The Download: talking dirty with DeepSeek, and the risks and rewards of calorie restriction

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.

It’s pretty easy to get DeepSeek to talk dirty

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty. DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too.

Huiqian Lai, a PhD student at Syracuse University, found vast differences in how mainstream models process sexual queries, from steadfast rejection to performative refusal followed by the requested sexually explicit content.

The findings highlight inconsistencies in LLMs’ safety boundaries that could, in certain situations, become harmful. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Calorie restriction can help animals live longer. What about humans?

Living comes with a side effect: aging. Despite what you might hear on social media, there are no drugs that are known to slow or reverse human aging. But there’s some evidence to support another approach: cutting back on calories.

Reducing your intake of calories and fasting can help with weight loss. But they may also offer protection against some health conditions. And some believe such diets might even help you live longer—a finding supported by new research out this week.

However, the full picture is not so simple. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits—and risks—of caloric restriction.

—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.

How a 30-year-old techno-thriller predicted our digital isolation

Thirty years ago, Irwin Winkler’s proto–cyber thriller, The Net, was released. It was 1995, commonly regarded as the year Hollywood discovered the internet. Sandra Bullock played a social recluse and computer nerd for hire named Angela Bennett, who unwittingly uncovers a sinister computer security conspiracy. She soon finds her life turned upside down as the conspiracists begin systematically destroying her credibility and reputation.

While the villain of The Net is ultimately a nefarious cybersecurity software company, the film’s preoccupying fear is much more fundamental: If all of our data is digitized, what happens if the people with access to that information tamper with it? Or weaponize it against us? Read the full story.

—Tom Humberstone

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump has extended TikTok’s deadline for a third time 
He’s granted it yet another 90-day reprieve. (WSJ $)
+ He says he needs more time to broker a deal. (AP News)
+ But it’s not clear if Trump’s orders are even legal. (Bloomberg $)

2 A SpaceX rocket exploded on the test stand
Sending a giant fireball into the Texas sky. (CNN)
+ It’s the fourth SpaceX explosion this year. (WP $)
+ The company has a lot of issues to resolve before it can ever reach Mars. (Ars Technica)

3 Checking a web user’s age is technologically possible
An Australian trial may usher in a ban on under-16s accessing social media. (Bloomberg $)
+ The findings are a blow to social media firms who have been fighting to avoid this. (Reuters)

4 Chinese companies are urgently searching for new markets
And Brazil is looking like an increasingly attractive prospect. (NYT $)
+ Chinese carmaker BYD is sending thousands of EVs there. (Rest of World)

5 How Mark Zuckerberg came to love MAGA
His recent alignment with the manosphere hasn’t come as a shock to insiders. (FT $)

6 We shouldn’t be using AI for everything
Using chatbots without good reason is putting unnecessary strain on the planet. (WP $)
+ AI companies are remaining tight-lipped over their energy use. (Wired $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

7 This Chinese courier company is out-delivering Amazon
J&T Express fulfills orders from giants like Temu and Shein. (Rest of World)

8 How Amazon plans to overhaul Alexa
With AI, AI, and some more AI. (Wired $)

9 How smart should today’s toys be?
The last AI-powered Barbie was not a resounding success. (Vox)

10 This French app allows you to rent household appliances
No raclette machine? No problem. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“So Mr “Art of the Deal” has not made a TikTok deal (again).”

—Adam Cochran, founder of venture capital firm Cinneamhain Ventures, questions Donald Trump’s credentials in a post on X.

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.)

+ How many art terms are you familiar with? Time to brush up.
+ They can make a museum out of pretty much anything these days.
+ Beekeeping isn’t just beneficial for the bees—it could help your mental health, too
+ The Sculptor galaxy is looking ridiculously beautiful right now.

The Download: future grids, and bad boy bots

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.

Before we embark on our usual programming we’re thrilled to share that The Download won Best Technology Newsletter at this year’s Publisher Newsletter Awards! Thank you to all of you for reading, subscribing, and supporting us—you’re the best.

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

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

OpenAI can rehabilitate AI models that develop a “bad boy persona”

A new paper from OpenAI shows a little bit of bad training can make AI models go rogue—but also demonstrates that this problem is generally pretty easy to fix.

Back in February, a group of researchers discovered that fine-tuning an AI model by training it on code that contains certain security vulnerabilities could cause the model to respond with harmful content, even when the user inputs completely benign prompts.

An OpenAI team claims that this behavior occurs when a model essentially shifts into an undesirable personality type—like the “bad boy persona,” a description their misaligned reasoning model gave itself—by training on untrue information.

However, the researchers found they could detect evidence of this misalignment, and they could even shift the model back to its regular state. Read the full story.

—Peter Hall

Inside the US power struggle over coal

Coal power is on life support in the US. It used to carry the grid with cheap electricity, but now plants are closing left and right.

There are many reasons to let coal continue its journey to the grave. Carbon emissions from coal plants are a major contributor to climate change. And those facilities are also often linked with health problems in nearby communities, as reporter Alex Kaufman explored in a feature story on Puerto Rico’s only coal-fired power plant.

