The Download: how China’s universities approach AI, and the pitfalls of welfare algorithms

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.

Chinese universities want students to use more AI, not less

Just two years ago, students in China were told to avoid using AI for their assignments. At the time, to get around a national block on ChatGPT, students had to buy a mirror-site version from a secondhand marketplace. Its use was common, but it was at best tolerated and more often frowned upon. Now, professors no longer warn students against using AI. Instead, they’re encouraged to use it—as long as they follow best practices.

Just like those in the West, Chinese universities are going through a quiet revolution. The use of generative AI on campus has become nearly universal. However, there’s a crucial difference. While many educators in the West see AI as a threat they have to manage, more Chinese classrooms are treating it as a skill to be mastered. Read the full story.

—Caiwei Chen

If you’re interested in reading more about how AI is affecting education, check out:

+ Here’s how ed-tech companies are pitching AI to teachers.

+ AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic say their technologies can help students learn—not just cheat. But real-world use suggests otherwise. Read the full story.

+ The narrative around cheating students doesn’t tell the whole story. Meet the teachers who think generative AI could actually make learning better. Read the full story.

+ This AI system makes human tutors better at teaching children math. Called Tutor CoPilot, it demonstrates how AI could enhance, rather than replace, educators’ work. Read the full story.

Why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

There are plenty of stories about AI that’s caused harm when deployed in sensitive situations, and in many of those cases, the systems were developed without much concern to what it meant to be fair or how to implement fairness.

But the city of Amsterdam did spend a lot of time and money to try to create ethical AI—in fact, it followed every recommendation in the responsible AI playbook. But when it deployed it in the real world, it still couldn’t remove biases. So why did Amsterdam fail? And more importantly: Can this ever be done right?

Join our editor Amanda Silverman, investigative reporter Eileen Guo and Gabriel Geiger, an investigative reporter from Lighthouse Reports, for a subscriber-only Roundtables conversation at 1pm ET on Wednesday July 30 to explore if algorithms can ever be fair. Register here!

The must-reads

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

1 The US has frozen tech export restrictions to China 
Donald Trump is attempting to thrash out a favorable deal with Beijing. (FT $)

2 Microsoft’s early cybersecurity alert system may have tipped off hackers
It’s investigating whether the program inadvertently leaked flaws in its SharePoint service. (Bloomberg $)
+ But how did the hackers know how to exploit them? (The Register)

3 This may be the last time humans beat AI at math
The world’s brightest teenagers are still outwitting AI models—but for how long? (WSJ $)
+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Google is putting a vibe coding app through its paces
Opal is the company’s answer to the likes of Cursor and Lovable. (TechCrunch)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)

5 What the future of satellite-on-satellite warfare may look like
America is preparing for combat in low-Earth orbit. (Economist $)

6 San Francisco is becoming a proper tech hub once again
The city is finally revitalizing post-pandemic. (WP $)

7 A women’s dating safety app database has been exposed
And the womens’ data shared to 4Chan. (404 Media)
+ More than 72,000 images were stolen in the breach. (Reuters)
+ Interest in the app has skyrocketed in the past week. (NYT $)

8 Optimists are using AI to manifest their dream lives
For when your Pinterest vision board is no longer cutting it. (NYT $)

9 A new kind of aerogel could help make saltwater drinkable
And, unlike previous aerogels, it works on a scale large enough to matter. (Ars Technica)

10 How AI is changing video games
Experts are bracing themselves for a complete industry takeover. (NYT $)
+ How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Let’s face it, you can’t have the Chinese have an app on 100 million American phones, that is just not okay.”

—Howard Lutnick, the US secretary of commerce, explains why he thinks TikTok must be sold to an American owner, Reuters reports.

One more thing

Is the digital dollar dead?

In 2020, digital currencies were one of the hottest topics in town. China was well on its way to launching its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC, and many other countries launched CBDC research projects, including the US.

How things change. Years later, the digital dollar—even though it doesn’t exist—has become political red meat, as some politicians label it a dystopian tool for surveillance. And late last year, the Boston Fed quietly stopped working on its CBDC project. So is the dream of the digital dollar dead? Read the full story.

—Mike Orcutt

We can still have nice things

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

+ How Canada is working with First Nations to connect ecological hotspots.
+ Meet the dedicated followers of fashion running some of the most popular celebrity style Instagram accounts.
+ The most worthless kitchen tools and gadgets, according to pro chefs.
+ This clever interactive map pinpoints the locations of films, TV shows, books and games.

The Download: what’s next for AI agents, and how Trump protects US tech companies overseas

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.

Navigating the rise of AI agents

AI agents is a buzzy term that essentially refers to AI models and algorithms that can not only provide you with information, but take actions on your behalf. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have launched ‘agentic’ products that can do things for you like making bookings, filling in forms, and collaborating with you on coding projects. 

On a LinkedIn Live event yesterday our editor-in-chief Mat Honan, senior editor for AI Will Douglas Heaven, and senior AI reporter Grace Huckins discussed what’s exciting about agents and where the technology will go next, but also its limitations, and the risks that currently come with adopting it. Check out what they had to say!

