The Download: mimicking pregnancy’s first moments in a lab, and AI parameters explained

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

Researchers are getting organoids pregnant with human embryos

At first glance, it looks like the start of a human pregnancy: A ball-shaped embryo presses into the lining of the uterus then grips tight, burrowing in as the first tendrils of a future placenta appear. This is implantation—the moment that pregnancy officially begins.

Only none of it is happening inside a body. These images were captured in a Beijing laboratory, inside a microfluidic chip, as scientists watched the scene unfold.

In three recent papers published by Cell Press, scientists report what they call the most accurate efforts yet to mimic the first moments of pregnancy in the lab. They’ve taken human embryos from IVF centers and let these merge with “organoids” made of endometrial cells, which form the lining of the uterus. Read our story about their work, and what might come next.

—Antonio Regalado

LLMs contain a LOT of parameters. But what’s a parameter?

A large language model’s parameters are often said to be the dials and levers that control how it behaves. Think of a planet-size pinball machine that sends its balls pinging from one end to the other via billions of paddles and bumpers set just so. Tweak those settings and the balls will behave in a different way.  

OpenAI’s GPT-3, released in 2020, had 175 billion parameters. Google DeepMind’s latest LLM, Gemini 3, may have at least a trillion—some think it’s probably more like 7 trillion—but the company isn’t saying. (With competition now fierce, AI firms no longer share information about how their models are built.)

But the basics of what parameters are and how they make LLMs do the remarkable things that they do are the same across different models. Ever wondered what makes an LLM really tick—what’s behind the colorful pinball-machine metaphors? Let’s dive in. 

—Will Douglas Heaven

What new legal challenges mean for the future of US offshore wind

For offshore wind power in the US, the new year is bringing new legal battles.

On December 22, the Trump administration announced it would pause the leases of five wind farms currently under construction off the US East Coast. Developers were ordered to stop work immediately.

The cited reason? Concerns that turbines can cause radar interference. But that’s a known issue, and developers have worked with the government to deal with it for years.

Companies have been quick to file lawsuits, and the court battles could begin as soon as this week. Here’s what the latest kerfuffle might mean for the US’s struggling offshore wind industry.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter that explains the tech that could combat the climate crisis. 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 and Character.AI have agreed to settle a lawsuit over a teenager’s death
It’s one of five lawsuits the companies have settled linked to young people’s deaths this week. (NYT $)
+ AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction, and lawmakers are taking aim. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The Trump administration’s chief output is online trolling
Witness the Maduro memes. (The Atlantic $)

3 OpenAI has created a new ChatGPT Health feature 
It’s dedicated to analyzing medical results and answering health queries. (Axios)
+ AI chatbots fail to give adequate advice for most questions relating to women’s health. (New Scientist $)
+ AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Meta’s acquisition of Manus is being probed by China
Holding up the purchase gives it another bargaining chip in its dealings with the US. (CNBC)
+ What happened when we put Manus to the test. (MIT Technology Review)

5 China is building humanoid robot training centers
To address a major shortage of the data needed to make them more competent. (Rest of World)
+ The robot race is fueling a fight for training data. (MIT Technology Review)

6 AI still isn’t close to automating our jobs
The technology just fundamentally isn’t good enough yet—for now. (WP $)

7 Weight regain seems to happen within two years of quitting the jabs
That’s the conclusion of a review of more than 40 studies. But dig into the details, and it’s not all bad news. (New Scientist $)

8 This Silicon Valley community is betting on algorithms to find love
Which feels like a bit of a fool’s errand. (NYT $)

9 Hearing aids are about to get really good
You can—of course—thank advances in AI. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 The first 100% AI-generated movie will hit our screen within three years
That’s according to Roku’s founder Anthony Wood. (Variety $)
+ How do AI models generate videos? (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I’ve seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine. ” 

—Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz responds on X to Homeland Security’s claim that ICE’s shooting of a woman in Minneapolis was justified.

One more thing

Inside the strange limbo facing millions of IVF embryos

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

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

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

—Jessica Hamzelou

We can still have nice things

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

+ I love hearing about musicians’ favorite songs
+ Here are some top tips for making the most of travelling on your own.
+ Check out just some of the excellent-sounding new books due for publication this year.
+ I could play this spherical version of Snake forever (thanks Rachel!)

The Download: war in Europe, and the company that wants to cool the planet

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.

Europe’s drone-filled vision for the future of war

Last spring, 3,000 British soldiers deployed an invisible automated intelligence network, known as a “digital targeting web,” as part of a NATO exercise called Hedgehog in the damp forests of Estonia’s eastern territories.

The system had been cobbled together over the course of four months—an astonishing pace for weapons development, which is usually measured in years. Its purpose is to connect everything that looks for targets—“sensors,” in military lingo—and everything that fires on them (“shooters”) to a single, shared wireless electronic brain.

Eighty years after total war last transformed the continent, the Hedgehog tests signal a brutal new calculus of European defense. But leaning too much on this new mathematics of warfare could be a risky bet. Read the full story.

—Arthur Holland Michel

This story is from the next print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive it once it lands.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet

Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change—for a price.

The Israel-based geoengineering startup has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch specially equipped aircraft into the stratosphere. Once they’ve reached the necessary altitude, those planes will disperse particles engineered to reflect away enough sunlight to cool down the planet, purportedly without causing environmental side effects. 

But numerous solar geoengineering researchers are skeptical that Stardust will line up the customers it needs to carry out a global deployment in the next decade. They’re also highly critical of the idea of a private company setting the global temperature for us.

