI to scale up its operations. (WP $)
+ Google Search results are full of Russian AI spam, too. (Wired $)
+ The Kremlin is rewriting Wikipedia to suit its own agenda. (Economist $)

3 Amazon claims to have met a clean energy goal seven years early
Some experts aren’t convinced its calculation method is up to scratch, though. (NYT $)
+ Carbon capture needs to improve if we’re ever to move away from fossil fuels. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How electricity could clean up transportation, steel, and even fertilizer. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Rechargeable batteries come at an environmental cost
They appear to be a growing source of forever chemicals. (The Verge)
+ The race to destroy PFAS, the forever chemicals. (MIT Technology Review)

5 What happens to your money when your startup bank folds?
Plenty of customers are finding out the hard way. (NYT $)

6 Crypto fans are up in arms over Germany selling confiscated bitcoin
But the state of Saxony doesn’t have a choice. (CoinDesk)
+ Crypto scams are alive and well. (Wired $)

7 How to prepare your home for a hurricane
Stronger materials, tighter seals, and a whole lot of work. (Wired $)
+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)

8 No one answers the phone anymore
And it’s a bigger problem than you’d think. (Slate $)

9 Philips Hue smart lightbulbs seem to have a mind of their own
Owners claim the bulbs are overriding settings to full brightness. (Insider $) 

10 Gen Z uses the iPhone Notes app to generate outfits
All those little digital stickers are coming in handy. (Vogue Business $)

Quote of the day

“I faced the issues of AI early, but it will happen for others. It may not be a happy ending.”

—Lee Saedol, the legendary Go player who lost to Google DeepMind’s AI program in 2016, warns an audience in Seoul about the risks the technology may pose, the New York Times reports.

The big story

This super-realistic virtual world is a driving school for AI

February 2022

Building driverless cars is a slow and expensive business. After years of effort and billions of dollars of investment, the technology is still stuck in the pilot phase.

Autonomous technology company Waabi thinks it can do better. In 2021 it revealed the controversial new shortcut to autonomous vehicles it’s betting on. The big idea? Ditch the cars.

Wasabi has built a super-realistic virtual environment called Waabi World. Instead of training an AI driver in real vehicles, it plans to do it entirely inside the simulation. But simulation alone is a bold strategy, and how far it can go depends on how realistic Waabi World really is. Read the full story. 

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

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

+ If this video doesn’t fill you with joy, I don’t know what will.
+ Apo Whang-Od Oggay is the world’s oldest tattoo artist, and very cool.
+ The world’s most difficult maze holds a very interesting secret.
+ Netflix’s Supacell features some of the very best of Black British talent.

The Download: recycling clothing, and fish-friendly hydropower

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

A polyester-dissolving process could make modern clothing recyclable  

The news: Less than 1% of clothing is recycled. Most of the rest ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. A team of researchers hopes to change that with a new process that breaks down mixed-fiber clothing into reusable, recyclable parts without any sorting or separation in advance.

How they did it: Many garments are made of a mix of natural and synthetic fibers. Once these fibers are combined, they are difficult to separate. To tackle this problem, the team used a solvent that breaks the chemical bonds in polyester fabric while leaving cotton and nylon intact. To speed up the process, they power it with microwave energy and add a zinc oxide catalyst. 

Why it matters: While similar methods have been used to recycle pre-sorted plastic, this is the first time they’ve been used to recycle mixed-fiber textiles without any sorting required. Read the full story.

—Sarah Ward

What new hydropower tech says about climate action

Back at MIT Technology Review’s ClimateTech event in 2022, Gia Schneider, a cofounder of Natel Energy, spoke about her company’s mission to design hydropower turbines that are safer for fish.

To illustrate her point, she shared grisly images of fish that had been hit by conventional turbine blades. On the other hand, the fish swimming through Natel’s turbines seemed relatively unbothered, curving around the blades and going on their merry way downstream. 

Recently, our climate reporter Casey Crownhart had a chat with Schneider about how Natel is working to change hydropower technology and juggle climate action with freshwater ecosystems to make hydropower a bit more fish-friendly. Read the full story.