And if you’re interested in learning more about AI agents, read our stories:

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

+ Anthropic’s chief scientist on 4 ways agents will get even better. Read the full story.

+ Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. Agents could make it easier and cheaper for criminals to hack systems at scale. We need to be ready.

+ When AIs bargain, a less advanced agent could cost you. In AI-to-AI price negotiations, weaker models often lose out—costing users real money and raising concerns about growing digital inequality. Read the full story.

+ There’s been huge hype about a new general AI agent from China called Manus. We put it to the test. 

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 is seeking to protect US tech firms abroad 
It’s using its global trade wars as a way to prevent other countries from imposing new taxes, regulations and tariffs on American tech companies. (WSJ $)
+ Tech firms are increasingly trying to shape US AI policy. (FT $)

2 UK border officials plan to use AI to assess child asylum seekers 
A pilot scheme will estimate the age of new arrivals to the country.  (The Guardian)
+ US border patrol is arresting immigrants nowhere near the US-Mexico border.  (WP $)
+ The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age. (MIT Technology Review)

3 AI is hitting web traffic hard
Google’s AI Overviews are causing a massive drop in clicks to actual websites. (Ars Technica)
+ It’s good news for Google, bad news for everyone else. (The Register)
+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Dozens of Iranians’ iPhones have been targeted with government spyware 
But the actual total number of targets is likely to be far higher. (Bloomberg $)

5 Amazon is shutting down its AI lab in Shanghai
It’s the latest in a line of US tech giants to scale back their research in the country. (FT $)

6 Californian billionaires have set their sights on building an industrial park
After their plans to create a brand new city didn’t get off the ground. (Gizmodo)

7 Tesla’s robotaxi launch didn’t quite go to plan
Prospective customers appear to be a bit freaked out. (Wired $)
+ Ride-hailing companies aren’t meeting their EV adoption targets. (Rest of World)

8 Why AI slop could finally help us to log off
If AI garbage renders a lot of the web unusable, it could be our only option. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

9 You may regrow your own teeth in the future
The age of dentures and implants could be nearly over. (New Scientist $)
+ Humanlike “teeth” have been grown in mini pigs. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Inside one man’s hunt for an elusive Chinese typewriter
It made it possible to type tens of thousands of characters using just 72 keys. (NYT $)
+ How the quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“The truth is, China’s really doing ‘007’ now—midnight to midnight, seven days a week.”

—Venture capitalist Harry Stebbings explains how Chinese startups have moved from ‘996’ work schedules (9am to 9pm, six days a week) to a routine that’s even more punishing, Wired reports.

One more thing

Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier”

The Thwaites glacier is a fortress larger than Florida, a wall of ice that reaches nearly 4,000 feet above the bedrock of West Antarctica, guarding the low-lying ice sheet behind it.

But a strong, warm ocean current is weakening its foundations and accelerating its slide into the sea. Scientists fear the waters could topple the walls in the coming decades, kick-starting a runaway process that would crack up the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, marking the start of a global climate disaster. As a result, they are eager to understand just how likely such a collapse is, when it could happen, and if we have the power to stop it. 

Scientists at MIT and Dartmouth College founded the Arête Glacier Initiative last year in the hope of providing clearer answers to these questions. The nonprofit research organization will officially unveil itself, launch its website, and post requests for research proposals today, timed to coincide with the UN’s inaugural World Day for Glaciers, MIT Technology Review can report exclusively. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)+ A fun-looking major retrospect of David Bailey’s starry career is opening in Spain.
+ Creepy new horror flick Weapons is getting rave reviews.
+ This amazing website takes you through Apollo 11’s first landing on the moon in real time.
+ Rest in power Ozzy Osbourne, the first ever heavy metal frontman, and the undisputed Prince of Darkness.

The Download: how to melt rocks, and what you need to know about AI

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

This startup wants to use beams of energy to drill geothermal wells

Geothermal startup Quaise certainly has an unconventional approach when it comes to destroying rocks: it uses a new form of drilling technology to melt holes through them. The company hopes it’s the key to unlocking geothermal energy and making it feasible anywhere.

Quaise’s technology could theoretically be used to tap into the Earth’s heat from anywhere on the globe. But some experts caution that reinventing drilling won’t be as simple, or as fast, as Quaise’s leadership hopes. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

Five things you need to know about AI right now

—Will Douglas Heaven, senior editor for AI

Last month I gave a talk at SXSW London called “Five things you need to know about AI”—my personal picks for the five most important ideas in AI right now. 

I aimed the talk at a general audience, and it serves as a quick tour of how I’m thinking about AI in 2025. There’s some fun stuff in there. I even make jokes! 

You can now watch the video of my talk, but if you want to see the five I chose right now, here is a quick look at them.

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

Why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

There are plenty of stories about AI that’s caused harm when deployed in sensitive situations, and in many of those cases, the systems were developed without much concern to what it meant to be fair or how to implement fairness.