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 Amazon has been accused of listing products without retailers’ consent
Small shop owners claim Amazon’s AI tool sold their goods without their permission. (Bloomberg $)
+ It also listed products the shops didn’t actually have in stock. (CNBC)
+ A new feature called “Shop Direct” appears to be to blame. (Insider $)

2 Data centers are a political issue 
Opposition to them is uniting communities across the political divide. (WP $)
+ Power-grid operators have suggested the centers power down at certain times. (WSJ $)
+ The data center boom in the desert. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Things are looking up for the nuclear power industry
The Trump administration is pumping money into it—but success is not guaranteed. (NYT $)
+ Why the grid relies on nuclear reactors in the winter. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A new form of climate modelling pins blame on specific companies
It may not be too long until we see the first case of how attribution science holds up in court. (New Scientist $)
+ Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Meta has paused the launch of its Ray-Ban smartglasses
They’re just too darn popular, apparently. (Engadget)
+ Europe and Canada will just have to wait. (Gizmodo)
+ It’s blaming supply shortages and “unprecedented” demand. (Insider $)

6 Sperm contains information about a father’s fitness and diet
New research is shedding light on how we think about heredity. (Quanta Magazine)

7 Meta is selling online gambling ads in countries where it’s illegal
It’s ignoring local laws across Asia and the Middle East. (Rest of World)

8 AI isn’t always trying to steal your job
Sometimes it makes your toy robot a better companion. (The Verge)
+ How cuddly robots could change dementia care. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How to lock down a job at one of tech’s biggest companies
You’re more likely to be accepted into Harvard, apparently. (Fast Company $)

10 Millennials are falling out of love with the internet
Is a better future still possible? (Vox)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I want to keep up with the latest doom.”

—Author Margaret Atwood explains why she doomscrolls to Wired.

One more thing

Inside the decades-long fight over Yahoo’s misdeeds in China

When you think of Big Tech these days, Yahoo is probably not top of mind. But for Chinese dissident Xu Wanping, the company still looms large—and has for nearly two decades.

In 2005, Xu was arrested for signing online petitions relating to anti-Japanese protests. He didn’t use his real name, but he did use his Yahoo email address. Yahoo China violated its users’ trust—providing information on certain email accounts to Chinese law enforcement, which in turn allowed the government to identify and arrest some users.

Xu was one of them; he would serve nine years in prison. Now, he and five other Chinese former political prisoners are suing Yahoo and a slate of co-defendants—not because of the company’s information-sharing (which was the focus of an earlier lawsuit filed by other plaintiffs), but rather because of what came after. 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.)

+ It’s time to celebrate the life and legacy of Cecilia Giménez Zueco, the legendary Spanish amateur painter whose botched fresco restoration reached viral fame in 2012.
+ If you’re a sci-fi literature fan, there’s plenty of new releases to look forward to in 2026.
+ Last week’s wolf supermoon was a sight to behold.
+ This Mississippi restaurant is putting its giant lazy Susan to good use.

The Download: Kenya’s Great Carbon Valley, and the AI terms that were everywhere in 2025

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

Welcome to Kenya’s Great Carbon Valley: a bold new gamble to fight climate change

In June last year, startup Octavia Carbon began running a high-stakes test in the small town of Gilgil in south-central Kenya. It’s harnessing some of the excess energy generated by vast clouds of steam under the Earth’s surface to power prototypes of a machine that promises to remove carbon dioxide from the air in a manner that the company says is efficient, affordable, and—crucially—scalable.

The company’s long-term vision is undoubtedly ambitious—it wants to prove that direct air capture (DAC), as the process is known, can be a powerful tool to help the world keep temperatures from rising to ever more dangerous levels. 

But DAC is also a controversial technology, unproven at scale and wildly expensive to operate. On top of that, Kenya’s Maasai people have plenty of reasons to distrust energy companies. Read the full story.

—Diana Kruzman

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

AI Wrapped: The 14 AI terms you couldn’t avoid in 2025

If the past 12 months have taught us anything, it’s that the AI hype train is showing no signs of slowing. It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the year, DeepSeek had yet to turn the entire industry on its head, Meta was better known for trying (and failing) to make the metaverse cool than for its relentless quest to dominate superintelligence, and vibe coding wasn’t a thing.

If that’s left you feeling a little confused, fear not. Our writers have taken a look back over the AI terms that dominated the year, for better or worse. Read the full list.

MIT Technology Review’s most popular stories of 2025

2025 was a busy and productive year here at MIT Technology Review. We published magazine issues on power, creativity, innovation, bodies, relationships, and security. We hosted 14 exclusive virtual conversations with our editors and outside experts in our subscriber-only series, Roundtables, and held two events on MIT’s campus. And we published hundreds of articles online, following new developments in computing, climate tech, robotics, and more.

As the new year begins, we wanted to give you a chance to revisit some of this work with us. Whether we were covering the red-hot rise of artificial intelligence or the future of biotech, these are some of the stories that resonated the most with our readers.

