The Download: the US digital rights crackdown, and AI companionship

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

What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate  

Just before Christmas the Trump administration dramatically escalated its war on digital rights by banning five people from entering the US. One of them, Josephine Ballon, is a director of HateAid, a small German nonprofit founded to support the victims of online harassment and violence. The organization is a strong advocate of EU tech regulations, and so finds itself attacked in campaigns from right-wing politicians and provocateurs who claim that it engages in censorship. 

EU officials, freedom of speech experts, and the five people targeted all flatly reject these accusations. Ballon told us that their work is fundamentally about making people feel safer online. But their experiences over the past few weeks show just how politicized and besieged their work in online safety has become. Read the full story. 

—Eileen Guo

TR10: AI companions

Chatbots are skilled at crafting sophisticated dialogue and mimicking empathetic behavior. They never get tired of chatting. It’s no wonder, then, that so many people now use them for companionship—forging friendships or even romantic relationships. 

72% of US teenagers have used AI for companionship, according to a study from the nonprofit Common Sense Media. But while chatbots can provide much-needed emotional support and guidance for some people, they can exacerbate underlying problems in others—especially vulnerable people or those with mental health issues. 

Although some early attempts to regulate this space are underway, AI companionship is going nowhere. Read why we made it one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year, and check out the rest of the list.

And, if you want to learn more about what we predict for AI this year, sign up to join me for our free LinkedIn Live event tomorrow at 12.30pm ET.

Why inventing new emotions feels so good  

Have you ever felt “velvetmist”?  

It’s a “complex and subtle emotion that elicits feelings of comfort, serenity, and a gentle sense of floating.” It’s peaceful, but more ephemeral and intangible than contentment. It might be evoked by the sight of a sunset or a moody, low-key album.  

If you haven’t ever felt this sensation—or even heard of it—that’s not surprising. A Reddit user generated it with ChatGPT, along with advice on how to evoke the feeling. Don’t scoff: Researchers say more and more terms for these “neo-­emotions” are showing up online, describing new dimensions and aspects of feeling. Read our story to learn more about why. 

—Anya Kamenetz

This story is from the latest print issue of MIT Technology Review. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive the next edition as soon as it lands (and benefit from some hefty seasonal discounts too!)

The must-reads

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

1 Ads are coming to ChatGPT 
For American users initially, with plans to expand soon. (CNN)
+ Here’s how they’ll work. (Wired $)

2 What will we be able to salvage after the AI bubble bursts? 
It will be ugly, but there are plenty of good uses for AI that we’ll want to keep. (The Guardian) 
+ What even is the AI bubble? (MIT Technology Review)

3 It’s almost impossible to mine Greenland’s natural resources 
It has vast supplies of rare earth elements, but its harsh climate and environment make them very hard to access. (The Week)

4 Iran is now 10 days into its internet shutdown
It’s one of the longest and most extreme we’ve ever witnessed. (BBC)
+  Starlink isn’t proving as helpful as hoped as the regime finds ways to jam it. (Reuters $)
+ Battles are raging online about what’s really going on inside Iran. (NYT $)

5 America is heading for a polymarket disaster 
Prediction markets are getting out of control, and some people are losing a lot of money. (The Atlantic $)
+ They were first embraced by political junkies, but now they’re everywhere. (NYT $)

6 How to fireproof a city 
Californians are starting to fight fires before they can even start. (The Verge $)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Stoking ‘deep state’ conspiracy theories can be dangerous 
Especially if you’re then given the task of helping run one of those state institutions, as Dan Bongino is now learning. (WP $)
+ Why everything is a conspiracy now. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Why we’re suddenly all having a ‘Very Chinese Time’ 
It’s a fun, flippant trend—but it also shows how China’s soft power is growing around the globe. (Wired $) 

9 Why there’s no one best way to store information
Each one involves trade-offs between space and time. (Quanta $)

10 Meat may play a surprising role in helping people reach 100
Perhaps because it can assist with building stronger muscles and bones. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“That’s the level of anxiety now – people watching the skies and the seas themselves because they don’t know what else to do.”

—A Greenlander tells The Guardian just how seriously she and her fellow compatriots are taking Trump’s threat to invade their country. 

One more thing

KATHERINE LAM

Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there

Gavesh’s journey started, seemingly innocently, with a job ad on Facebook promising work he desperately needed.

Instead, he found himself trafficked into a business commonly known as “pig butchering”—a form of fraud in which scammers form close relationships with targets online and extract money from them. The Chinese crime syndicates behind the scams have netted billions of dollars, and they have used violence and coercion to force their workers, many of them trafficked like Gavesh, to carry out the frauds from large compounds, several of which operate openly in the quasi-lawless borderlands of Myanmar.