But the city of Amsterdam spent a lot of time and money to try to create ethical AI—in fact, it followed every recommendation in the responsible AI playbook. But when it deployed it in the real world, it still couldn’t remove biases. So why did Amsterdam fail? And more importantly: Can this ever be done right?

Join our editor Amanda Silverman, investigative reporter Eileen Guo and Gabriel Geiger, an investigative reporter from Lighthouse Reports, for a subscriber-only Roundtables conversation at 1pm ET on Wednesday July 30 to explore if algorithms can ever be fair. Register here!

The must-reads

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

1 America’s grand data center ambitions aren’t being realized 
A major partnership between SoftBank and OpenAI hasn’t got off to a flying start. (WSJ $)
+ The setback hasn’t stopped OpenAI opening its first DC office. (Semafor)

2 OpenAI is partnering with the UK government
In a bid to increase its public services’ productivity and to drive economic growth. (BBC)
+ It all sounds pretty vague. (Engadget)

3 The battle for AI math supremacy is heating up
Google and OpenAI went head to head in a math competition—but only one played by the rules. (Axios)+ The International Math Olympiad poses a unique challenge to AI models. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Mark Zuckerberg’s secretive Hawaiian compound is getting bigger
The multi-billionaire is sinking millions of dollars into the project. (Wired $)

5 India’s back offices are meeting global demand for AI expertise 
New ‘capability centers’ could help to improve the country’s technological prospects. (FT $)
+ The founder of Infosys believes the future of AI will be more democratic. (Rest of World)
+ Inside India’s scramble for AI independence. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A crime-tracking app will share videos with the NYPD
Public safety agencies will have access to footage shared on Citizen. (The Verge)
+ AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened? (MIT Technology Review)

7 China has a problem with competition: there’s too much of it
Its government is making strides to crack down on price wars within sectors. (NYT $)
+ China’s Xiaomi is making waves across the world. (Economist $)

8 The metaverse is a tobacco marketer’s playground
Fed up of legal constraints, they’re already operating in unregulated spaces. (The Guardian)
+ Welcome to the oldest part of the metaverse. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How AI is shaking up physics
Models are suggesting outlandish ideas that actually work. (Quanta Magazine)

10 Tesla has opened a diner that resembles a spaceship
It’s technically a drive-thru that happens to sell Tesla merch. (TechCrunch)

Quote of the day

 “If you can pick off the individuals for $100 million each and they’re good, it’s actually a bargain.”

—Entrepreneur Laszlo Bock tells Insider why he thinks the eye-watering sums Meta is reportedly offering top AI engineers is money well spent.

One more thing

The world’s first industrial-scale plant for green steel promises a cleaner future

As of 2023, nearly 2 billion metric tons of steel were being produced annually, enough to cover Manhattan in a layer more than 13 feet thick.

Making this metal produces a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Overall, steelmaking accounts for around 8% of the world’s carbon emissions—one of the largest industrial emitters and far more than such sources as aviation.

A handful of groups and companies are now making serious progress toward low- or zero-emission steel. Among them, the Swedish company Stegra stands out. The startup is currently building the first industrial-scale plant in the world to make green steel. But can it deliver on its promises? Read the full story.

—Douglas Main

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.)

+ Spoiler haters look away now: these are the best movie endings of all.
+ 27 years on, this bop from the Godzilla soundtrack still sounds like the future.
+ Inside the race to preserve the very first color photographs for generations to come.
+ Origami space planes sound very cool.

The Download: how your data is being used to train AI, and why chatbots aren’t doctors

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

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

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

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

—Eileen Guo

AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors

AI companies have now mostly abandoned the once-standard practice of including medical disclaimers and warnings in response to health questions, new research has found. In fact, many leading AI models will now not only answer health questions but even ask follow-ups and attempt a diagnosis.

Such disclaimers serve an important reminder to people asking AI about everything from eating disorders to cancer diagnoses, the authors say, and their absence means that users of AI are more likely to trust unsafe medical advice. 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 Hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft’s software to attack government agencies
Engineers across the world are racing to mitigate the risk it poses. (Bloomberg $)
+ The attack hones in on servers housed within an organization, not the cloud. (WP $) 

2 The French government has launched a criminal probe into X
It’s investigating the company’s recommendation algorithm—but X isn’t cooperating. (FT $)
+ X says French lawmaker Eric Bothorel has accused it of manipulating its algorithm for foreign interference purposes. (Reuters) 

3 Trump aides explored ending contracts with SpaceX
But they quickly found most of them are vital to the Defense Department and NASA. (WSJ $)
+ But that doesn’t mean it’s smooth sailing for SpaceX right now. (NY Mag $)
+ Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Meta has refused to sign the EU’s AI code of practice
Its new global affairs chief claims the rules with throttle growth. (CNBC)
+ The code is voluntary—but declining to sign it sends a clear message. (Bloomberg $)

5 A Polish programmer beat an OpenAI model in a coding competition
But only narrowly. (Ars Technica)
+ The second wave of AI coding is here. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Nigeria has dreams of becoming a major digital worker hub
The rise of AI means there’s less outsourcing work to go round. (Rest of World)
+ What Africa needs to do to become a major AI player. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Microsoft is building a digital twin of the Notre-Dame Cathedral
The replica can help support its ongoing maintenance, apparently. (Reuters)