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

The must-reads

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

1 Google’s plan to ditch tracking cookies is not going well
Adtech firms are worried the replacement program will pose major risks to publishers. (Insider $)
+ The new project could slash publisher ad revenue by 60%. (Press Gazette)

2 NASA is launching a gamma-ray telescope

In the hopes of studying the creation and destruction of chemical elements. (Ars Technica)
+ Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible. (MIT Technology Review)

3 We need more alternative fuels
Planes, trains, and automobiles are getting leaner and greener. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Clean fuels are a hugely expensive moonshot. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Tom Hanks’ son has become a face of online white supremacy
He claims his phrase “white boy summer” has been hijacked by the far right. (NYT $)

5 Threads is weighing up selling ads
A year after launch, it still hasn’t toppled its bitter rival X. (Bloomberg $)
+ Threads’ aversion to hard news could make or break it. (WP $)
+ The platform has recently hit 175 million users and is still going. (The Verge)

6 The UK’s general election has descended into a cringe meme war
Young voters aren’t falling for it. (Wired $)

7 Inside the great air conditioning debate
There’s no rule saying you have to keep it at 72 degrees. (Vox)
+ AC units aren’t a long term defense against heat waves. (CNN)
+ Why air-conditioning is a climate antihero. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Thinking of changing your life? Try it in The Sims first
From testing out bold interior design choices, to learning new languages. (WP $)
+ How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play.  (MIT Technology Review)

9 A teenager discovered her identical twin on TikTok
The revelation sparked the unraveling of a long-held family secret. (Vice)

10 The world’s most-delayed video game has finally been released
It’s been 22 long years in the making. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“We have won the war on floppy disks!”

—Taro Kono, Japan’s digital minister, tells Reuters he has succeeded in his mission to rid his government of its reliance on floppy disks.

The big story

The new US border wall is an app

June 2023

Keisy Plaza, 39, left her home in Colombia seven months ago. She walked a 62-mile stretch with her two daughters and grandson to reach Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, on the border with Texas.

Plaza has been trying every day for weeks to secure an appointment with Customs and Border Protection so she can request permission for her family to enter the US.

So far, she’s had no luck: each time, she’s been met with software errors and frozen screens. When appointment slots do open up, they fill within minutes. A new app, called CBP One, is supposed to help alleviate the sorts of issues Plaza has encountered. But will it? Read the full story.

—Lorena Rios

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.)

+ If you’re traveling today, here’s how to avoid the worst of the traffic and crowds—whether that’s by car, plane, or train.
+ Similarly, if your pets aren’t enjoying the fireworks as much as you are, there’s plenty of ways to calm them down.
+ It’s the general election here in the UK, which can only mean one thing—dogs at polling stations!
+ What comes after Gen Z? Why, Gen Alpha, of course.

The Download: listening robots, and Google’s AI emissions

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

A way to let robots learn by listening will make them more useful

Most AI-powered robots today use cameras to understand their surroundings and learn new tasks, but it’s becoming easier to train robots with sound too, helping them adapt to tasks and environments where visibility is limited. 

Though sight is important, for some of our daily tasks, sound is actually more helpful, like listening to onions sizzling on the stove to see if the pan is at the right temperature. Training robots with audio has only been done in highly controlled lab settings, however, and the techniques have lagged behind other fast robot-teaching methods.

Researchers at the Robotics and Embodied AI Lab at Stanford University set out to change that. They first built a system for collecting audio data, then used this data to train robotic arms how to execute the task on their own. The team’s new training algorithms help robots gather clues from audio signals to perform more effectively. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

The must-reads

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

1 Google’s emissions have skyrocketed in the past five years
And those pesky AI products are to blame. (The Guardian)+ Microsoft has the same problem, too. (Bloomberg $)
+ AI is an energy hog. This is what it means for climate change. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US wants to develop an mRNA vaccine to fight bird flu
Moderna already started a vaccine trial last year targeting the main strains. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next for bird flu vaccines. (MIT Technology Review)

3 An underground network is smuggling Nvidia chips into China
Neatly swerving US export restrictions. (WSJ $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Fiverr freelancers will dox anyone for a price
Some charge as little as $30. (404 Media)

5 OnlyFans’ paywalls are impeding abuse investigations
Forensic consultants are increasingly frustrated by its infrastructure. (Reuters)

6 US universities are offering degrees in climate change
Many of them focus on developing practical climate solutions. (Fast Company $)
+ How fish-safe hydropower technology could keep more renewables on the grid. (MIT Technology Review)

7 SpaceX has grand ambitions to launch 120 times a year
Unsurprisingly, its competitors aren’t happy about its plans for Florida. (TechCrunch) 

8 Scientists are using radio-frequency tech to find dinosaur bones
The key card technology helps them to tag and recover fossils. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 The strange allure of a pointless website
One Million Checkboxes is exactly that—one million boxes to check. (WP $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Craigslist will never die 
The classified listings site looks the same as it did almost 30 years ago. (Slate $)

Quote of the day

“When you chew enough glass, you learn to like the taste of your own blood.”