Big Tech may hold the key to breaking up the scam syndicates—if these companies can be persuaded or compelled to act. Read the full story.

—Peter Guest & Emily Fishbein

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.)

+ Blue Monday isn’t real (but it is an absolute banger of a track.) 
+ Some great advice here about how to be productive during the working day.
+ Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s most fun plays—as these top actors can attest. 
+ If the cold and dark gets to you, try making yourself a delicious bowl of soup. 

The Download: cut through AI coding hype, and biotech trends to watch

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

AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced.  

Depending who you ask, AI-powered coding is either giving software developers an unprecedented productivity boost or churning out masses of poorly designed code that saps their attention and sets software projects up for serious long term-maintenance problems. 

The problem is right now, it’s not easy to know which is true. 

As tech giants pour billions into large language models (LLMs), coding has been touted as the technology’s killer app. Executives enamored with the potential are pushing engineers to lean into an AI-powered future. But after speaking to more than 30 developers, technology executives, analysts, and researchers, MIT Technology Review found that the picture is not as straightforward as it might seem. Read the full story. 

—Edd Gent

Generative coding is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. Learn more about why that is, and check out the rest of the list! 

This story was also part of our Hype Correction package. You can read the rest of the stories here.

The biotech trends to watch for in 2026

Earlier this week, MIT Technology Review published our annual list of Ten Breakthrough Technologies. 

This year’s list includes tech that’s set to transform the energy industry, artificial intelligence, space travel—and of course biotech and health. Our breakthrough biotechnologies for 2026 involve editing a baby’s genes and, separately, resurrecting genes from ancient species. We also included a controversial technology that offers parents the chance to screen their embryos for characteristics like height and intelligence. Here’s the story behind our biotech choices.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter all about the latest in health and biotech. Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: What’s next for AI in 2026

Our AI writers have made some big bets for the coming year—read our story about the five hot trends to watch, or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The must-reads

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

1 Minnesota shows how governing and content creation have merged
In another era, we’d have just called this propaganda. (NPR)
+ MAGA influencers are just straight up lying about what is happening there. (Vox) 
+ Activists are trying to identify individual ICE officers while protecting their own identities. (WP $)
+ A backlash against ICE is growing in Silicon Valley. (Wired $)
 
2 There’s probably more child abuse material online now than ever before
Of all Big Tech’s failures, this is surely the most appalling. (The Atlantic $)
+ US investigators are using AI to detect child abuse images made by AI. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Grok is still being used to undress images of real people. (Quartz)
 
3 ChatGPT wrote a suicide lullaby for a man who later killed himself
This shows it’s “still an unsafe product,” a lawyer representing a family in a tragically similar case said. (Ars Technica)
+ An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it. (MIT Technology Review)
 
4 Videos emerging from Iran show how bloody the crackdown has become
Iranians are finding ways around the internet blackout to show the rest of the world how many of them have been killed. (NBC) 
+ Here’s how they’re getting around the blackout. (NPR) 
 
5 China dominates the global humanoid robot market 
A new report by analysts found its companies account for over 80% of all deployments. (South China Morning Post) 
+ Just how useful are the latest humanoids, though? (Nature)
+ Why humanoid robots need their own safety rules. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 How is Australia’s social media ban for kids going? 
It’s mixed—some teens welcome it, but others are finding workarounds. (CNBC)
 
7 Scientists are finding more objective ways to spot mental illness 
Biomarkers like voice cadence and heart rate proving pretty reliable for diagnosing conditions like depression. (New Scientist $)
 
8 The Pebble smartwatch be making a comeback
This could be the thing that tempts me back into buying wearables… (Gizmodo)
 
9 A new video game traps you in an online scam center
Can’t see the appeal myself, but… each to their own I guess? (NYT $)
 
10 Smoke detectors are poised to get a high-tech upgrade 
And one of the technologies boosting their capabilities is, of course, AI. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“I am very annoyed. I’m very disappointed. I’m seriously frustrated.” 

—Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tells attendees at a healthcare conference this week his feelings about the anti-vaccine agenda Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been implementing, Bloomberg reports.

One more thing

ARIEL DAVIS

How close are we to genuine “mind reading?”

Technically speaking, neuroscientists have been able to read your mind for decades. It’s not easy, mind you. First, you must lie motionless within a fMRI scanner, perhaps for hours, while you watch films or listen to audiobooks. 