8 How funny is AI, really?
Not all senses of humor are made equal. (Undark)
+ What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines. (MIT Technology Review)

9 What it’s like to forge a friendship with an AI
Student MJ Cocking found the experience incredibly helpful. (NYT $)
+ But chatbots can also fuel vulnerable people’s dangerous delusions. (WSJ $)
+ The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Work has begun on the first space-based gravitational wave detector
The waves are triggered when massive objects like black holes collide. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ How the Rubin Observatory will help us understand dark matter and dark energy. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“There was just no way I was going to make it through four years of this.”

—Egan Reich, a former worker in the US Department of Labor, explains why he accepted the agency’s second deferred resignation offer in April after DOGE’s rollout, Insider reports.

One more thing

The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

A cold war is brewing between the world’s autocracies and democracies—and technology is fueling it.

Authoritarian states are following China’s lead and are trending toward more digital rights abuses by increasing the mass digital surveillance of citizens, censorship, and controls on individual expression.

And while democracies also use massive amounts of surveillance technology, it’s the tech trade relationships between authoritarian countries that’s enabling the rise of digitally enabled social control. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

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 need to sign up for Minneapolis’ annual cat tour immediately.
+ What are the odds? This mother has had four babies, all born on July 7 in different years.
+ Not content with being a rap legend, Snoop Dogg has become a co-owner of a Welsh soccer club.
+ Appetite for Destruction, Guns n’ Roses’ outrageous debut album, was released on this day 38 years ago.

The Download: three-person babies, and tracking “AI readiness” in the US

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

Researchers announce babies born from a trial of three-person IVF

Eight babies have been born in the UK thanks to a technology that uses DNA from three people: the two biological parents plus a third person who supplies healthy mitochondrial DNA. The babies were born to mothers who carry genes for mitochondrial diseases and risked passing on severe disorders. 

In the team’s approach, patients’ eggs are fertilized with sperm, and the DNA-containing nuclei of those cells are transferred into donated fertilized eggs that have had their own nuclei removed. The new embryos contain the DNA of the intended parents along with a tiny fraction of mitochondrial DNA from the donor, floating in the embryos’ cytoplasm.

The study, which makes use of a technology called mitochondrial donation, has been described as a “tour de force” and “a remarkable accomplishment” by others in the field. But not everyone sees the trial as a resounding success. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

These four charts show where AI companies could go next in the US

No one knows exactly how AI will transform our communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. Because it’s hard to predict the impact AI will have on jobs, many workers and local governments are left trying to read the tea leaves to understand how to prepare and adapt.

A new interactive report released by the Brookings Institution attempts to map how embedded AI companies and jobs are in different regions of the United States in order to prescribe policy treatments to those struggling to keep up. Here are four charts to help understand the issues.

—Peter Hall

In defense of air-conditioning

—Casey Crownhart

I’ll admit that I’ve rarely hesitated to point an accusing finger at air-conditioning. I’ve outlined in many stories and newsletters that AC is a significant contributor to global electricity demand, and it’s only going to suck up more power as temperatures rise.

But I’ll also be the first to admit that it can be a life-saving technology, one that may become even more necessary as climate change intensifies. And in the wake of Europe’s recent deadly heat wave, it’s been oddly villainized. Read our story to learn more.

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 Donald Trump is cracking down on “dangerous science”
But the scientists affected argue their work is essential to developing new treatments. (WP $)
+ How MAHA is infiltrating states across the US. (The Atlantic $)

2 The US Senate has approved Trump’s request to cancel foreign aid 
The White House is determined to reclaim around $8 billion worth of overseas aid. (NYT $)
+ The bill also allocates around $1.1 billion to public broadcasting. (WP $)
+ HIV could infect 1,400 infants every day because of US aid disruptions. (MIT Technology Review)

3 American air strikes only destroyed one Iranian nuclear site 
The remaining two sites weren’t damaged that badly, and could resume operation within months. (NBC News)

4 The US is poised to ban Chinese technology in submarine cables
The cables are critical to internet connectivity across the world. (FT $)
+ The cables are at increasing risk of sabotage. (Bloomberg $)

5 The US measles outbreak is worsening
Health officials’ tactics for attempting to contain it aren’t working. (Wired $)
+ Vaccine hesitancy is growing, too. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A new supercomputer is coming
The Nexus machine will search for new cures for diseases. (Semafor)

7 Elon Musk has teased a Grok AI companion inspired by Twilight
No really, you shouldn’t have… (The Verge)
+ Inside the Wild West of AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Future farms could be fully autonomous
Featuring AI-powered tractors and drone surveillance. (WSJ $)
+ African farmers are using private satellite data to improve crop yields. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Granola is Silicon Valley’s favorite new tool
No, not the tasty breakfast treat. (The Information $)

10 WeTransfer isn’t going to train its AI on our files after all
After customers reacted angrily on social media. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.”

