The Download: next-gen nuclear, and the data center backlash

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 next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint  

The popularity of commercial nuclear reactors has surged in recent years as worries about climate change and energy independence drowned out concerns about meltdowns and radioactive waste. The problem is, building nuclear power plants is expensive and slow.  

A new generation of nuclear power technology could reinvent what a reactor looks like—and how it works. Advocates hope that new tech can refresh the industry and help replace fossil fuels without emitting greenhouse gases.  Here’s what that might look like.

—Casey Crownhart

Next-gen nuclear is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. If you want to learn more about why it made the list, sign up to receive The Spark, our weekly newsletter all about energy and climate change, tomorrow. You can also check out the rest of the technologies on the list here.

Data centers are amazing. Everyone hates them.

The hyperscale datacenter is a marvel of our age. A masterstroke of engineering across multiple disciplines. They are nothing short of a technological wonder. People hate them.  

People hate them in Virginia, which leads the nation in their construction. They hate them in Nevada, where they slurp up the state’s precious water. They hate them in Michigan, and Arizona, and South Dakota. They hate them all around the world, it’s true. But they really hate them in Georgia. Read our story about why they’re provoking so much fury. 

—Mat Honan

This story first featured in The Debrief with Mat Honan, a weekly newsletter about the biggest stories in tech from our editor in chief. Sign up here to get the next one in your inbox on Friday.

The must-reads

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

1 Iran is systematically crippling Starlink
The satellite internet service is meant to be impossible to jam—but the Iranian authorities are doing just that. (Rest of World)  
+ Messages getting around Iran’s internet block suggest that thousands of people have been killed. (NYT $)
+ On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Studies claiming microplastics harm us are being called into question
Some scientists say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. (The Guardian) 

3 Trump is trying to temper the data center backlash 
He hopes cajoling tech companies to pay more and thus reduce people’s energy bills will do the trick. (WP $) 
+ Microsoft has just become the first tech company to promise it will do just that. (NYT $)
+ We know AI is power hungry. But just how big is the scale of the problem? (MIT Technology Review) 

4 US emissions jumped last year
Thanks to a combination of rising electricity demand, and more coal being burned to meet it. (NYT $)
+ But it’s not all bad news: coal power generation in India and China finally started to decline. (The Guardian)
+ Four bright spots in climate news in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Elon Musk needs to face consequences for his actions
If we tolerate him unleashing a flood of harassment of women and children, what will come next? (The Atlantic $) 
+ The US Senate has passed a bill that could give non-consensual deepfake victims a new way to fight back. (The Verge $)

6 Why the US is set to lose the race back to the moon 
Cuts to NASA aren’t helping, but they’re not the only problem. (Wired $)

7 Google’s Veo AI model can now turn portrait images into vertical videos
Really slick ones, too. (The Verge $)
+ AI-generated influencers are sharing fake images of them in bed with celebrities on Instagram. (404 Media $)

8 Former NYC mayor Eric Adams has been accused of a crypto ‘pump and dump’ 
He promoted a token that saw its market cap briefly soar to $580 million before plummeting. (Coindesk)

9 Are you a middle manager? Here’s some good news for you
Your skills are not being replaced by AI any time soon. (Quartz) 

10 Even miniscule lifestyle tweaks can extend your lifespan
A study of 60,000 adults found just a little bit more sleep and exercise makes a huge difference. (New Scientist $)
+ Aging hits us in our 40s and 60s. But well-being doesn’t have to fall off a cliff. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“What I’m hopeful for in ’26 is for more people speaking up. Speaking truth to power is the point of freedom of speech, is the point of American society.”

—LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman tells Wired he wants more people in Silicon Valley to start pushing back against the Trump administration this year. 

One more thing

DEEP LEARNING INDABA 2024

What Africa needs to do to become a major AI player

Africa is still early in the process of adopting AI technologies. But researchers say the continent is uniquely hospitable to it for several reasons, including a relatively young and increasingly well-educated population, a rapidly growing ecosystem of AI startups, and lots of potential consumers.  

However, ambitious efforts to develop AI tools that answer the needs of Africans face numerous hurdles. Taken together, researchers worry, they could hold Africa’s AI sector back and hamper its efforts to pave its own pathway in the global AI race. Read the full story.

—Abdullahi Tsanni

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.)

+ Still keen to do a bit of reflecting on the year behind and the one ahead? This free guide might help!
+ Turns out British comedian Rik Mayall had some pretty solid life advice.
+ I want to stay in this house in São Paolo.  
+ If you want to stop doomscrolling, it’s worth looking at your sleep habits. ($)

The Download: sodium-ion batteries and China’s bright tech future

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

Sodium-ion batteries are making their way into cars—and the grid

For decades, lithium-ion batteries have powered our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But lithium’s limited supply and volatile price have led the industry to seek more resilient alternatives. Enter: sodium-ion batteries. 