But the Trump administration wants to keep coal power alive, and the US Department of Energy recently ordered some plants to stay open past their scheduled closures. Here’s why there’s a power struggle over coal.

—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 The US State Department is restarting student visa interviews 
All students will be required to have their social media accounts set to public for scrutiny. (WP $)
+ Officials are searching for any “indications of hostility” towards America. (BBC)
+ It’s not just social media either: they’ll be vetting an applicant’s entire web presence. (Reuters)

2 DARPA is partnering math experts with AI “co-authors”
In a bid to speed up the pace of progress in pure math. (NYT $)
+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Tech executives are joining the US Army
Open AI, Meta, and Palantir leaders will serve as mid-level officers to build a stronger relationship with the military. (Insider $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Tesla is in desperate need of a comeback
Sales are plummeting. Can Elon Musk reverse its fortunes? (The Atlantic $)
+ The company’s robotaxi service is poised to launch in Texas. (NYT $)

5 America’s biggest companies are becoming more “agile”
In other words, laying people off. (WSJ $)
+ Microsoft is planning to let thousands of people go, particularly in sales. (Bloomberg $)

6 JFK Jr wants to wage war on vaccines
Physicians, epidemiologists, and public health advocates are increasingly worried. (The Verge)

7 People are sick of AI being added to everything
Sadly that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop. (WP $)
+ AI is everywhere—but that doesn’t mean it works. (WSJ $)
+ Meta’s WhatsApp AI assistant gave out an ordinary person’s private number. (The Guardian)
+ Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Sam Altman is turning to ChatGPT for child-rearing advice
Watch out for those hallucinations, please! (TechCrunch)
+ What the future holds for those born today. (MIT Technology Review)

9 China doesn’t know what to do with all its drones
It’s searching for new use cases for them. (FT $)

10 A brief history of the jpeg
It rose to become the internet’s primary image format. But it wasn’t always that way. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“Welcome to the US, where public debate is “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open”! Remember not to say anything mean about any Americans and enjoy your stay!”

—Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School, takes aim at the US State Department’s stringent new rules for overseas students in a post on Bluesky.

One more thing

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is ready to transform our understanding of the cosmos

High atop Chile’s 2,700-meter Cerro Pachón, the air is clear and dry, leaving few clouds to block the beautiful view of the stars. It’s here that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will soon use a car-size 3,200-megapixel digital camera—the largest ever built—to produce a new map of the entire night sky every three days.

Findings from the observatory will help tease apart fundamental mysteries like the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two phenomena that have not been directly observed but affect how objects are bound together—and pushed apart.

A quarter-­century in the making, the observatory is poised to expand our understanding of just about every corner of the universe.  Read the full story.

—Adam Mann

We can still have nice things

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

+ Here’s a good metric for assessing things: how ‘alive’ do you feel? 
+ Why walking can do wonders.
+ Kinda obsessed with this beautiful building in Indonesia made out of bamboo. 
+ These photos show life in Norway in all its glory. 

The Download: tackling tech-facilitated abuse, and opening up AI hardware

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

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

After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior. One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.

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

—Jessica Klein 

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

Why AI hardware needs to be open

—by Ayah Bdeir, a leader in the maker movement, champion of open source AI, and founder of littleBits, the hardware platform that teaches STEAM to kids through hands-on invention. 

Once again, the future of technology is being engineered in secret by a handful of people and delivered to the rest of us as a sealed, seamless, perfect device. When technology is designed like this, we are reduced to consumers. We don’t shape the tools; they shape us. 

However, this moment creates a chance to do things differently. Because away from the self-centeredness of Silicon Valley, a quiet, grounded sense of resistance is reactivating.  Read the full story.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business

In China, people are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Our story about this trend is the latest 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 Iran is going offline to avoid Israeli cyberattacks
A government spokesperson said it plans to disconnect completely from the global internet this evening. (The Verge)
+ How attacks on Iran’s oil exports could hurt China. (WSJ $)

2 Trump is giving TikTok another reprieve from a US ban
It’s been a full five years since he signed the original executive order telling Bytedance to sell it. (CNN)
+ Why Chinese manufacturers are going viral on TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shooting are all over social media
Whenever there’s an information vacuum, people are all too keen to fill it with noise and nonsense. (NBC) 
+ The shooting suspect allegedly used data broker sites to find targets’ addresses. (Wired $)

4 Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft are starting to boil over 
OpenAI has even threatened to report its formerly close partner to antitrust regulators. (WSJ $)
+ Here are the concessions OpenAI is seeking. (The Information $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review) 

5 California cops are using AI cameras to investigate ICE protests
And sharing license plate data with other agencies, a practice some experts say is illegal. (404 Media)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Social media is now Americans’ primary news source
It’s overtaken TV for the first time. (Reuters)
+ They watched more TV via streaming than cable last month, too. (NYT $)

7 Weight loss drugs may not work quite as well as hoped
Researchers analysed data from 51,085 patients and found bariatric surgery delivered better, more sustainable results. (The Guardian)

8 What is AI doing to reading? 
Here’s what we stand to gain—and lose—when we outsource reading to machines. (New Yorker $) 

9 India is relying on China to build up its EV market
It’s taking a drastically different course to the US. (Rest of World)
+ Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)

10 People are building AI tools to decipher cats’ meows 
Bet at least half of them are “feed me.” (Scientific American $)

Quote of the day

“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

—Remarks made by federal judge Williams G. Young this week as he voided some of the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health grants, saying they were discriminatory, the New York Times reports. 