—A speaker at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto startup bootcamp shares some intense insights into enduring hardship, Wired reports.

The big story

Social media is polluting society. Moderation alone won’t fix the problem

August 2022

We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don’t want to be exposed to unpleasant speech.

Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected under federal law, hiring in-house moderators to examine individual pieces of content and removing them if posts violate predefined rules.

The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues. We need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects their choices have on us. Read the full story.

—Nathaniel Lubin & Thomas Krendl Gilbert

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.)

+ Salads don’t have to be boring—especially when there’s boiled eggs and salmon involved.
+ Whac-a-mole has a surprisingly long and checkered past.
+ Here’s how to rehydrate quickly if you’re feeling the heat.
+ Phones are crazy expensive. But you can make them last longer if you’re smart about it.

The Download: hyperrealistic deepfakes, and using math to shape wood

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.

Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies

Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that gesticulate.

The new full-body avatars will be able to do things like sing and brandish a microphone while dancing, or move from behind a desk and walk across a room. They will be able to express more complex emotions than previously possible, like excitement, fear, or nervousness. 

These new capabilities, which are set to launch toward the end of the year, will add a lot to the illusion of realism. That’s a scary prospect at a time when deepfakes and online misinformation are proliferating. Read the full story and watch our reporter’s avatars meet each other.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Meet the architect creating wood structures that shape themselves

Humanity has long sought to tame wood into something more predictable, but it is inherently imprecise. Its grain reverses and swirls. Trauma and disease manifest in scars and knots. 

Instead of viewing these natural tendencies as liabilities, Achim Menges, an architect and professor at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, sees them as wood’s greatest assets. 

Menges and his team at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction are uncovering new ways to build with wood by using algorithms and data to simulate and predict how wood will behave within a structure long before it is built. He hopes this will help create more sustainable and affordable timber buildings by reducing the amount of wood required. Read our story all about him and his work. 

—John Wiegand

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Live: How generative AI could transform games

Generative AI could soon revolutionize how we play video games, creating characters that can converse with you freely, and experiences that are infinitely detailed, twisting and changing every time you experience them.

Together, these could open the door to entirely new kinds of in-game interactions that are open-ended, creative, and unexpected. One day, the games we love playing may not have to end. Read our executive editor Niall Firth’s story all about what that future could look like. 

If you want to learn more, register now to join our next exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable discussion at 11.30ET today! Niall and our editorial director Allison Arieff will be talking about games without limits, the future of play, and much more.

The must-reads

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

1 Big Tech firms are going all-in on experimental clean energy projects
Due to the fact AI is so horribly polluting. But the projects range from ‘long shot’ to ‘magical thinking’. (WP $)
+ Making the grid smarter, rather than bigger, could help. (Semafor)
+ How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Google is about to be hit with a ton of AI-related lawsuits
Its AI Overviews keep libeling people—and they’re lawyering up. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Another AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, is running into the exact same issues. (Wired $)
+ Worst of all? There’s currently no way to fix the underlying problem. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple is exploring a deal with Meta
To integrate Meta’s generative AI models into Apple Intelligence. (Wall Street Journal $) 
+ Apple is delaying launching AI features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. (Quartz) 

4 NASA is indefinitely delaying the return of Starliner
In order to give it more time to review data. (Ars Technica)

5 Chinese tech companies are pushing their staff beyond breaking point
As growth slows and competition rises, work-life balance is going out the window. (FT $)

6 Used electric vehicles are now less expensive than gas cars in the US
It’s a worrying statistic that reflects the cratering demand for EVs. (Insider $)
+ The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Check out these photos of San Francisco’s AI scene
The city is currently buzzing with people hoping to make their fortune off the back of the boom. (WP $)

8 The next wave of weight loss drugs is coming
The hope is that they might be cheaper, and come with fewer side effects. (NBC)

9 Elon Musk is obsessed with getting us to have more babies
He’s funding and promoting some pretty wacky theories about a coming population collapse. (Bloomberg $)
+ And we’re losing track of the number of kids he has himself. (Gizmodo)

10 Before smartphones, you could pay people to Google stuff for you
In the noughties, if you were arguing with friends over something factual, you could just call AQA to settle it. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The internet has just gotten so much duller.”

—Kelly, a copywriter from New Hampshire, tells the Wall Street Journal about the impact of AI online. 