The must-reads

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

1 Washington’s battle to break up Big Tech is in peril
A string of judges have opted not to force them to spin off key assets. (FT $)
+ Here’s some of the major tech litigation we can expect in the next 12 months. (Reuters)

2 Disinformation about the US invasion of Venezuela is rife on social media
And the biggest platforms don’t appear to be doing much about it. (Wired $)
+ Trump shared a picture of captured president Maduro on Truth Social. (NYT $)

3 Here’s what we know about Big Tech’s ties to the Israeli military
AI is central to its military operations, and giant US firms have stepped up to help. (The Guardian)

4 Alibaba’s AI tool is detecting cancer cases in China
PANDA is adept at spotting pancreatic cancer, which is typically tough to identify. (NYT $)
+ How hospitals became an AI testbed. (WSJ $)
+ A medical portal in New Zealand was hacked into last week. (Reuters)

5 This Discord community supports people recovering from AI-fueled delusions
They say reconnecting with fellow humans is an important step forward. (WP $)
+ The looming crackdown on AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Californians can now demand data brokers delete their personal information 
Thanks to a new tool—but there’s a catch. (TechCrunch)
+ This California lawmaker wants to ban AI from kids’ toys. (Fast Company $)

7 Chinese peptides are flooding into Silicon Valley
The unproven drugs promise to heal injuries, improve focus and reduce appetite—and American tech workers are hooked. (NYT $)

8 Alaska’s court system built an AI assistant to navigate probate
But the project has been plagued by delays and setbacks. (NBC News)
+ Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI. (MIT Technology Review)

9 These ghostly particles could upend how we think about the universe
The standard model of particle physics may have a crack in it. (New Scientist $)
+ Why is the universe so complex and beautiful? (MIT Technology Review)

10 Sick of the same old social media apps?
Give these alternative platforms a go. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”

—Sharon Wilson, a former oil and gas worker who tracks methane releases, tells the Guardian what a thermal imaging camera pointed at xAI’s Colossus datacentre has revealed.

One more thing

How aging clocks can help us understand why we age—and if we can reverse it

Wrinkles and gray hairs aside, it can be difficult to know how well—or poorly—someone’s body is truly aging. A person who develops age-related diseases earlier in life, or has other biological changes associated with aging, might be considered “biologically older” than a similar-age person who doesn’t have those changes. Some 80-year-olds will be weak and frail, while others are fit and active.

Over the past decade, scientists have been uncovering new methods of looking at the hidden ways our bodies are aging. And what they’ve found is changing our understanding of aging itself. 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.)

+ You heard it here first: 2026 is the year of cabbage (yes, cabbage.)
+ Darts is bigger than ever. So why are we still waiting for the first great darts video game?
+ This year’s CES is already off to a bang, courtesy of an essential, cutting-edge vibrating knife.
+ At least one good thing came out of that Stranger Things finale—streams of Prince’s excellent back catalog have soared.

The Download: China’s dying EV batteries, and why AI doomers are doubling down

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.

China figured out how to sell EVs. Now it has to bury their batteries.

In the past decade, China has seen an EV boom, thanks in part to government support. Buying an electric car has gone from a novel decision to a routine one; by late 2025, nearly 60% of new cars sold were electric or plug-in hybrids.

But as the batteries in China’s first wave of EVs reach the end of their useful life, early owners are starting to retire their cars, and the country is now under pressure to figure out what to do with those aging components.

The issue is putting strain on China’s still-developing battery recycling industry and has given rise to a gray market that often cuts corners on safety and environmental standards. National regulators and commercial players are also stepping in, but so far these efforts have struggled to keep pace with the flood of batteries coming off the road. Read the full story.

—Caiwei Chen

The AI doomers feel undeterred

It’s a weird time to be an AI doomer.This small but influential community believes, in the simplest terms, that AI could get so good it could be bad—very, very bad—for humanity.

The doomer crowd has had some notable success over the past several years: including helping shape AI policy coming from the Biden administration. But a number of developments over the past six months have put them on the back foot. Talk of an AI bubble has overwhelmed the discourse as tech companies continue to invest in multiple Manhattan Projects’ worth of data centers without any certainty that future demand will match what they’re building.

So where does this leave the doomers? We decided to ask some of the movement’s biggest names to see if the recent setbacks and general vibe shift had altered their views. See what they had to say in our story.

—Garrison Lovely

This story is part of our new Hype Correction package, a collection of stories designed to help you reset your expectations about what AI makes possible—and what it doesn’t. Check out the rest of the package.

Take our quiz on the year in health and biotechnology

In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be bidding farewell to 2025. And what a year it has been! Artificial intelligence is being incorporated into more aspects of our lives, weight-loss drugs have expanded in scope, and there have been some real “omg” biotech stories from the fields of gene therapy, IVF, neurotech, and more.

Jessica Hamzelou, our senior biotech reporter, is inviting you to put your own memory to the test. So how closely have you been paying attention this year?

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

The must-reads

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

1 TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US unit 
Its new owner will be a joint venture controlled by American investors including Oracle. (Axios)
+ But the platform is adamant that its Chinese owner will retain its core US business. (FT $)
+ The deal is slated to close on January 22 next year. (Bloomberg $)
+ It means TikTok will sidestep a US ban—at least for now. (The Guardian)

2 A tip on Reddit helped to end the hunt for the Brown University shooter
The suspect, who has been found dead, is also suspected of killing an MIT professor. (NYT $)
+ The shooter’s motivation is still unclear, police say. (WP $)

3 Tech leaders are among those captured in newly-released Epstein photos
Bill Gates and Google’s Sergey Brin are both in the pictures. (FT $)
+ They’ve been pulled from a tranche of more than 95,000. (Wired $)

4 A Starlink satellite appears to have exploded
And it’s now falling back to earth. (The Verge)
+ On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop. (MIT Technology Review)

5 YouTube has shut down two major channels that share fake movie trailers
Screen Culture and KH Studio uploaded AI-generated mock trailers with over a billion views. (Deadline)
+ Google is treading a thin line between embracing and shunning generative AI. (Ars Technica)

6 Trump is cracking down on investment in Chinese tech firms
Lawmakers are increasingly worried that US money is bolstering the country’s surveillance state. (WSJ $)
+ Meanwhile, China is working on boosting its chip output. (FT $)