They work much like lithium-ion ones: they store and release energy by shuttling ions between two electrodes. But unlike lithium, a somewhat rare element that is currently mined in only a handful of countries, sodium is cheap and found everywhere. Read why it’s poised to become more important to our energy future.

—Caiwei Chen

Sodium-ion batteries are one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. Take a look at what else made the list. 

CES showed me why Chinese tech companies feel so optimistic

—Caiwei Chen

I decided to go to CES kind of at the last minute. Over the holiday break, contacts from China kept messaging me about their travel plans. After the umpteenth “See you in Vegas?” I caved. As a China tech writer based in the US, I have one week a year when my entire beat seems to come to me—no 20-hour flights required.

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, is the world’s biggest tech show, where companies launch new gadgets and announce new developments, and it happens every January. China has long had a presence at CES, but this year it showed up in a big way. Chinese companies showcased everything from AI gadgets to household appliances to robots, and the overall mood among them was upbeat. Here’s why.

This story was first featured in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside story of what’s going on in AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

This company is developing gene therapies for muscle growth, erectile dysfunction, and “radical longevity”  

At some point this month, a handful of volunteers will be injected with experimental gene therapies as part of an unusual clinical trial. The drugs are potential longevity therapies, says Ivan Morgunov, the CEO of Unlimited Bio, the company behind the trial.  

The volunteers—who are covering their own travel and treatment costs—will receive a series of injections in their arms and legs. One of the therapies is designed to increase the blood supply to those muscles. The other is designed to support muscle growth. The company hopes to see improvements in strength, endurance, and recovery. It also plans to eventually trial similar therapies in the scalp (for baldness) and penis (for erectile dysfunction). 

However, some experts warn the trial is too small, and likely won’t reveal anything useful. Read the full story. 

—Jessica Hamzelou

The must-reads

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

1 Apple is teaming up with Google to give Siri an AI revamp 
That’s a giant win for Google, and a blow for OpenAI. (CNBC)

2 Trump wants Elon Musk to help break Iran’s internet blackout
He’s appealing to Musk to let Iranians circumvent it with Starlink. (WP $)
+ Smuggled tech is Iran’s last link to the outside world. (The Guardian)

3 Right-wing influencers have flocked to Minneapolis 
Their goal is to paint it as a lawless city, and justify ICE’s shooting of Renee Nicole Good. (Wired $)

4 The Pentagon is adopting Musk’s Grok AI chatbot 
Just as it faces a backlash across the world for making non-consensual deepfakes. (NPR)
+ The UK is launching a formal probe into X. (The Guardian)
+ It’s also bringing in a new law which will make it illegal to make these sorts of images. (BBC)

5 The push to power AI is devastating coastal villages in Taiwan
A rapid expansion of wind energy is hurting farmers and fishers. (Rest of World)
+ Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Don’t hold your breath for robots’ ChatGPT moment
AI has unlocked impressive advances in robotics, but we’re a very long way from human-level capabilities. (FT $)
+ Will we ever trust humanoid robots in our homes? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Meta is about to lay off hundreds of metaverse employees
Reality Labs is yesterday’s news—now it’s all about AI. (NYT $)

8 We could eradicate flu 
A “universal” flu vaccine could be far better at protecting us than any existing option. (Vox $)

9 You can now reserve a hotel room on the moon
It’s all yours, for just $250,000. (Ars Technica)
+ This astronaut is training tourists to fly in the world’s first commercial space station. (MIT Technology Review)

10 AI images are complicating efforts to find some monkeys in Missouri 
For real. (AP) 

Quote of the day

“In big cities, everyone is an isolated, atomized individual. People live in soundproof apartments, not knowing the surname of their neighbors.”

—A user on social media platform RedNote explains why a new app called ‘Are you dead’ has become popular in China, Business Insider reports. 

One more thing

STUART BRADFORD

AI is coming for music, too

While large language models that generate text have exploded in the last three years, a different type of AI, based on what are called diffusion models, is having an unprecedented impact on creative domains. 

By transforming random noise into coherent patterns, diffusion models can generate new images, videos, or speech, guided by text prompts or other input data. The best ones can create outputs indistinguishable from the work of people.

Now these models are marching into a creative field that is arguably more vulnerable to disruption than any other: music. And their output encapsulates how difficult it’s becoming to define authorship and originality in the age of AI. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

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.)

+ Bricking your phone is the new Dry January. 
+ If you’re hankering for an adventure this year, check out this National Geographic list.
+ There are few people more furiously punk than women going through the menopause, as this new TV show demonstrates ($).
+ Aww, look how Pallas cats keep their paws warm in winter.

The Download: introducing this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies

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 this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies 

It’s easy to be cynical about technology these days. Many of the “disruptions” of the last 15 years were more about coddling a certain set of young, moneyed San Franciscans than improving the world. Yet you can be sympathetic to the techlash and still fully buy into the idea that technology can be good.