One more thing

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | GETTY

Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch

Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.

But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.

—Edd Gent

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.)

+ Wait a minute, Will Smith was offered a role in Inception? Much to think about.
+ No pain, no gain? Not necessarily.
+ John Waters, you really are one of a kind.
+ Say it ain’t so—I refuse to believe that young love is dead!

The Download: power in Puerto Rico, and the pitfalls of AI agents

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.

Puerto Rico’s power struggles

On the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico lies the country’s only coal-fired power station, flanked by a mountain of toxic ash. The plant, owned by the utility giant AES, has long plagued this part of Puerto Rico with air and water pollution.

Before the coal plant opened Guayama had on average just over 103 cancer cases per year. In 2003, the year after the plant opened, the number of cancer cases in the municipality surged by 50%, to 167. In 2022, the most recent year with available data, cases hit a new high of 209. The question is: How did it get this bad? Read the full story.

—Alexander C. Kaufman

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

When AIs bargain, a less advanced agent could cost you

The race to build ever larger AI models is slowing down. The industry’s focus is shifting toward agents—systems that can act autonomously, make decisions, and negotiate on users’ behalf.

But what would happen if both a customer and a seller were using an AI agent? A recent study put agent-to-agent negotiations to the test and found that stronger agents can exploit weaker ones to get a better deal. It’s a bit like entering court with a seasoned attorney versus a rookie: You’re technically playing the same game, but the odds are skewed from the start. Read the full story.

—Caiwei Chen

AI copyright anxiety will hold back creativity

—Nitin Nohria is the George F. Baker Jr. Professor at Harvard Business School and its former dean. 

Last fall, during a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I found myself imagining the painting in front of me as the product of a generative AI model prompted with the query How would van Gogh reinterpret a Japanese woodblock in the style of Keisai Eisen?

And I wondered: If van Gogh had used such an AI tool to stimulate his imagination, would Eisen—or his heirs—have had a strong legal claim?

And the questions don’t stop there. Who, exactly, owns the outputs of a generative model? The user who crafted the prompt? The developer who built the model? The artists whose works were ingested to train it?

The US Copyright Office has begun to tackle the thorny issues of ownership and says that generative outputs can be copyrighted if they are sufficiently human-authored. But it is playing catch-up in a rapidly evolving field. Read the full story.

What does it mean for an algorithm to be “fair”?

—Eileen Guo

Back in February, I flew to Amsterdam to report on a high-stakes experiment the city had recently conducted. Officials had tried to create an effective, fair, and unbiased predictive algorithm to try to detect welfare fraud. But the city fell short of its lofty goals—and, with our partners at Lighthouse Reports and the Dutch newspaper Trouw, we tried to get to the bottom of why.

For an American reporter, it’s been an interesting time to write a story on “responsible AI” in a progressive European city—just as ethical considerations in AI deployments appear to be disappearing in the United States, at least at the national level. 

It has also made me think more deeply about the stakes of deploying AI in situations that directly affect human lives, and about what success would even look like. Read the full story.

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

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI is going to build tools for the US Defense Department
For a chunky $200 million. (CNBC)
+ Spotify founder Daniel Ek is sinking €600 million into a German drone firm. (FT $)
+ OpenAI’s new defense contract completes its military pivot. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Trump has fired the US nuclear regulator
The administration wants to speed up reactor approvals at any cost. (WP $)
+ Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI? (MIT Technology Review)

3 Complaints about tariff evasion in the US are rising sharply
Tipsters are sounding the alarm about alleged duty dodging. (Wired $)
+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Trump’s smartphone plans may be a little too ambitious
It doesn’t seem all that likely it could be made in the USA by August for just $499. (WSJ $)
+ Conflicts of interest, anyone? (Bloomberg $)
+ Even ordering the handset is a massive ordeal. (404 Media $)

5 AI won’t just replace jobs. It’ll create new ones too
Some will be better than others. (NYT $)
+ People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Ads are coming to WhatsApp
It was only ever a matter of time. (The Information $)
+ It’s all part of Meta’s grand plan. (BBC)
+ Thankfully, unless you’re an Updates obsessive, you may never see them. (Ars Technica)

7 AI bots are hammering libraries and museums
Their servers are swamped, and even knocked offline in some cases. (404 Media)

8 Venetians aren’t happy about Jeff Bezos’ upcoming nuptials
They’re protesting around the town square and along the Rialto Bridge. (Insider $)
+ ‘No space for Bezos’ is a pretty snappy slogan. (NBC News)

9 Tinder is resurrecting its Double Date feature
In an effort to let Gen Z daters bring a friend along for emotional support. (Insider $)
+ Double the rejection? No thanks. (TechCrunch)

10 Threads is experimenting with a spoiler feature
Well, that could be one reason to start using it. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“No one who has been paying attention could miss that President Trump considers the presidency a vehicle to grow his family’s wealth. Maybe this example will help more come to see this undeniable truth.”

—Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, tells Reuters why people should be concerned about Trump’s plans to launch a smartphone.

One more thing

Is this the end of animal testing?

Animal studies are notoriously bad at identifying human treatments. Around 95% of the drugs developed through animal research fail in people, but until recently there was no other option.

Now organs on chips, also known as microphysiological systems, may offer a truly viable alternative. It’s only early days, but if they work as hoped, they could solve one of the biggest problems in medicine today. Read the full story.

—Harriet Brown

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.)

+ Brace yourself: there are still plenty of great video games coming later this year.
+ Tradwives are out, radwives are in.
+ I fully endorse this handy guide to sleeping in airports.
+ How artist Andy Vella came up with the beautiful artwork for The Cure’s latest album.

The Download: how AI can improve a city, and inside OpenAI’s empire

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 AI can help make cities work better

In recent decades, cities have become increasingly adept at amassing all sorts of data. But that data can have limited impact when government officials are unable to communicate, let alone analyze or put to use, all the information they have access to.

This dynamic has always bothered Sarah Williams, a professor of urban planning and technology at MIT. Shortly after joining MIT in 2012, Williams created the Civic Data Design Lab to bridge that divide. Over the years, she and her colleagues have made urban planning data more vivid and accessible through human stories and striking graphics. Read the full story.

—Ben Schneider

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

Inside OpenAI’s empire with Karen Hao

AI journalist Karen Hao’s newly released book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, tells the story of OpenAI’s rise to power and its far-reaching impact all over the world.

Hao, a former MIT Technology Review senior editor, will join our executive editor Niall Firth in an intimate subscriber-exclusive Roundtable conversation exploring the AI arms race, what it means for all of us, and where it’s headed. Register here to join us at 9am ET on Monday June 30th June.

Special giveaway: Attendees will have the chance to receive a free copy of Hao’s book. See registration form for details.

The must-reads

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

1 The White House is sharing tasteless deportation memes
Its digital strategy revolves around boosting policies for cheap laughs. (WP $)
+ Trump’s immigration raids are a rapid escalation of his deportation tactics. (Vox)
+ The administration is revelling in the outraged reaction to its actions. (The Atlantic $)
+ But New Yorkers are fighting back. (New Yorker $)

2 New York is asking companies to disclose when AI contributes to layoffs
It’s the first official step towards measuring AI’s impact on the labor market. (Bloomberg $)
+ People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Regeneron isn’t buying 23andMe after all
A non-profit controlled by its cofounder has made a higher bid. (WSJ $)
+ Anne Wojcicki says she has the backing of a Fortune 500 company. (FT $)
+ How to… delete your 23andMe data. (MIT Technology Review)

4 RFK Jr has filled the CDC’s vaccine committee with allies
Robert Malone, one of the appointees, has encouraged the public to embrace the term anti-vax. (The Atlantic $)
+ Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Americans are commissioning animal torture videos
The US government has revealed details of residents accused of paying people in Indonesia to abuse helpless monkeys. (Ars Technica)

6 China has conducted its first brain implant clinical trial
Making it only the second country to do so, after the US. (Bloomberg $)
+ Brain-computer interfaces face a critical test. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The US Navy wants your startup
It’s more open to partnerships than ever before, apparently. (TechCrunch)
+ China is stockpiling intercontinental ballistic missiles. (Insider $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The UK is working on a chemotherapy-free approach to treating leukaemia
Combining two targeted drugs appears to perform better. (The Guardian)

9 Brace yourself for AI sponcon
Just when you thought product placement couldn’t get any worse. (The Verge)

10 Zines are staging a comeback
Creatives are turning their backs on social media in favor of good old-fashioned booklets. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“Being a highly “online” person is a very embarrassing thing and should be relegated to basement losers.”

—Derek Guy, aka The Menswear Guy on X, explains to Wired why he thinks a significant proportion of the Republican coalition need to step away from their keyboards.

One more thing

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked to cancer and cardiovascular disease, while wildlife suffers from interruption to their reproductive patterns, and increased danger.

Astronomers, policymakers, and lighting professionals are all working to find ways to reduce light pollution. Many of them advocate installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in outdoor fixtures such as city streetlights, mainly for their ability to direct light to a targeted area.

But the high initial investment and durability of modern LEDs mean cities need to get the transition right the first time or potentially face decades of consequences. Read the full story.

—Shel Evergreen

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.)

+ As commencement speeches go, Steve Jobs’ is definitely one of the best.
+ I love this iconic Homer moment recreated in Lego.
+ The remains of a beautiful Byzantine tomb complex has been uncovered between Aleppo and Damascus.
+ I want to believe: check out this short, bizarre history of alien abductions in America

The Download: gambling with humanity’s future, and the FDA under Trump

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.

Tech billionaires are making a risky bet with humanity’s future

Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others may have slightly different goals, but their grand visions for the next decade and beyond are remarkably similar.

They include aligning AI with the interests of humanity; creating an artificial superintelligence that will solve all the world’s most pressing problems; merging with that superintelligence to achieve immortality (or something close to it); establishing a permanent, self-­sustaining colony on Mars; and, ultimately, spreading out across the cosmos.