7 ICE has paid an AI agent company to track down targets
It claims to be able to rapidly trace a target’s online network. (404 Media)

8 America wants to return to the Moon by 2028
And to build some nuclear reactors while it’s up there. (Ars Technica)
+ Southeast Asia seeks its place in space. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Actors in the UK are refusing to be scanned for AI
They’re reportedly routinely pressured to consent to creating digital likenesses of themselves. (The Guardian)
+ How Meta and AI companies recruited striking actors to train AI. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Indian tutors are explaining how to use AI over WhatsApp
Lessons are cheap and personalized—but the teachers aren’t always credible. (Rest of World)
+ How Indian health-care workers use WhatsApp to save pregnant women. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Trump wants to hand over even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies. Americans deserve to know if the president struck another backdoor deal for this billionaire takeover of TikTok.”

—Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren queries the terms of the deal that TikTok has made to allow it to continue operating in the US in a post on Bluesky.

One more thing

Synthesia’s AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they’ll be able to talk back.

—Rhiannon Williams

Earlier this summer, I visited the AI company Synthesia to create a hyperrealistic AI-generated avatar of me. The company’s avatars are a decent barometer of just how dizzying progress has been in AI over the past few years, so I was curious just how accurately its latest AI model, introduced last month, could replicate me.

I found my avatar as unnerving as it is technically impressive. It’s slick enough to pass as a high-definition recording of a chirpy corporate speech, and if you didn’t know me, you’d probably think that’s exactly what it was.

My avatar shows how it’s becoming ever-harder to distinguish the artificial from the real. And before long, these avatars will even be able to talk back to us. But how much better can they get? And what might interacting with AI clones do to us? Read the full story.

We can still have nice things

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

+ You can keep your beef tallow—here are the food trends that need to remain firmly in 2025.
+ The Library of Congress has some lovely images of winter that are completely free to use.
+ If you’ve got a last minute Christmas work party tonight, don’t make these Secret Santa mistakes.
+ Did you realize Billie Eilish’s smash hit Birds of a Feather has the same chord progression as Wham’s Last Christmas? They sound surprisingly good mashed together.

The Download: the worst technology of 2025, and Sam Altman’s 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.

The 8 worst technology flops of 2025

Welcome to our annual list of the worst, least successful, and simply dumbest technologies of the year.

We like to think there’s a lesson in every technological misadventure. But when technology becomes dependent on power, sometimes the takeaway is simpler: it would have been better to stay away.

Regrets—2025 had a few. Here are some of the more notable ones.

—Antonio Regalado

A brief history of Sam Altman’s hype

Each time you’ve heard a borderline outlandish idea of what AI will be capable of, it often turns out that Sam Altman was, if not the first to articulate it, at least the most persuasive and influential voice behind it.

For more than a decade he has been known in Silicon Valley as a world-class fundraiser and persuader. Throughout, Altman’s words have set the agenda. What he says about AI is rarely provable when he says it, but it persuades us of one thing: This road we’re on with AI can go somewhere either great or terrifying, and OpenAI will need epic sums to steer it toward the right destination. In this sense, he is the ultimate hype man.

To understand how his voice has shaped our understanding of what AI can do, we read almost everything he’s ever said about the technology. His own words trace how we arrived here. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

This story is part of our new Hype Correction package, a collection of stories designed to help you reset your expectations about what AI makes possible—and what it doesn’t. Check out the rest of the package here.

Can AI really help us discover new materials?

One of my favorite stories in the Hype Correction package comes from my colleague David Rotman, who took a hard look at AI for materials research. AI could transform the process of discovering new materials—innovation that could be especially useful in the world of climate tech, which needs new batteries, semiconductors, magnets, and more.

But the field still needs to prove it can make materials that are actually novel and useful. Can AI really supercharge materials research? And what would that look like? 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 China built a chip-making machine to rival the West’s supremacy 
Suggesting China is far closer to achieving semiconductor independence than we previously believed. (Reuters)
+ China’s chip boom is creating a new class of AI-era billionaires. (Insider $)

2 NASA finally has a new boss
It’s billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Elon Musk. (Insider $)
+ But will Isaacman lead the US back to the Moon before China? (BBC)
+ Trump previously pulled his nomination, before reselecting Isaacman last month. (The Verge)

3 The parents of a teenage sextortion victim are suing Meta
Murray Dowey took his own life after being tricked into sending intimate pictures to an overseas criminal gang. (The Guardian)
+ It’s believed that the gang is based in West Africa. (BBC)

4 US and Chinese satellites are jostling in orbit
In fact, these clashes are so common that officials have given it a name—”dogfighting.” (WP $)
+ How to fight a war in space (and get away with it) (MIT Technology Review)

5 It’s not just AI that’s trapped in a bubble right now
Labubus, anyone? (Bloomberg $)
+ What even is the AI bubble? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Elon Musk’s Texan school isn’t operating as a school
Instead, it’s a “licensed child care program” with just a handful of enrolled kids. (NYT $)

7 US Border Patrol is building a network of small drones
In a bid to expand its covert surveillance powers. (Wired $)
+ This giant microwave may change the future of war. (MIT Technology Review)

8 This spoon makes low-salt foods taste better
By driving the food’s sodium ions straight to the diner’s tongue. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 AI cannot be trusted to run an office vending machine
Though the lucky Wall Street Journal staffer who walked away with a free PlayStation may beg to differ. (WSJ $)

10 Physicists have 3D-printed a Cheistmas tree from ice
No refrigeration kit required. (Ars Technica) 

Quote of the day

“It will be mentioned less and less in the same way that Microsoft Office isn’t mentioned in job postings anymore.”