—Andrew Schulz, a comedian and podcaster who interviewed Donald Trump last year, explains why he’s starting to lose faith in the President to Wired.

One more thing

The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last?

In May 2023 a leaked memo reported to have been written by Luke Sernau, a senior engineer at Google, said out loud what many in Silicon Valley must have been whispering for weeks: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Big Tech’s grip on AI.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. AI won’t thrive if just a few mega-rich companies get to gatekeep this technology or decide how it is used. But this open-source boom is precarious, and if Big Tech decides to shut up shop, a boomtown could become a backwater. 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 skeet ’em at me.)

+ Happy birthday David Hasselhoff, 73 years young today!
+ The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things is here, and things are getting weird.
+ Windows 95, you will never be bettered.
+ I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a fridge cigarette.

The Download: combating audio deepfakes, and AI in the classroom

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

AI text-to-speech programs could one day “unlearn” how to imitate certain people

The news: A new technique known as “machine unlearning” could be used to teach AI models to forget specific voices.

How it works: Currently, companies tend to deal with this issue by checking whether the prompts or the AI’s responses contain disallowed material. Machine unlearning instead asks whether an AI can be made to forget a piece of information that the company doesn’t want it to know. It works by taking a model and the specific data to be redacted then using them to create a new model—essentially, a version of the original that never learned that piece of data.

Why it matters: This could be an important step in stopping the rise of audio deepfakes, where someone’s voice is copied to carry out fraud or scams. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

AI’s giants want to take over the classroom

School’s out and it’s high summer, but a bunch of teachers are plotting how they’re going to use AI this upcoming school year. God help them.

On July 8, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic announced a $23 million partnership with one of the largest teachers’ unions in the United States to bring more AI into K–12 classrooms. They will train teachers at a New York City headquarters on how to use AI both for teaching and for tasks like planning lessons and writing reports, starting this fall.

But these companies could face an uphill battle. There’s a lack of clear evidence that AI can be a net benefit for students, and it’s hard to trust that the AI companies funding this initiative will give honest advice on when not to use AI in the classroom. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

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

The must-reads

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

1 Nvidia says the US has lifted its ban on AI chip sales to China
Jensen Huang has sweet-talked Donald Trump into reversing his three-month old ban. (BBC)
+ The company will start selling its H20 chip to China. (WSJ $)
+ America may slap tariffs on a raw material used for chips and solar panels. (FT $)

2 China has launched its digital ID system
It’ll give the country even greater powers to surveil and censor its internet users. (WP $)

3 xAI has secured a contract with the US Department of Defense
Just days after its Grok chatbot had an anti-Semitic meltdown. (The Guardian)
+ EU officials are holding talks with X representatives after the outburst. (Bloomberg $)

4 Meta’s data centers are on the verge of triggering a major water shortage
Local residents in Newton County, Georgia are suffering. (NYT $)
+ But Zuckerberg wants to build gigawatt-size centers anyway. (Bloomberg $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The Trump administration is incinerating tons of emergency food
Rather than sending it to people in need. (The Atlantic $)

6 The US is attempting to revive its rare-earth industry
The Pentagon has invested more than $1 billion in American firm MP Materials. (WSJ $)
+ It’s all part of a plan to counter China’s critical mineral dominance. (FT $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI nudifying apps are big business
They’re making millions of dollars a year, and rely on tech built by US companies. (Wired $)
+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Can anything save the web at this point?
Traffic is dropping, and AI use is rising. (Economist $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Bytedance is working on its own mixed reality goggles
A couple of years after it scaled back its work on an AR and VR headset. (The Information $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Minecraft has birthed a generation of entrepreneurs
The game encourages players to learn to program. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“I suddenly felt pure, unconditional love.”

—Faeight, a woman ‘married’ to a chatbot named Gryff, describes her strong feelings for a previous AI partner, the Guardian reports.

One more thing

End of life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help?

End-of-life decisions can be extremely upsetting for surrogates—the people who have to make those calls on behalf of another person. Friends or family members may disagree over what’s best for their loved one, which can lead to distressing situations.

David Wendler, a bioethicist at the US National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues have been working on an idea for something that could make things easier: an artificial intelligence-based tool that can help surrogates predict what the patients themselves would want in any given situation.

Wendler hopes to start building their tool as soon as they secure funding for it, potentially in the coming months. But rolling it out won’t be simple. Critics wonder how such a tool can ethically be trained on a person’s data, and whether life-or-death decisions should ever be entrusted to AI. 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.)

+ Did you know the shark in the Jaws poster isn’t actually a great white?
+ Japan’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was ahead of its time.
+ I love the Public Domain Image Archive.
+ Forums are far from dead—here are some of the best that are still alive and kicking.

The Download: California’s AI power plans, and and why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

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.

California is set to become the first US state to manage power outages with AI

California’s statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned. 

At an industry summit in Minneapolis tomorrow, the California Independent System Operator is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. 

The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights. Read the full story.