Three features play a central role with powering these visions, says Adam Becker, a science writer and astrophysicist: an unshakable certainty that technology can solve any problem, a belief in the necessity of perpetual growth, and a quasi-religious obsession with transcending our physical and biological limits.

In his timely new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Becker reveals how these fantastical visions conceal a darker agenda. Read the full story.

—Bryan Gardiner

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration

Earlier this week, two new leaders of the US Food and Drug Administration published a list of priorities for the agency. Both Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad are controversial figures in the science community. They were generally highly respected academics until the covid pandemic, when their contrarian opinions on masking, vaccines, and lockdowns turned many of their colleagues off them.

Given all this, along with recent mass firings of FDA employees, lots of people were pretty anxious to see what this list might include—and what we might expect the future of food and drug regulation in the US to look like. So let’s dive into the pair’s plans for new investigations, speedy approvals, and the “unleashing” of AI.

—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 NASA is investigating leaks on the ISS
It’s postponed launching private astronauts to the station while it evaluates. (WP $)
+ Its core component has been springing small air leaks for months. (Reuters)
+ Meanwhile, this Chinese probe is en route to a near-Earth asteroid. (Wired $)

2 Undocumented migrants are using social media to warn of ICE raids
The DIY networks are anonymously reporting police presences across LA. (Wired $)
+ Platforms’ relationships with protest activism has changed drastically. (NY Mag $) 

3 Google’s AI Overviews is hallucinating about the fatal Air India crash
It incorrectly stated that it involved an Airbus plane, not a Boeing 787. (Ars Technica)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Chinese engineers are sneaking suitcases of hard drives into the country
To covertly train advanced AI models. (WSJ $)
+ The US is cracking down on Huawei’s ability to produce chips. (Bloomberg $)
+ What the US-China AI race overlooks. (Rest of World)

5 The National Hurricane Center is joining forces with DeepMind
It’s the first time the center has used AI to predict nature’s worst storms. (NYT $)
+ Here’s what we know about hurricanes and climate change. (MIT Technology Review)

6 OpenAI is working on a product with toymaker Mattel
AI-powered Barbies?! (FT $)
+ Nothing is safe from the creep of AI, not even playtime. (LA Times $)
+ OpenAI has ambitions to reach billions of users. (Bloomberg $)

7 Chatbots posing as licensed therapists may be breaking the law
Digital rights organizations have filed a complaint to the FTC. (404 Media)
+ How do you teach an AI model to give therapy? (MIT Technology Review)

8 Major companies are abandoning their climate commitments
But some experts argue this may not be entirely bad. (Bloomberg $)
+ Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Vibe coding is shaking up software engineering
Even though AI-generated code is inherently unreliable. (Wired $)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)

10 TikTok really loves hotdogs
And who can blame it? (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“It kind of jams two years of work into two months.”

—Andrew Butcher, president of the Maine Connectivity Authority, tells Ars Technica why it’s so difficult to meet the Trump administration’s new plans to increase broadband access in certain states.

One more thing

The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we need

It’s a tough time to try and buy a home in America. From the beginning of the pandemic to early 2024, US home prices rose by 47%. In large swaths of the country, buying a home is no longer a possibility even for those with middle-class incomes. For many, that marks the end of an American dream built around owning a house. Over the same time, rents have gone up 26%.

The reason for the current rise in the cost of housing is clear to most economists: a lack of supply. Simply put, we don’t build enough houses and apartments, and we haven’t for years.

But the reality is that even if we ease the endless permitting delays and begin cutting red tape, we will still be faced with a distressing fact: The construction industry is not very efficient when it comes to building stuff. 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.)

+ If you’re one of the unlucky people who has triskaidekaphobia, look away now.
+ 15-year old Nicholas is preparing to head from his home in the UK to Japan to become a professional sumo wrestler.
+ Earlier this week, London played host to 20,000 women in bald caps. But why? ($)
+ Why do dads watch TV standing up? I need to know.

The Download: AI agents’ autonomy, and sodium-based batteries

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.

Are we ready to hand AI agents the keys?

In recent months, a new class of agents has arrived on the scene: ones built using large language models. Any action that can be captured by text—from playing a video game using written commands to running a social media account—is potentially within the purview of this type of system.

LLM agents don’t have much of a track record yet, but to hear CEOs tell it, they will transform the economy—and soon. Despite that, like chatbot LLMs, agents can be chaotic and unpredictable. Here’s what could happen as we try to integrate them into everything.

—Grace Huckins

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

These new batteries are finding a niche

Lithium-ion batteries have some emerging competition: Sodium-based alternatives.

Sodium is more abundant on Earth than lithium, and batteries that use the material could be cheaper in the future. Building a new battery chemistry is difficult, mostly because lithium is so entrenched. But, as I’ve noted before, this new technology has some advantages in nooks and crannies.

I’ve been following sodium-ion batteries for a few years, and we’re starting to see the chemistry make progress. Let’s talk about what’s new for sodium batteries, and what it’ll take for them to really break out.