We really can build tools that make this planet healthier, more livable, more equitable, and just all-around better. And some people are doing just that, pushing progress forward across a number of fundamental, potentially world-changing technologies.  

These are exactly the technologies we aim to spotlight in our annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. These are 10 technologies that we believe are poised to fundamentally alter the world, and they’re a matter of hot debate across the newsroom for months before being unveiled. So, without further ado… Here’s the full list.

Do you think we’ve missed something? You have until April to cast your vote for the 11th breakthrough!

Why some “breakthrough” technologies don’t work out 

—Fabio Duarte is associate director and principal research scientist at the MIT Senseable City Lab.

Today marks the 25th year the MIT Technology Review newsroom has compiled its annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies list, which means its journalists and editors have now identified 250 technologies as breakthroughs. 

A few years ago, editor at large David Rotman revisited the publication’s original list, finding that while all the technologies were still relevant, each had evolved and progressed in often unpredictable ways. I lead students through a similar exercise in a graduate class I teach with James Scott for MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, asking them what we can learn from the failures. 

Although it’s less glamorous than envisioning which advances will change our future, analyzing failed technologies is equally important. Read about why that is.

The must-reads

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

1 Iran has almost completely shut its internet down 
Which makes it very hard for the world to witness its government killing people. (AP)
+ The shutdown is chillingly effective, and likely to last. (The Guardian)
+ President Trump is considering military strikes against Iran. (NYT $)

2 ICE is gaining powerful new surveillance capabilities
It’s purchased tools that give it the ability to track individuals across entire neighborhoods. (404 Media $)
+ The ICE shooting shows why reality still matters. (The Verge $)
+ It’s time for Apple to reinstate ICEBlock. (Engadget) 

3 Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Grok 
They are the first in the world to ban the AI tool, which is being used to make explicit non-consensual deepfakes. (BBC)
+ How Elon Musk’s platform unleashed a torrent of abuse upon women and girls. (The Guardian)

4 Silicon Valley’s billionaires are panicking over a proposed 5% wealth tax
Poor dears. (Wired $)

5 Meta signed a deal with three nuclear companies
It’s becoming a favored power source for tech companies as their AI ambitions grow. (TechCrunch)
+ Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI? (MIT Technology Review)

6 AI has a memorization problem 
The fact it reproduces copyrighted work shows it might not work the way its makers claim. (The Atlantic $)
+ DeepSeek is poised to release a new flagship AI model. (The Information $)

7 Here’s the stuff from CES you might actually consider buying 
It’s always a bit of a gimmick fest—but these items made their way onto reporters’ wishlists. (The Verge $)
+ On the flipside, you absolutely should not purchase anything on the ‘worst in show’ list. (The Register)

8 How WhatsApp took over the world 
It’s used by more than three billion people every month—nearly half the global population. (New Yorker $)

9 AI music is here to stay
Love it or hate it, it’s only going to play a bigger role going forward. (Vox)
+ It’s complicating our definitions of authorship and creativity in the process. (MIT Technology Review)

10 We’re crying out for better experiences online
The question is: who will give them to us? (WP $)

Quote of the day

“Things here are very, very bad. A lot of our friends have been killed. They were firing live rounds. It’s like a war zone, the streets are full of blood. They’re taking away bodies in trucks.”

—An anonymous source in Iran’s capital Tehran tells the BBC how the government is cracking down on protests. 

One more thing

This startup is about to conduct the biggest real-world test of aluminum as a zero-carbon fuel

Found Energy aims to harness the energy in scraps of aluminum metal to power industrial processes without fossil fuels. Since 2022, the company has worked to develop ways to rapidly release energy from aluminum on a small scale. 

Now it’s just switched on a much larger version of its aluminum-powered engine, which it claims is the largest aluminum-water reactor ever built. Soon, it will be installed to supply heat and hydrogen to a tool manufacturing facility in the southeastern US, using the aluminum waste produced by the plant itself as fuel.

If everything works as planned, this technology, which uses a catalyst to unlock the energy stored within aluminum metal, could transform a growing share of aluminum scrap into a zero-carbon fuel. Read the full story.

—James Dinneen

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 enjoyed this heartwarming story of love across the generational divide  
+ It turns out you can cook an egg in an air fryer. The big question is—should you?
+ Of course Japan has a real-life Pokémon Fossil Museum.
+ If you haven’t already, make 2026 the year you get a hobby. Your life will be all the richer for it.

The Download: the case for AI slop, and helping CRISPR fulfill its promise

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 I learned to stop worrying and love AI slop

—Caiwei Chen

If I were to locate the moment AI slop broke through into popular consciousness, I’d pick the video of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline that went viral last summer. For many savvy internet users, myself included, it was the first time we were fooled by an AI video, and it ended up spawning a wave of almost identical generated clips.