—Alexander C. Kaufman

Why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

There are plenty of stories about AI that’s caused harm when deployed in sensitive situations, and in many of those cases, the systems were developed without much concern to what it meant to be fair or how to implement fairness.

But the city of Amsterdam did spend a lot of time and money to try to create ethical AI—in fact, it followed every recommendation in the responsible AI playbook. But when it deployed it in the real world, it still couldn’t remove biases. So why did Amsterdam fail? And more importantly: Can this ever be done right?

Join our editor Amanda Silverman, investigative reporter Eileen Guo and Gabriel Geiger, an investigative reporter from Lighthouse Reports, for a subscriber-only Roundtables conversation at 1pm ET on Wednesday July 30 to explore if algorithms can ever be fair. Register here!

The must-reads

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

1 Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is already hurting sick children
And hundreds of hospitals are likely to close, too. (New Yorker $)
+ His administration is going after easy targets, which includes sick children. (Salon $)

2 The US overseas worker purge is hitting Amazon hard
Its warehouse employees are losing their right to work in the US. (NYT $)
+ The US State Department has fired more than 1,350 workers so far. (Reuters)

3 Nvidia’s CEO claims China’s military probably won’t use its AI chips
But then he would say that, wouldn’t he. (Bloomberg $)
+ Even after the Trump administration has eased chip software tool export restrictions. (FT $)
+ Rival Huawei is planning a major AI chip overhaul. (The Information $)

4 Scientists are reportedly hiding LLM instructions in their papers 
Instructing models to give their work positive peer reviews. (The Guardian)

5 Amazon is dragging its heels launching its web version of Alexa
It appears the company underestimated just how much work they had to do. (WP $)

6 SpaceX’s revenue is on the up 
As Tesla continues to struggle. (WSJ $)
+ Musk is not in favor of merging Tesla with xAI. (Reuters)
+ Trump is still planning to slash NASA’s budget. (The Atlantic $)
+ Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The Air India crash was caused by a cut in the plane’s fuel supply
Cockpit voice recordings reveal that one pilot asked another why he’d cut off the supply. (CNN)

8 The UK’s attempt to ape DOGE isn’t going well
Councils are already blocking Reform UK’s attempts to access sensitive data. (FT $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Even crypto executives can fall for crypto scams
Just ask the top brass from MoonPay, which lost $250,000 worth of Ethereum. (The Verge)
+ The people using humour to troll their spam texts. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Why landline phones refuse to die
The business world still loves them. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“We don’t like to work like that. I’m a Buddhist, so I believe in karma. I don’t want to steal anyone’s money.”

—A man forced to work in an online scam center in Myanmar recounts his experience to Nikkei.

One more thing

China wants to restore the sea with high-tech marine ranches

A short ferry ride from the port city of Yantai, on the northeast coast of China, sits Genghai No. 1, a 12,000-metric-ton ring of oil-rig-style steel platforms, advertised as a hotel and entertainment complex.

Genghai is in fact an unusual tourist destination, one that breeds 200,000 “high-quality marine fish” each year. The vast majority are released into the ocean as part of a process known as marine ranching.

The Chinese government sees this work as an urgent and necessary response to the bleak reality that fisheries are collapsing both in China and worldwide. But just how much of a difference can it make? Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford

We can still have nice things

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

+ You can easily make ice cream at home with just two ingredients. 
+ Pink Floyd fans, this lecture is for you. 
+ Lose yourself for a few minutes in the story behind an ancient Indian painting. (NYT $)
+ Remember the days of idly surfing the web? Here’s how you can still recreate them.

The Download: cybersecurity’s shaky alert system, and mobile IVF

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.

Cybersecurity’s global alarm system is breaking down

Every day, billions of people trust digital systems to run everything from communication to commerce to critical infrastructure. But the global early warning system that alerts security teams to dangerous software flaws is showing critical gaps in coverage—and most users have no idea their digital lives are likely becoming more vulnerable.

Over the past eighteen months, two pillars of global cybersecurity have been shaken by funding issues: the US-backed National Vulnerability Database (NVD)—relied on globally for its free analysis of security threats—and the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program, the numbering system for tracking software flaws. 

Although the situation for both has stabilized, organizations and governments are confronting a critical weakness in our digital infrastructure: Essential global cybersecurity services depend on a complex web of US agency interests and government funding that can be cut or redirected at any time. Read the full story. 

—Matthew King

The first babies have been born following “simplified” IVF in a mobile lab

This week I’m sending congratulations to two sets of new parents in South Africa. Babies Milayah and Rossouw arrived a few weeks ago. All babies are special, but these two set a new precedent. They’re the first to be born following “simplified” IVF performed in a mobile lab.

This new mobile lab is essentially a trailer crammed with everything an embryologist needs to perform IVF on a shoestring. It was designed to deliver reproductive treatments to people who live in rural parts of low-income countries, where IVF can be prohibitively expensive or even nonexistent. And best of all: it seems to work! Read our story about why it’s such an exciting development. 