—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 Disney and Universal are suing Midjourney
The movie companies allege that its software “blatantly” copies their characters. (NYT $)
+ They argue its tools facilitate personalized AI slop of their IP. (Hollywood Reporter $)
+ Midjourney’s forthcoming video generator is a particular point of concern. (The Verge)

2 Microsoft is reportedly preparing an AI tool for the Pentagon
It’s working on a version of Copilot for more than one million licenses. (Insider $)
+ The Pentagon is gutting the team that tests AI and weapons systems. (MIT Technology Review)

3 The US is rolling back emissions standards for power plants
Even though power stations are its second-largest source of CO2 emissions. (Wired $)
+ It’s the Trump administration’s biggest reversal of green policies yet. (FT $)
+ The repeals could affect public health across the nation. (CNN)
+ Interest in nuclear power is surging. Is it enough to build new reactors? (MIT Technology Review)

4 A new kind of AI bot is scraping the web
Retrieval bots crawl websites for up-to-date information to supplement AI models. (WP $)

5 Nvidia’s new AI model simulates the world’s climate
Researchers may be able to predict weather conditions decades into the future. (WSJ $)
+ AI is changing how we predict the weather. (MIT Technology Review)

6 China is demanding sensitive information to secure rare earths
Companies fear their trade secrets could end up exposed. (FT $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources. (MIT Technology Review)

7 What Vietnam stands to lose in Trump’s trade war
The country, which has transformed into an industrial hub, is waiting for the 46% tariffs to hit. (Bloomberg $)

8 AI is helping pharmacists to process prescriptions in the remote Amazon
Its success could lead to wider adoption in under-resourced countries. (Rest of World)

9 How to save an age-damaged oil painting
With a bit of AI-aided wizardry. (The Guardian)
+ This artist collaborates with AI and robots. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Gen Z is enchanted by the BlackBerry
QWERTY keyboards never truly die, apparently. (Fast Company $)

Quote of the day

“Cancel your Chinese New Year holiday. Everybody stay in the company. Sleep in the office.”

—Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s chairman, recalls how the company’s engineering leads worked through the Lunar New Year holiday in January to play catch up with rival DeepSeek, Bloomberg reports

One more thing

Next slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation

PowerPoint is everywhere. It’s used in religious sermons; by schoolchildren preparing book reports; at funerals and weddings. In 2010, Microsoft announced that PowerPoint was installed on more than a billion computers worldwide.

But before PowerPoint, 35-millimeter film slides were king. They were the only medium for the kinds of high-impact presentations given by CEOs and top brass at annual meetings for stockholders, employees, and salespeople.

Known in the business as “multi-image” shows, these presentations required a small army of producers, photographers, and live production staff to pull off. Read this story to delve into the fascinating, flashy history of corporate presentations.

—Claire L. Evans

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.)

+ Brian Wilson was a visionary who changed popular music forever. He will be dearly missed.
+ Roman-era fast food was something else.
+ This fossil skull of Nigersaurus was one of the first dinosaur skulls to be digitally reconstructed from CT scans.
+ Parker Posey, you will always be cool.

The Download: Amsterdam’s welfare AI experiment, and making humanoid robots safer

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 Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI

Amsterdam thought it was on the right track. City officials in the welfare department believed they could build technology that would prevent fraud while protecting citizens’ rights. They followed these emerging best practices and invested a vast amount of time and money in a project that eventually processed live welfare applications. But in their pilot, they found that the system they’d developed was still not fair and effective. Why?

Lighthouse Reports, MIT Technology Review, and the Dutch newspaper Trouw have gained unprecedented access to the system to try to find out. Read about what we discovered.

—Eileen Guo, Gabriel Geiger & Justin-Casimir Braun

This story is a partnership between MIT Technology Review, Lighthouse Reports, and Trouw, and was supported by the Pulitzer Center. 

+ Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game to find out.

Why humanoid robots need their own safety rules

While humanoid robots are taking their first tentative steps into industrial applications, the ultimate goal is to have them operating in close quarters with humans.

One reason for making robots human-shaped in the first place is so they can more easily navigate the environments we’ve designed around ourselves. This means they will need to be able to share space with people, not just stay behind protective barriers. But first, they need to be safe. Read the full story.

—Victoria Turk

MIT Technology Review Narrated: The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we need

Sure, there’s too much red tape, but there is another reason building anything is so expensive: the construction industry’s “awful” productivity.

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 Chatbots are getting facts about the LA riots wrong
AI systems can’t be relied upon at the best of times, let alone with fast-moving news. (Wired $)
+ What’s Trump’s goal here, exactly? (NY Mag $)

2 Gavin Newsom is becoming a meme
The California governor’s Trump clapbacks are winning him a legion of online fans. (WP $)
+ He’s accused the President of “pulling a military dragnet” across the city. (The Guardian)
+ Newsom has warned that other states are likely to be next. (Politico)

3 Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill could lead to more than 51,000 deaths a year
Due to the bill’s provisions for public health insurance. (Undark)

4 How Ukraine’s AI-guided drones hit Russia’s airfields
But its opponent is also stepping up its AI capabilities. (FT $)
+ Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense. (MIT Technology Review)