—Marc Cenedella, founder and CEO of careers platform Ladders, tells Insider why employers will increasingly expect new hires to be fully au fait with AI.

One more thing

Is this the electric grid of the future?

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

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

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

—Andrew Blum

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.)

+ A fragrance company is trying to recapture the scent of extinct flowers, wow. 
+ Seattle’s Sauna Festival sounds right up my street.
+ Switzerland has built what’s essentially a theme park dedicated to Saint Bernards. 
+ I fear I’ll never get over this tale of director supremo James Cameron giving a drowning rat CPR to save its life

The Download: why 2025 has been the year of AI hype correction, and fighting GPS jamming

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 great AI hype correction of 2025

Some disillusionment was inevitable. When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an entire industry—and several world economies. Millions of people started talking to their computers, and their computers started talking back. We were enchanted, and we expected more.

Well, 2025 has been a year of reckoning. For a start, the heads of the top AI companies made promises they couldn’t keep. At the same time, updates to the core technology are no longer the step changes they once were.

To be clear, the last few years have been filled with genuine “Wow” moments. But this remarkable technology is only a few years old, and in many ways it is still experimental. Its successes come with big caveats. Read the full story to learn more about why we may need to readjust our expectations.

—Will Douglas Heaven

This story is part of our new Hype Correction package, a collection of stories designed to help you reset your expectations about what AI makes possible—and what it doesn’t. Check out the rest of the package here, and you can read more about why it’s time to reset our expectations for AI in the latest edition of the Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up here to make sure you receive future editions straight to your inbox.

Quantum navigation could solve the military’s GPS jamming problem

Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, thousands of flights have been affected by a far-reaching Russian campaign of using radio transmissions that jammed its GPS system.

The growing inconvenience to air traffic and risk of a real disaster have highlighted the vulnerability of GPS and focused attention on more secure ways for planes to navigate the gauntlet of jamming and spoofing, the term for tricking a GPS receiver into thinking it’s somewhere else.

One approach that’s emerging from labs is quantum navigation: exploiting the quantum nature of light and atoms to build ultra-sensitive sensors that can allow vehicles to navigate independently, without depending on satellites. Read the full story.

—Amos Zeeberg

The must-reads

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

1 The Trump administration has launched its US Tech Force program
In a bid to lure engineers away from Big Tech roles and straight into modernizing the government. (The Verge)
+ So, essentially replacing the IT workers that DOGE got rid of, then. (The Register)

2 Lawmakers are investigating how AI data centers affect electricity costs
They want to get to the bottom of whether it’s being passed onto consumers. (NYT $)
+ Calculating AI’s water usage is far from straightforward, too. (Wired $)
+ AI is changing the grid. Could it help more than it harms? (MIT Technology Review)

3 Ford isn’t making a large all-electric truck after all
After the US government’s support for EVs plummeted. (Wired $)
+ Instead, the F-150 Lightning pickup will be reborn as a plug-in hybrid. (The Information $)
+ Why Americans may be finally ready to embrace smaller cars. (Fast Company $)
+ The US could really use an affordable electric truck. (MIT Technology Review)

4 PayPal wants to become a bank in the US
The Trump administration is very friendly to non-traditional financial companies, after all. (FT $)
+ It’s been a good year for the crypto industry when it comes to banking. (Economist $)

5 A tech trade deal between the US and UK has been put on ice
America isn’t happy with the lack of progress Britain has made, apparently. (NYT $)
+ It’s a major setback in relations between the pair. (The Guardian)

6 Why does no one want to make the cure for dengue?
A new antiviral pill appears to prevent infection—but its development has been abandoned. (Vox)

7 The majority of the world’s glaciers are forecast to disappear by 2100
At a rate of around 3,000 per year. (New Scientist $)
+ Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier”. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Hollywood is split over AI
While some filmmakers love it, actors are horrified by its inexorable rise. (Bloomberg $)

9 Corporate America is obsessed with hiring storytellers
It’s essentially a rehashed media relations manager role overhauled for the AI age. (WSJ $)

10 The concept of hacking existed before the internet
Just ask this bunch of teenage geeks. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“So the federal government deleted 18F, which was doing great work modernizing the government, and then replaced it with a clone? What is the point of all this?”

—Eugene Vinitsky, an assistant professor at New York University, takes aim at the US government’s decision to launch a new team to overhaul its approach to technology in a post on Bluesky.

One more thing

How DeepSeek became a fortune teller for China’s youth

As DeepSeek has emerged as a homegrown challenger to OpenAI, young people across the country have started using AI to revive fortune-telling practices that have deep roots in Chinese culture.

Across Chinese social media, users are sharing AI-generated readings, experimenting with fortune-telling prompt engineering, and revisiting ancient spiritual texts—all with the help of DeepSeek.

The surge in AI fortune-telling comes during a time of pervasive anxiety and pessimism in Chinese society. And as spiritual practices remain hidden underground thanks to the country’s regime, computers and phone screens are helping younger people to gain a sense of control over their lives. Read the full story.

—Caiwen Chen

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.)

+ Chess has been online as far back as the 1800s (no, really!)
+ Jane Austen was born 250 years ago today. How well do you know her writing? ($)
+ Rob Reiner, your work will live on forever.
+ I enjoyed this comprehensive guide to absolutely everything you could ever want to know about New England’s extensive seafood offerings.