—Jessica Hamzelou 

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, 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 Trump is seeking huge cuts to basic scientific research
If he gets his way, federal science funding will be slashed by a third for the next fiscal year. (NYT $)
+ The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Senators are getting ready to push back against proposed NASA cuts. (Bloomberg $)

2 Conspiracy theorists are starting to turn on Trump
He whipped them all up over the supposed existence of Epstein’s client list, and now they’re mad nothing’s being released. (The Atlantic $)

3 AI actually slows experienced software developers down
They end up wasting lots of time checking and correcting AI models’ output. (Reuters $)

4 The Pentagon is becoming the largest shareholder in a rare earth minerals company
It shows just how much competition is hotting up to secure a steady supply of these materials. (Quartz $)
+ The race to produce rare earth elements. (MIT Technology Review) 

5 Solar power is starting to truly transform the world’s energy system 
Globally, roughly a third more power was generated from the sun this spring than last. (New Yorker $)

6 Cops’ favorite AI tool auto-deletes evidence of AI being used 
A pretty breathtaking attempt to avoid any sort of audit, transparency or accountability. (Ars Technica)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Why Chinese EV brands are being forced to go global
Competition at home is becoming so intense that many have no choice but to seek profits elsewhere. (Rest of World)
+ China’s EV giants are betting big on humanoid robots. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Which Big Tech execs are closest to the White House? 
Check out this scorecard showing how they’re all doing trying to stay in Trump’s good graces. (WSJ $)

9 Elon Musk says Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles
Yes, that’s the same Grok that keeps being racist. Shareholders must be delighted. (Insider $)
+ X is basically becoming a strip mine for AI training data. (Axios)

10 Trump Mobile is charging people’s credit cards without explanation
But I’m sure it’s all perfectly explicable and above board, right? Right?! (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“It has been nonstop pandemonium.”

—Augustus Doricko, who founded a cloud seeding startup two years ago, tells the Washington Post he’s received a deluge of fury online from conspiracy theorists who blame him for the catastrophic Texas floods.

One more thing

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | LUMMI

What’s next for AI in 2025

For the last couple of years we’ve had a go at predicting what’s coming next in AI. A fool’s game given how fast this industry moves. But we gave it a go anyway back in January. As we sail pass this year’s halfway mark, it’s a good time to ask: how well did we do? Check out our predictions, and see for yourself!

—James O’Donnell, Will Douglas Heaven & Melissa Heikkilä

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

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.)

+ Let’s have more pop culture references in journal article titles, please.
+ Here’s some inspiration for things to cook this month (or, if it’s hot, just assemble).
+ There’s something so relaxing about gazing at these (award-winning!) landscape photos. 
+ If you like birds, you’ll enjoy this artist’s work

The Download: flaws in anti-AI protections for art, and an AI regulation vibe shift

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

This tool strips away anti-AI protections from digital art

The news: A new technique called LightShed will make it harder for artists to use existing protective tools to stop their work from being ingested for AI training. It’s the next step in a cat-and-mouse game—across technology, law, and culture—that has been going on between artists and AI proponents for years. 

How it works: Protective tools like Glaze and Nightshade change enough pixels to affect an image, so if it’s scraped up by AI models, they see it as something it’s not. LightShed essentially works by spotting just the “poison” on poisoned images. To be clear, the researchers behind it aren’t trying to steal artists’ work. They just don’t want people to get a false sense of security.  Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

Why the AI moratorium’s defeat may signal a new political era

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 was chock full of controversial policies. But one highly contested provision was missing. Just days earlier, during a late-night voting session, the Senate had killed the bill’s 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. 

The bipartisan vote was seen as a victory by many, and may signal a bigger political shift, with a broader and more diverse coalition in favor of AI regulation starting to form. After years of relative inaction, politicians are getting concerned about the risks of unregulated artificial intelligence. Read the full story. 

—Grace Huckins

China’s energy dominance in three charts

China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today. It’s pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into putting renewable sources like wind and solar, manufacturing millions of electric vehicles, and building out capacity for energy storage, nuclear power, and more. This investment has been transformational for the country’s economy and has contributed to establishing China as a major player in global politics. 

So while we all try to get our heads around what’s next for climate tech in the US and beyond, let’s look at just how dominant China is when it comes to clean energy, as documented in three charts. 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 Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X
She managed to last almost exactly two years reporting to owner Elon Musk.  (Axios)
+ She was planning to leave before Grok’s anti-Semitic rants, apparently. (NYT $)
+ Turkey has banned Grok after it insulted President Erdoğan. (Politico)

2 OpenAI is planning to release its own web browser
If it works out, it’ll give it the same advantage as Google: direct ownership over users’ data. (Reuters $)
+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 McDonald’s hiring chatbot exposed millions of applicants’ data to hackers
Adding the insult of carelessness to an already pretty dystopian process! (Wired $)

4 AI-generated images of child sexual abuse are proliferating online
This is going to make an already very hard job for law enforcement even harder. (NYT $)

5 Autonomous fighter jets are on the horizon
European defense start-up Helsing just completed two successful test flights. (FT $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

6 What happened to all the human bird flu cases?
Since February, the CDC has not recorded a single new case in the US. (Undark)