The big story

How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime

CHRISSIE ABBOTT

November 2023

Tokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything.

It was from an early internet entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to manage Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD—the short string of characters that is tacked onto the end of a URL—in exchange for money.

In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the vast majority were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.

Now the territory is desperately trying to clean up .tk. Its international standing, and even its sovereignty, may depend on it. 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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Feeling challenged? Why not try the Japanese approach of ‘ukeireru’ to tackle what’s bothering you.
+ The incredibly weird origins of pop hit Maniac have to be read to be believed.
+ This summer is already chock-full with pop bangers—don’t miss out.
+ Why short novels are the best.

The Download: video-generating AI, and Meta’s voice cloning watermarks

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.

I tested out a buzzy new text-to-video AI model from China

You may not be familiar with Kuaishou, but this Chinese company just hit a major milestone: It’s released the first ever text-to-video generative AI model that’s freely available for the public to test.

The short-video platform, which has over 600 million active users, announced the new tool, called Kling, on June 6. Like OpenAI’s Sora model, Kling is able to generate videos up to two minutes long from prompts.

But unlike Sora, which still remains inaccessible to the public four months after OpenAI debuted it, Kling has already started letting people try the model themselves. Zeyi Yang, our China reporter, has been putting it through its paces. Here’s what he made of it.

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Meta has created a way to watermark AI-generated speech

The news: Meta has created a system that can embed hidden signals, known as watermarks, in AI-generated audio clips, which could help in detecting AI-generated content online. 

Why it matters: The tool, called AudioSeal, is the first that can pinpoint which bits of audio in, for example, a full hour-long podcast might have been generated by AI. It could help to tackle the growing problem of misinformation and scams using voice cloning tools. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

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. The technology involves moving a cylindrical carrier or capsule through a series of tubes with the aid of a blower that pushes or pulls it into motion, and 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

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

The must-reads

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

1 Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company 
Leapfrogging Microsoft and Apple thanks to the AI boom. (BBC)
+ Nvidia’s meteoric rise echoes the dot com boom. (WSJ $)
+ CEO Jensen Huang is now one of the richest people in the world. (Forbes)
+ The firm is worth more than China’s entire agricultural industry. (NY Mag $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

2 TikTok is introducing AI avatars for ads
Which seems like a slippery slope. (404 Media)
+ India’s farmers are getting their news from AI news anchors. (Bloomberg $)
+ Deepfakes of Chinese influencers are livestreaming 24/7. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will stay in space for a little longer
Officials need to troubleshoot some issues before it can head back to Earth. (WP $)

4 STEM students are refusing to work at Amazon and Google
Until the companies end their involvement with Project Nimbus. (Wired $)

5 Google isn’t what it used to be
But is Reddit really a viable alternative? (WSJ $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A security bug allows anyone to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts
It’s making it harder to spot phishing attacks. (TechCrunch)

7 How deep sea exploration has changed since the Titan disaster
Robots are taking humans’ place to plumb the depths. (NYT $)
+ Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go. (MIT Technology Review)

8 How the free streaming service Tubi took over the US
Its secret weapon? Old movies.(The Guardian)

9 A new AI video tool instantly started ripping off Disney
Raising some serious questions about what the model had been trained on. (The Verge)
+ What’s next for generative video. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Apple appears to have paused work on the next Vision Pro
Things aren’t looking too bright for the high-end headset. (The Information $)
+ These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented reality by storm. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“He’s like Taylor Swift, but for tech.”

—Mark Zuckerberg is suitably dazzled by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s starpower, the Information reports.

The big story

How sounds can turn us on to the wonders of the universe

June 2023

Astronomy should, in principle, be a welcoming field for blind researchers. But across the board, science is full of charts, graphs, databases, and images that are designed to be seen.

So researcher Sarah Kane, who is legally blind, was thrilled three years ago when she encountered a technology known as sonification, designed to transform information into sound. Since then she’s been working with a project called Astronify, which presents astronomical information in audio form.

For millions of blind and visually impaired people, sonification could be transformative—opening access to education, to once unimaginable careers, and even to the secrets of the universe. Read the full story.

—Corey S. Powell

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.)

+ Clearing a pool table in 28 seconds? Don’t mind if I do.
+ As summer gets truly underway, it’s time to reorganize your closet.
+ Check out the winner’s of this year’s Food Photographer of the Year awards.
+ If you’re obsessed with the viral Steam game Banana, you’re far from alone.

The Download: AI’s limitations

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 does AI hallucinate?