The Download: introducing the AI Hype Correction package

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

Introducing: the AI Hype Correction package

AI is going to reproduce human intelligence. AI will eliminate disease. AI is the single biggest, most important invention in human history. You’ve likely heard it all—but probably none of these things are true.

AI is changing our world, but we don’t yet know the real winners, or how this will all shake out.

After a few years of out-of-control hype, people are now starting to re-calibrate what AI is, what it can do, and how we should think about its ultimate impact.

Here, at the end of 2025, we’re starting the post-hype phase. This new package of stories, called Hype Correction, is a way to reset expectations—a critical look at where we are, what AI makes possible, and where we go next.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect:

+ An introduction to four ways of thinking about the great AI hype correction of 2025.

+  While it’s safe to say we’re definitely in an AI bubble right now, what’s less clear is what it really looks like—and what comes after it pops. Read the full story.

+ Why OpenAI’s Sam Altman can be traced back to so many of the more outlandish proclamations about AI doing the rounds these days. Read the full story.

+ It’s a weird time to be an AI doomer. But they’re not giving up.

+ AI coding is now everywhere—but despite the billions of dollars being poured into improving AI models’ coding abilities, not everyone is convinced. Read the full story.

+ If we really want to start finding new kinds of materials faster, AI materials discovery needs to make it out of the lab and move into the real world. Read the full story.

+ Why reports of AI’s potential to replace trained human lawyers are greatly exaggerated.

+ Dr. Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at AI startup Hugging Face, explains why the generative AI hype train is distracting us from what AI actually is and what it can—and crucially, cannot—do. Read the full story.

The must-reads

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

1 iRobot has filed for bankruptcy
The Roomba maker is considering handing over control to its main Chinese supplier. (Bloomberg $)
+ A proposed Amazon acquisition fell through close to two years ago. (FT $)
+ How the company lost its way. (TechCrunch)
+ A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? (MIT Technology Review)

2 Meta’s 2025 has been a total rollercoaster ride
From its controversial AI team to Mark Zuckerberg’s newfound appreciation for masculine energy. (Insider $)

3 The Trump administration is giving the crypto industry a much easier ride
It’s dismissed crypto lawsuits involving many firms with financial ties to Trump. (NYT $)
+ Celebrities are feeling emboldened to flog crypto once again. (The Guardian)
+ A bitcoin investor wants to set up a crypto libertarian community in the Caribbean. (FT $)

4 There’s a new weight-loss drug in town
And people are already taking it, even though it’s unapproved. (Wired $)
+ What we still don’t know about weight-loss drugs. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Chinese billionaires are having dozens of US-born surrogate babies
An entire industry has sprung up to support them. (WSJ $)
+ A controversial Chinese CRISPR scientist is still hopeful about embryo gene editing. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Trump’s “big beautiful bill” funding hinges on states integrating AI into healthcare
Experts fear it’ll be used as a cost-cutting measure, even if it doesn’t work. (The Guardian)
+ Artificial intelligence is infiltrating health care. We shouldn’t let it make all the decisions. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Extreme rainfall is wreaking havoc in the desert
Oman and the UAE are unaccustomed to increasingly common torrential downpours. (WP $)

8 Data centers are being built in countries that are too hot for them
Which makes it a lot harder to cool them sufficiently. (Rest of World)

9 Why AI image generators are getting deliberately worse
Their makers are pursuing realism—not that overly polished, Uncanny Valley look. (The Verge)
+ Inside the AI attention economy wars. (NY Mag $)

10 How a tiny Swedish city became a major video game hub
Skövde has formed an unlikely community of cutting-edge developers. (The Guardian)
+ Google DeepMind is using Gemini to train agents inside one of Skövde’s biggest franchises. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“They don’t care about the games. They don’t care about the art. They just want their money.”

—Anna C Webster, chair of the freelancing committee of the United Videogame Workers union, tells the Guardian why their members are protesting the prestigious 2025 Game Awards in the wake of major layoffs.

One more thing

Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML

Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences.

There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls of text on a colored background. In the 2000s, before Squarespace and social media, websites were manifestations of individuality—built from scratch using HTML, by users who had some knowledge of code.

Scattered across the web are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated approach. And the movement is anything but a superficial appeal to retro aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human touch in digital experiences. Read the full story.

—Tiffany Ng

We can still have nice things

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

+  Here’s how a bit of math can help you wrap your presents much more neatly this year.
+ It seems that humans mastered making fire way, way earlier than we realized.
+ The Arab-owned cafes opening up across the US sound warm and welcoming.
+ How to give a gift the recipient will still be using and loving for decades to come.

The Download: expanded carrier screening, and how Southeast Asia plans to get to space

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.

Expanded carrier screening: Is it worth it?

Carrier screening  tests would-be parents for hidden genetic mutations that might affect their children. It initially involved testing for specific genes in at-risk populations.

Expanded carrier screening takes things further, giving would-be parents an option to test for a wide array of diseases in prospective parents and egg and sperm donors.

The companies offering these screens “started out with 100 genes, and now some of them go up to 2,000,” Sara Levene, genetics counsellor at Guided Genetics, said at a meeting I attended this week. “It’s becoming a bit of an arms race amongst labs, to be honest.”

But expanded carrier screening comes with downsides. And it isn’t for everyone. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

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

Southeast Asia seeks its place in space

It’s a scorching October day in Bangkok and I’m wandering through the exhibits at the Thai Space Expo, held in one of the city’s busiest shopping malls, when I do a double take. Amid the flashy space suits and model rockets on display, there’s a plain-looking package of Thai basil chicken. I’m told the same kind of vacuum-­sealed package has just been launched to the International Space Station.