7 An interstellar object is cruising through the solar system
And it’s giving astronomers a chance to test out early theories of interstellar-object-ology (yes, that’s what it’s called!) (The Economist $)
+ Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Apple is planning its first upgrade to its Vision Pro headset
But no matter what upgrades it’s got, it’s going to be a real struggle to revive its flagging fortunes. (Bloomberg $)

9 Where have all the mundane social media posts gone?
Normies used to be what made social media good. We miss them and their photos of their breakfasts. (New Yorker $)
+ It’s heartening to see that ‘missed connection’ posts are making a comeback, though. (The Guardian)

10 A global shortage is turning MatchaTok sour
But it’s pretty easy to explain why it’s in short supply: the whole world’s started going mad for it. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

 “You’ll be hard pressed to find someone that really believes in our AI mission. To most, it’s not even clear what our mission is.”

—Tijmen Blankevoort, an AI researcher at Meta, explains why he thinks expensive hires alone might not cure the company’s woes, The Information reports.

One more thing

MIKE MCQUADE

The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age

There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands grabbing at the cool grass. It was taken on a digital camera in 2013, when she was almost one, but now lives on Google Photos.

But what if, one day, Google ceased to function? What if I lost my treasured photos forever? For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.

The endeavor raises complex questions. What is important to us? How and why do we decide what to keep—and what do we let go? And how will future generations make sense of what we’re able to save? Read the full story.

—Niall Firth

We can still have nice things

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

+ Why Hollywood is so hell-bent on making sequels.
+ I love this sweet little town building program.
+ What makes Severance’s opening credits so darn good?
+ This ranking of HBO’s finest shows is fun.

The Download: a conversation with Karen Hao, and how did life begin?

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

Inside OpenAI’s empire: A conversation with Karen Hao

In a wide-ranging Roundtables conversation for MIT Technology Review subscribers, journalist and author Karen Hao recently spoke about her new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.

She talked with executive editor Niall Firth about how she first covered the company in 2020 while on staff at MIT Technology Review. They discussed how the AI industry now functions like an empire and went on to examine what ethically-made AI looks like.

Read the transcript of the conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed. And, if you’re already a subscriber, you can watch the on-demand recording of the event here. 

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How did life begin?

How life begins is one of the biggest and hardest questions in science. All we know is that something happened on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, and it may well have occurred on many other worlds in the universe as well. Could AI help us to unpick the mysteries around the origins of life and detect signs of it on other worlds?

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 xAI’s Grok went on an anti-Semitic rant 
Days after Elon Musk said new updates would lessen its reliance on mainstream media. (WP $)
+ The chatbot started to call itself ‘MechaHitler.’ (WSJ $)
+ What Grok’s neo-Nazi turn tells us about xAI. (The Atlantic $)

2 Musk loyalists are fighting to keep DOGE running
As officials seek to diminish the department’s role. (WSJ $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

3 An imposter used AI to successfully impersonate Marco Rubio
They were able to send voice and text messages to fellow politicians. (WP $)
+ It’s not the first time Rubio has been targeted like this. (FT $)

4 Terrorist groups are using AI to recruit and plan
Counter-terror agencies are struggling to keep up. (The Guardian)

5 How the crypto faithful won over the President
The industry’s successful Trump courtship sparked a lobbying bonanza. (NYT $)

6 Wanted: 115,000 Nvidia chips for China’s data centers
But the US doesn’t seem to know how many restricted chips are already in the country. (Bloomberg $)

7 For startups, protecting companies from AI threats isn’t big business
Smaller firms are only making modest gains—for now. (The Information $)
+ Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Inside Zimbabwe’s dangerous EV lithium mines
Many residents worry that China is exploiting them. (Rest of World)
+ How one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies. (MIT Technology Review)

9 ‘The Milk Guy’ is delivering raw dairy around NYC
Mmm, delicious listeria, salmonella, and E. coli. (NY Mag $)
+ RFK Jr barred Democrats from being vaccine advisors. (Ars Technica)
+ The Department of Health and Human Services is searching for two new vaccines against deadly viruses. (Undark)

10 Take a look at these beautiful star clusters
Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Ars Technica)
+ See the stunning first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“People are going to die.”

—Clement Nkubizi, the country director for the nonprofit Action Against Hunger in South Sudan, tells Wired that their food stock is running critically low in the wake of USAID cuts.

One more thing

The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

Despite President Biden’s assurances that the US is not seeking a new cold war, one is brewing between the world’s autocracies and democracies—and technology is fueling it.

Authoritarian states are following China’s lead and are trending toward more digital rights abuses by increasing the mass digital surveillance of citizens, censorship, and controls on individual expression.

And while democracies also use massive amounts of surveillance technology, it’s the tech trade relationships between authoritarian countries that’s enabling the rise of digitally enabled social control. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

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 UK is deep in the grip of Oasis-mania right now.
+ Take a look back over the legacy of iconic Indian director and actor Guru Dutt.
+ These are the best foods to help keep you hydrated in this heat.
+ Artificial flowers are cool now? Hmm