My first reaction was that, broadly speaking, all of this sucked. That’s become a familiar refrain, in think pieces and at dinner parties. Everything online is slop now—the internet “enshittified,” with AI taking much of the blame. Initially, I largely agreed. But then friends started sharing AI clips in group chats that were compellingly weird, or funny. Some even had a grain of brilliance. 

I had to admit I didn’t fully understand what I was rejecting—what I found so objectionable. To try to get to the bottom of how I felt (and why), I spoke to the people making the videos, a company creating bespoke tools for creators, and experts who study how new media becomes culture. What I found convinced me that maybe generative AI will not end up ruining everything after all. Read the full story.

A new CRISPR startup is betting regulators will ease up on gene-editing

Here at MIT Technology Review we’ve been writing about the gene-editing technology CRISPR since 2013, calling it the biggest biotech breakthrough of the century. Yet so far, there’s been only one gene-editing drug approved, and it’s been used commercially on only about 40 patients, all with sickle-cell disease.

It’s becoming clear that the impact of CRISPR isn’t as big as we all hoped. In fact, there’s a pall of discouragement over the entire field—with some journalists saying the gene-editing revolution has “lost its mojo.”

So what will it take for CRISPR to help more people? A new startup says the answer could be an “umbrella approach” to testing and commercializing treatments which could avoid costly new trials or approvals for every new version. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

America’s new dietary guidelines ignore decades of scientific research

The first days of 2026 have brought big news for health. On Wednesday, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his colleagues at the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture unveiled new dietary guidelines for Americans. And they are causing a bit of a stir.

That’s partly because they recommend products like red meat, butter, and beef tallow—foods that have been linked to cardiovascular disease, and that nutrition experts have been recommending people limit in their diets.

These guidelines are a big deal—they influence food assistance programs and school lunches, for example. Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly advice being dished up to Americans by their government.

—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.

The must-reads

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

1 Grok has switched off its image-generating function for most users
Following a global backlash to its sexualized pictures of women and children. (The Guardian)
+ Elon Musk has previously lamented the “guardrails” around the chatbot. (CNN)
+ XAI has been burning through cash lately. (Bloomberg $)

2 Online sleuths tried to use AI to unmask the ICE agent who killed a woman
The problem is, its results are far from reliable. (WP $)
+ The Trump administration is pushing videos of the incident filmed from a specific angle. (The Verge)
+ Minneapolis is struggling to make sense of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good. (WSJ $)

3 Smartphones and PCs are about to get more expensive
You can thank the memory chip shortage sparked by the AI data center boom. (FT $)
+ Expect delays alongside those price rises, too. (Economist $)

4 NASA is bringing four of the seven ISS crew members back to Earth
It’s not clear exactly why, but it said one of them experienced a “medical situation” earlier this week. (Ars Technica)

5 The vast majority of humanoid robots shipped last year were from China
The country is dominating early supply for the bipedal machines. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why a Chinese robot vacuum firm is moving into EVs. (Wired $)
+ China’s EV giants are betting big on humanoid robots. (MIT Technology Review)

6 New Jersey has banned students’ phones in schools
It’s the latest in a long line of states to restrict devices during school hours. (NYT $)

7 Are AI coding assistants getting worse?
This data scientist certainly seems to think so. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced. (MIT Technology Review)

8 How to save wine from wildfires
Smoke leaves the alcohol with an ashy taste, but a group of scientists are working on a solution. (New Yorker $)

9 Celebrity Letterboxd accounts are good fun
Unsurprisingly, a subset of web users have chosen to hound them. (NY Mag $)

10 Craigslist refuses to die
The old-school classifieds corner of the web still has a legion of diehard fans. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“Tools like Grok now risk bringing sexual AI imagery of children into the mainstream. The harms are rippling out.”

—Ngaire Alexander, head of the Internet Watch Foundation’s reporting hotline, explains the dangers around low-moderation AI tools like Grok to the Wall Street Journal.

One more thing

How to measure the returns on R&D spending

Given the draconian cuts to US federal funding for science, it’s worth asking some hard-nosed money questions: How much should we be spending on R&D? How much value do we get out of such investments, anyway?

To answer that, in several recent papers, economists have approached this issue in clever new ways.  And, though they ask slightly different questions, their conclusions share a bottom line: R&D is, in fact, one of the better long-term investments that the government can make. Read the full story.

—David Rotman

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.)

+ Bruno Mars is back, baby!
+ Hmm, interesting: Apple’s new Widow’s Bay show is inspired by both Stephen King and Donald Glover, which is an intriguing combination.
+ Give this man control of the new Lego AI bricks!
+ An iron age war trumpet recently uncovered in Britain is the most complete example discovered anywhere in the world.

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.