It’s an unexpected sight, one that reflects the growing excitement within the Southeast Asian space sector. And while there is some uncertainty about how exactly the region’s space sector may evolve, there is plenty of optimism, too. Read the full story.

—Jonathan O’Callaghan

This story is from the next print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine. 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 Disney just signed a major deal with OpenAI
Meaning you’ll soon be able to create Sora clips starring 200 Marvel, Pixel and Star Wars characters. (Hollywood Reporter $)
+ Disney used to be openly skeptical of AI. What changed? (WSJ $)
+ It’s not feeling quite so friendly towards Google, however. (Ars Technica)
+ Expect a load of AI slop making its way to Disney Plus. (The Verge)

2 Donald Trump has blocked US states from enforcing their own AI rules
But technically, only Congress has the power to override state laws. (NYT $)
+ A new task force will seek out states with “inconsistent” AI rules. (Engadget)
+ The move is particularly bad news for California. (The Markup)

3 Reddit is challenging Australia’s social media ban for teens
It’s arguing that the ban infringes on their freedom of political communication. (Bloomberg $)
+ We’re learning more about the mysterious machinations of the teenage brain. (Vox)

4 ChatGPT’s “adult mode” is due to launch early next year
But OpenAI admits it needs to improve its age estimation tech first. (The Verge)
+ It’s pretty easy to get DeepSeek to talk dirty. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The death of Running Tide’s carbon removal dream
The company’s demise is a wake-up call to others dabbling in experimental tech. (Wired $)
+ We first wrote about Running Tide’s issues back in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)
+ What’s next for carbon removal? (MIT Technology Review)

6 That dirty-talking AI teddy bear wasn’t a one-off
It turns out that a wide range of LLM-powered toys aren’t suitable for children. (NBC News)
+ AI toys are all the rage in China—and now they’re appearing on shelves in the US too. (MIT Technology Review)

7 These are the cheapest places to create a fake online account
For a few cents, scammers can easily set up bots. (FT $)

8 How professors are attempting to AI-proof exams
ChatGPT won’t help you cut corners to ace an oral examination. (WP $)

9 Can a font be woke?
Marco Rubio seems to think so. (The Atlantic $)

10 Next year is all about maximalist circus decor
That’s according to Pinterest’s trend predictions for 2026. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

 “Trump is delivering exactly what his billionaire benefactors demanded—all at the expense of our kids, our communities, our workers, and our planet.” 

—Senator Ed Markey criticizes Donald Trump’s decision to sign an order cracking down on US states’ ability to self-regulate AI, the Wall Street Journal reports.

One more thing

Taiwan’s “silicon shield” could be weakening

Taiwanese politics increasingly revolves around one crucial question: Will China invade? China’s ruling party has wanted to seize Taiwan for more than half a century. But in recent years, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has placed greater emphasis on the idea of “taking back” the island (which the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, has never controlled).

Many in Taiwan and elsewhere think one major deterrent has to do with the island’s critical role in semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan produces the majority of the world’s semiconductors and more than 90% of the most advanced chips needed for AI applications.

But now some Taiwan specialists and some of the island’s citi­zens are worried that this “silicon shield,” if it ever existed, is cracking. Read the full story.

—Johanna M. Costigan

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.)

+ Reasons to be cheerful: people are actually nicer than we think they are.
+ This year’s Krampus Run in Whitby—the Yorkshire town that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula—looks delightfully spooky.
+ How to find the magic in that most mundane of locations: the airport.
+ The happiest of birthdays to Dionne Warwick, who turns 85 today.

The Download: solar geoengineering’s future, and OpenAI is being sued

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.

Solar geoengineering startups are getting serious

Solar geoengineering aims to manipulate the climate by bouncing sunlight back into space. In theory, it could ease global warming. But as interest in the idea grows, so do concerns about potential consequences.

A startup called Stardust Solutions recently raised a $60 million funding round, the largest known to date for a geoengineering startup. My colleague James Temple has a new story out about the company, and how its emergence is making some researchers nervous.

So far, the field has been limited to debates, proposed academic research, and—sure—a few fringe actors to keep an eye on. Now things are getting more serious. So what does it mean for geoengineering, and for the climate? 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.

If you’re interested in reading more about solar geoengineering, check out:

+ Why the for-profit race into solar geoengineering is bad for science and public trust. Read the full story.

+ Why we need more research—including outdoor experiments—to make better-informed decisions about such climate interventions.

+ The hard lessons of Harvard’s failed geoengineering experiment, which was officially terminated last year. Read the full story.

+ How this London nonprofit became one of the biggest backers of geoengineering research.

+ The technology could alter the entire planet. These groups want every nation to have a say.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI is being sued for wrongful death
By the estate of a woman killed by her son after he engaged in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT. (WSJ $)
+ The chatbot appeared to validate Stein-Erik Soelberg’s conspiratorial ideas. (WP $)
+ It’s the latest in a string of wrongful death legal actions filed against chatbot makers. (ABC News)

2 ICE is tracking pregnant immigrants through specifically-developed smartwatches
They’re unable to take the devices off, even during labor. (The Guardian)
+ Pregnant and postpartum women say they’ve been detained in solitary confinement. (Slate $)
+ Another effort to track ICE raids has been taken offline. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Meta’s new AI hires aren’t making friends with the rest of the company
Tensions are rife between the AGI team and other divisions. (NYT $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg is keen to make money off the company’s AI ambitions. (Bloomberg $)
+ Meanwhile, what’s life like for the remaining Scale AI team? (Insider $)