5 US agencies tracked foreign nationals travelling to Elon Musk
Officials kept an eye on who visited him in 2022 and 2023. (WSJ $)

6 Snap’s new AR smart glasses will go on sale next year
Its sixth generation of Specs will enter an increasingly crowded field. (CNBC)
+ Qualcomm has made a new processor to power similar glasses. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Each ChatGPT query uses ‘roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon’ of water
That’s according to Sam Altman, at least. (The Verge)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Death Valley’s air could be a valuable water source
Scientists proved their hydrogel method worked in the real world. (New Scientist $)

9 Gen Z is choosing to skip college entirely
Increasing numbers of young tech workers are opting out and entering the workforce early. (Insider $)

10 How to fight back against a world of AI-generated choices
Good taste is your friend here. (The Atlantic $)

Quote of the day

“We’re probably going to have flying taxis before we have autonomous ones in London.”

—Steve McNamara, the general secretary of the UK’s Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, isn’t optimistic about London’s plans to trial autonomous cars, he tells the Guardian.

One more thing

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews in beauty magazines.

Exosomes are being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you can afford the price tag—which can stretch to thousands of dollars.

But there’s a big problem with these big promises: We don’t fully understand how exosomes work—or what they even really are. Read our 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.)

+ Here’s how to tap into your flow state and get things DONE.
+ Check out these must-see art shows and exhibitions of the year.
+ Everybody’s free (to listen to one of the best hits of the 90s)
+ Turns out 10CC frontman Graham Gouldman doesn’t just like cricket—he’s just watched his first ever game and he really does love it

The Download: IBM’s quantum computer, and cuts to military AI testing

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.

IBM aims to build the world’s first large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by 2028

The news: IBM announced detailed plans today to build an error-corrected quantum computer with significantly more computational capability than existing machines by 2028. It hopes to make the computer available to users via the cloud by 2029.

What is it? The proposed machine, named Starling, will consist of a network of modules, each of which contains a set of chips, housed within a new data center in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Why it matters: IBM claims Starling will be a leap forward in quantum computing. In particular, the company aims for it to be the first large-scale machine to implement error correction. If Starling achieves this, IBM will have solved arguably the biggest technical hurdle facing the industry today. Read the full story.

—Sophia Chen

The Pentagon is gutting the team that tests AI and weapons systems

The Trump administration’s chainsaw approach to federal spending lives on, even as Elon Musk turns on the president. 

As part of a string of moves, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has cut the size of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation in half. The group was established in the 1980s after criticisms that the Pentagon was fielding weapons and systems that didn’t perform as safely or effectively as advertised. Hegseth is reducing the agency’s staff to about 45, down from 94, and firing and replacing its director. 

It is a significant overhaul of a department that in 40 years has never before been placed so squarely on the chopping block. Here’s how defense tech companies stand to gain (and the rest of us may stand to lose).

—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 Conspiracy theories are spreading about the LA protests
Misleading photos and videos are circulating on social media. (NYT $)
+ Donald Trump has vowed to send 700 Marines to the city. (The Guardian)
+ Waymo has paused its service in downtown LA after its vehicles were set alight. (LA Times $)

2 RFK Jr has fired an entire CDC panel of vaccine experts
The anti-vaccine advocate accused them of conflicts of interest. (Ars Technica)
+ He claims that their replacements will “exercise independent judgment.” (WSJ $)
+ RFK Jr is interested in using a toxic bleach solution to treat ailments. (Wired $)
+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 A new covid variant is spreading across Europe and the US
While it’s considered low risk, ‘Nimbus’ appears to be more infectious. (Wired $)

4 White House security cautioned against installing Starlink internet
But Elon Musk’s team ignored them and fitted the service in the complex anyway. (WP $)
+ Trump isn’t planning on getting rid of it, though. (Bloomberg $)

5 Developers are underwhelmed by Apple’s AI efforts
Its WWDC announcements haven’t been met with much enthusiasm. (WSJ $)
+ The company is opening up its AI models to developers for the first time. (FT $)
+ Where’s the overhauled, AI-powered Siri we were promised? (TechCrunch)

6 Meta is assembling a new AI research lab
Researchers will be tasked with beating its rivals to achieve superintelligence. (Bloomberg $)
+ There’s no doubt that Meta is feeling the heat right now. (The Information $)

7 Vulnerable minors are increasingly becoming radicalized online
The sad case of Rhianan Rudd illustrates the ease of access to extremist material. (FT $)

8 Our nerves may play a central role in how cancer spreads
Researchers believe they may help tumors to grow. (New Scientist $)
+ Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer. (MIT Technology Review)

9 An end is in sight for the video game actors’ strike
Major labels have reached a tentative deal with the SAG-AFTRA. (Variety $)
+ How Meta and AI companies recruited striking actors to train AI. (MIT Technology Review)

10 The UK is planning a robotaxi trial next next
Many years behind other countries. (FT $)

Quote of the day

“At the end of the day, what they need to do is deliver on what they presented a year ago.”

—Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research, tells Reuters where Apple went wrong with its lacklustre WWDC announcements.