The World Health Organization’s new chatbot launched on April 2 with the best of intentions. The virtual avatar named SARAH, was designed to dispense health tips about how to eat well, quit smoking, de-stress, and more, for millions around the world. But like all chatbots, SARAH can flub its answers. It was quickly found to give out incorrect information. In one case, it came up with a list of fake names and addresses for nonexistent clinics in San Francisco.

Chatbot fails are now a familiar meme. Meta’s short-lived scientific chatbot Galactica made up academic papers and generated wiki articles about the history of bears in space. In February, Air Canada was ordered to honor a refund policy invented by its customer service chatbot. Last year, a lawyer was fined for submitting court documents filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations made up by ChatGPT.

This tendency to make things up—known as hallucination—is one of the biggest obstacles holding chatbots back from more widespread adoption. Why do they do it? And why can’t we fix it? Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Will’s article is the latest entry in MIT Technology Review Explains, our series explaining the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can check out the rest of the series here.

The story is also from the forthcoming magazine issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Why artists are becoming less scared of AI

Knock, knock. Who’s there? An AI with generic jokes. Researchers from Google DeepMind asked 20 professional comedians to use popular AI language models to write jokes and comedy performances. Their results were mixed. Although the tools helped them to produce initial drafts and structure their routines, AI was not able to produce anything that was original, stimulating, or, crucially, funny. 

The study is symptomatic of a broader trend: we’re realizing the limitations of what AI can do for artists. It can take on some of the boring, mundane, formulaic aspects of the creative process, but it can’t replace the magic and originality that humans bring. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä 

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

The must-reads

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

1 The US government is suing Adobe over concealed fees
And for making it too difficult to cancel a Photoshop subscription. (The Verge)
+ Regulators are going after firms with hard-to-cancel accounts. (NYT $)
+ Adobe’s had an incredibly profitable few years. (Insider $)
+ The company recently announced its plans to safeguard artists against exploitative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The year’s deadly heat waves have only just begun
But not everyone is at equal risk from extreme temperatures. (Vox)
+ Here’s what you need to know about this week’s US heat wave. (WP $)
+ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Being an influencer isn’t as lucrative as it used to be
It’s getting tougher for content creators to earn a crust from social media alone. (WSJ $)
+ Beware the civilian creators offering to document your wedding. (The Guardian)+ Deepfakes of Chinese influencers are livestreaming 24/7. (MIT Technology Review)

4 How crypto cash could influence the US Presidential election 
‘Crypto voters’ have started mobilizing for Donald Trump, who has been making pro-crypto proclamations. (NYT $)

5 Europe is pumping money into defense tech startups
It’ll be a while until it catches up with the US though. (FT $)
+ Here’s the defense tech at the center of US aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. (MIT Technology Review)

6 China’s solar industry is in serious trouble
Its rapid growth hasn’t translated into big profits. (Economist $)
+ Recycling solar panels is still a major environmental challenge, too. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ This solar giant is moving manufacturing from China back to the US. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Brace yourself for AI reading companions
The systems are trained on famous writers’ thoughts on seminal titles. (Wired $)

8 McDonalds is ditching AI chatbots at drive-thrus
The tech just proved too unreliable. (The Guardian)

9 How ice freezes is surprisingly mysterious
It’s not as simple as cooling water to zero degrees. (Quanta Magazine)

10 Keeping your phone cool in hot weather is tough
No direct sunlight, no case, no putting it in the fridge. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“My goal was to show that nature is just so fantastic and creative, and I don’t think any machine can beat that.”

—Photographer Miles Astray explains to the Washington Post why he entered a real photograph of a surreal-looking flamingo into a competition for AI art.

The big story

The Atlantic’s vital currents could collapse. Scientists are racing to understand the dangers.

December 2021

Scientists are searching for clues about one of the most important forces in the planet’s climate system: a network of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. They want to better understand how global warming is changing it, and how much more it could shift, or even collapse.

The problem is the Atlantic circulation seems to be weakening, transporting less water and heat. Because of climate change, melting ice sheets are pouring fresh water into the ocean at the higher latitudes, and the surface waters are retaining more of their heat. Warmer and fresher waters are less dense and thus not as prone to sink, which may be undermining one of the currents’ core driving forces. 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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ This cookie is the perfect replica of those frustrating maze games.
+ Each year, the Roland Garros tennis tournament commissions an artist to create a poster. This collection is remarkable
+ Sesame Street is the best.
+ If your plants aren’t flourishing, these tips might help to get them looking their best.