4 Google DeepMind is building its first materials science lab in the UK
It’ll focus on developing new materials to build superconductors and solar cells. (FT $) 

5 The new space race is to build orbital data centers
And Blue Origin is winning, apparently. (WSJ $)
+ Plenty of companies are jostling for their slice of the pie. (The Verge)
+ Should we be moving data centers to space? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Inside the quest to find out what causes Parkinson’s
A growing body of work suggests it may not be purely genetic after all. (Wired $)

7 Are you in TikTok’s cat niche? 
If so, you’re likely to be in these other niches too. (WP $)

8 Why do our brains get tired?
Researchers are trying to get to the bottom of it.  (Nature $)

9 Microsoft’s boss has built his own cricket app
Satya Nadella can’t get enough of the sound of leather on willow. (Bloomberg $)

10 How much vibe coding is too much vibe coding? 
One journalist’s journey into the heart of darkness. (Rest of World)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I feel so much pain seeing his sad face…I hope for a New Year’s miracle.”

—A child in Russia sends a message to the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League explaining the impact of the country’s decision to block access to the wildly popular gaming platform Roblox on their brother, the Washington Post reports.

 One more thing

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

After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior. 

One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.

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

—Jessica Klein

We can still have nice things

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

+ The New Yorker has picked its best TV shows of 2025. Let the debate commence!
+ Check out the winners of this year’s Drone Photo Awards.
+ I’m sorry to report you aren’t half as intuitive as you think you are when it comes to deciphering your dog’s emotions.
+ Germany’s “home of Christmas” sure looks magical.

The Download: a controversial proposal to solve climate change, and our future grids

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

How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet

Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change—for a price. 

The Israel-based geoengineering startup has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch specially equipped aircraft into the stratosphere. Once they’ve reached the necessary altitude, those planes will disperse particles engineered to reflect away enough sunlight to cool down the planet, purportedly without causing environmental side effects. 

But numerous solar geoengineering researchers are skeptical that Stardust will line up the customers it needs to carry out a global deployment in the next decade. They’re also highly critical of the idea of a private company setting the global temperature for us. Read the full story.

—James Temple

MIT Technology Review Narrated: Is this the electric grid of the future?  

In Nebraska, a publicly owned utility company is tackling the challenges of delivering on reliability, affordability, and sustainability. It aims to reach net zero by 2040—here’s how it plans to get there.

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 Australia’s social media ban for teens has just come into force
The whole world will be watching to see what happens next. (The Guardian)
+ Opinions about the law are sharply divided among Australians. (BBC)
+ Plenty of teens hate it, naturally. (WP $)
+ A third of US teens are on their phones “almost constantly.” (NYT $)

2 This has been the second-hottest year since records began
Mean temperatures approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average. (New Scientist $)
+ Meanwhile world leaders at this year’s UN climate talks couldn’t even agree to use the phrase ‘fossil fuels’ in the final draft. (MIT Technology Review)

3 OpenAI is in trouble
It’s rapidly losing its technological edge to competitors like Google and Anthropic. (The Atlantic $)
+ Silicon Valley is working harder than ever to sell AI to us. (Wired $)
+ There’s a new industry-wide push to agree shared standards for AI agents. (TechCrunch)
+ No one can explain how AI really works—not even the experts attending AI’s biggest research gathering. (NBC)

4 MAGA influencers want Trump to kill the Netflix/Warner Bros deal
They argue Netflix is simply too woke (after all, it employs the Obamas.) (WP $)

5 AI slop videos have taken over social media
It’s now almost impossible to tell if what you’re seeing is real or not. (NYT $)

6 Trump’s system to weed out noncitizen voters is flagging US citizens 
Once alerted, people have 30 days to provide proof of citizenship before they lose their ability to vote. (NPR)
+ The US is planning to ask visitors to disclose five years of social media history. (WP $)
+ How open source voting machines could boost trust in US elections. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Virtual power plants are having a moment
Here’s why they’re poised to play a significant role in meeting energy demand over the next decade. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system. (MIT Technology Review)

8 New devices are about to get (even) more expensive
You can thank AI for pushing up the price of RAM for the rest of us. (The Verge)

9 People hated the McDonald’s AI ad so much the company pulled it 
How are giant corporations still falling into this exact trap every holiday season? (Forbes)  

10 Why is ice slippery? There’s a new hypothesis 
You might think you know. But it’s still fiercely debated among ice researchers! (Quanta $)

Quote of the day

“We’re pleased to be the first, we’re proud to be the first, and we stand ready to help any other jurisdiction who seeks to do these things.”

—Australia’s communications minister Anika Wells tells the BBC how she feels about her government’s decision to ban social media for under-16s. 

One more thing

MICHAEL BYERS

The entrepreneur dreaming of a factory of unlimited organs

At any given time, the US transplant waiting list is about 100,000 people long. Thousands die waiting, and many more never make the list to begin with. Entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt wants to address this by growing organs compatible with human bodies in genetically modified pigs.

In recent years, US doctors have attempted seven pig-to-human transplants, the most dramatic of which was a case where a 57-year-old man with heart failure lived two months with a pig heart supplied by Rothblatt’s company. 

The experiment demonstrated the first life-sustaining pig-to-human organ transplant—and paved the way towards an organized clinical trial to prove they save lives consistently. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

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

+ I want to eat all of these things, starting with the hot chocolate cookies. 
+ Even one minute is enough time to enjoy some of the benefits of mindfulness.
+ The Geminid meteor shower will reach its peak this weekend. Here’s how to see it. 
+ I really enjoy Leah Gardner’s still life paintings.