One more thing

The great AI consciousness conundrum

AI consciousness isn’t just a devilishly tricky intellectual puzzle; it’s a morally weighty problem with potentially dire consequences that philosophers, cognitive scientists, and engineers alike are currently grappling with.

Fail to identify a conscious AI, and you might unintentionally subjugate a being whose interests ought to matter. Mistake an unconscious AI for a conscious one, and you risk compromising human safety and happiness for the sake of an unthinking, unfeeling hunk of silicon and code.

Over the past few decades, a small research community has doggedly attacked the question of what consciousness is and how it works. The effort has yielded real progress. And now, with the rapid advance of AI technology, these insights could offer our only guide to the untested, morally fraught waters of artificial consciousness. Read the full story.

—Grace Huckins

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.)

+ Rest in power Sly Stone, truly one of the funky greats.
+ Did you know there’s an Olympics for scaffolding? Well, you do now.
+ Just one man is responsible for some of the greatest film artwork of all time—Drew Struzan.
+ That’s one dramatic pizza maker.

The Download: funding a CRISPR embryo startup, and bad news for clean cement

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.

Crypto billionaire Brian Armstrong is ready to invest in CRISPR baby tech

Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, says he’s ready to fund a US startup focused on gene-editing human embryos. If he goes forward, it would be the first major commercial investment in one of medicine’s most fraught ideas.

In a post on X June 2, Armstrong announced he was looking for gene-editing scientists and bioinformatics specialists to form a founding team for an “embryo editing” effort targeting an unmet medical need, such as a genetic disease.

The announcement from a deep-pocketed backer is a striking shift for a field considered taboo following the 2018 birth of the world’s first genetically edited children in China—a secretive experiment that led to international outrage and prison time for the lead scientist. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

Over $1 billion in federal funding got slashed for this polluting industry

The clean cement industry might be facing the end of the road, before it ever really got rolling. 

Last week, the US Department of Energy announced that it was canceling $3.7 billion in funding for 24 projects related to energy and industry. That included nearly $1.3 billion for cement-related projects.

Cement is a massive climate problem, accounting for roughly 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. What’s more, it’s a difficult industry to clean up, with huge traditional players and expensive equipment and infrastructure to replace. This funding was supposed to help address those difficulties, by supporting projects on the cusp of commercialization. Now companies will need to fill in the gap left by these cancellations, and it’s a big one. 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.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How DeepSeek became a fortune teller for China’s youth

AI-powered BaZi analysis has become the new oracle for a disillusioned generation seeking answers.

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 Reddit is suing Anthropic 
Reddit claims the AI company kept accessing its site after claiming it had stopped. (WSJ $)
+ Reddit says AI companies should not scrape the web without limitations. (NYT $)
+ It claims that other AI giants have played by its rules. (NBC News)

2 Inside the rise and rise of deepfake scams
The best way to protect yourself is to back up and think who (or what) you’re trusting. (Wired $)
+ An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary. (MIT Technology Review)

3 A lawsuit accuses DOGE of exploiting “error-riden” data to fire workers
It claims the department knew its records were inaccurate, but used them to fire 10,000 employees anyway.(Ars Technica)
+ Unlike Elon Musk, Russ Vought knows the federal government inside out. (NY Mag $)
+ The first wave of DOGE staffers are becoming full-time government workers. (Wired $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Can we make AI behave how we want it to?
Looking all the way back to Asimov’s Laws can offer us some clues. (New Yorker $)

5 Abuse is rife in Taiwan’s semiconductor factories
Workers were threatened with deportation and regular 16-hour shifts. (Rest of World)
+ The Trump administration is renegotiating chip grants, apparently. (Reuters)

6 Amazon wants to use humanoid robots to deliver packages
It’s planning to test its bipedal machines’ ability to tackle an obstacle course.(The Information $)
+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review)

7 We don’t know how to archive the digital age properly
Historians worry that they may lose access to intimate materials. (The Atlantic $)
+ The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Here’s how major AI helpers tackled a rigorous reading test
Bearing in mind, they all still hallucinated. (WP $)

9 Christians really love AI slop
A major Christian media company is using new tools to spread the word. (404 Media)
+ AI-generated garbage will make ads creepier and worse. (Bloomberg $)
+ It’s also warping media metrics beyond recognition. (Digiday)

10 What we can learn from potty-mouthed robots
A lot of people swear. Why shouldn’t robots, too? (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“Anthropic bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry. It is anything but.” 

—Reddit takes aim at Anthropic in a legal filing against the AI company, the Verge reports.

One more thing

Maybe you will be able to live past 122

How long can humans live? This is a good time to ask the question. The longevity scene is having a moment, and research suggests that we might be able to push human life spans further, potentially even reversing some signs of aging.

Researchers can’t even agree on what the exact mechanisms of aging are and which they should be targeting. Debates continue to rage over how long it’s possible for humans to live—and whether there is a limit at all.

But it looks likely that something will be developed in the coming decades that will help us live longer, in better health. 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.)

+ There’s something so uplifting about this user-generated collection of videos of parks. 
+ I could get on board with living in a cabin in the woods if it was this one. 
+ You should probably let go of that grudge you’re holding onto. 
+ Looking for some seasonal recipe inspo? Look no further.