If you do elect to endure claustrophobic hours in the scanner, the software will learn to generate a bespoke reconstruction of what you were seeing or listening to, just by analyzing how blood moves through your brain.

More recently, researchers have deployed generative AI tools, like Stable Diffusion and GPT, to create far more realistic, if not entirely accurate, reconstructions of films and podcasts based on neural activity. So how close are we to genuine “mind reading?” 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.)

+ 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: spying on the spies, and promising climate tech

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.

Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone

In April 2025, Ronald Deibert left all electronic devices at home in Toronto and boarded a plane. When he landed in Illinois, he bought a new laptop and iPhone. He wanted to reduce the risk of having his personal devices confiscated, because he knew his work made him a prime target for surveillance. “I’m traveling under the assumption that I am being watched, right down to exactly where I am at any moment,” Deibert says. 

Deibert directs the Citizen Lab, a research center he founded in 2001 to serve as “counterintelligence for civil society.” Housed at the University of Toronto, it’s one of the few institutions that investigate cyberthreats exclusively in the public interest, and in doing so, it has exposed some of the most egregious digital abuses of the past two decades.

For many years, Deibert and his colleagues have held up the US as the standard for liberal democracy. But that’s changing. Read the full story.

—Finian Hazen

This story is from the latest issue of our print magazine. If you subscribe now to receive future copies when they land you’ll benefit from some big discounts, and get a free tote bag! 

Three climate technologies breaking through in 2026  

—Casey Crownhart 

Happy New Year! I know it’s a bit late to say, but it never quite feels like the year has started until the new edition of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies list comes out. 

For 25 years, MIT Technology Review has put together this package, which highlights the technologies that we think are going to matter in the future. This year’s version has a bunch of climate and energy picks including sodium-ion batteries, next-generation nuclear, and hyperscale AI data centers. Let’s take a look at what ended up on the list, and what it says about this moment for climate tech. 

This story ran in The Spark, our weekly newsletter all about the technologies we can use to combat climate change. Sign up to get it in your inbox first every Wednesday. 

And, if you’re keen to learn more about why AI companies are betting big on next-gen nuclear, join us for an exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable event on Wednesday January 28 at 2pm ET. 

The must-reads

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

1 AI companies are now deeply entwined with the US military
And it looks like they’re only set to get closer. (Wired $)
+ Three open questions about the Pentagon’s push for generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Grok will comply with local laws, X has said
A global backlash over users creating ‘undressing’ images of real people seems to have forced its hand. (BBC)
+ So far there’s no evidence it’s actually following through on that promise though. (The Verge)
+ Elon Musk could stop it all instantly if he                         wanted to. (Engadget)

3 The risks of using AI in schools outweigh the benefits
According to a sweeping new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. (NPR)
+ AI’s giants are trying to take over the classroom. (MIT Technology Review)  

4 Trump is imposing new tariffs on high-end chips
They’re pretty narrow though, and leave plenty of room for exports to China. (WP $)
+ Zhipu AI says it’s trained its first major model entirely on Chinese chips. (South China Morning Post)

5 A UK police force blamed Microsoft Copilot for an intelligence error 
After spending weeks denying it was using AI tools at all. (Ars Technica)
+ Worried about police and lawyers using AI? Well, judges are at it too. (MIT Technology Review) 

6 Inside the compounds where the fraud industry makes its billions
The details are grim—for example the fact workers struck a gong every time they scammed someone out of $5,000. (NYT $)
+ Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Bandcamp has banned purely AI-generated music from its platform 
It’s the first online music platform to take this step. (Billboard)
+ Can AI generate new ideas? (NYT $)

8 Remember Havana Syndrome? The US may have found the device that causes it
It was acquired for millions of dollars under the last administration, and it’s still being studied. (CNN)

9 This study failed to prove social media time causes teens’ mental health issues
It’s a common assumption, but there’s still remarkably little evidence to back it up. (The Guardian)

10 The UK is planning to build a record-breaking number of wind farms
Its government is pushing for the vast majority of the country’s electricity to come from clean sources by 2030. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“Women and girls are far more reluctant to use AI. This should be no surprise to any of us. Women don’t see this as exciting new technology, but as simply new ways to harass and abuse us and try and push us offline.”

—Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, tells The Guardian she fears that the use of AI to harm women and girls is only going to grow. 

One more thing

DANIEL STOLLE

Inside the little-known group setting the corporate climate agenda

As thousands of companies trumpet their plans to cut carbon pollution, a small group of sustainability consultants has emerged as the go-to arbiter of corporate climate action.

The Science Based Targets initiative, or SBTi, helps businesses develop a timetable for action to shrink their climate footprint through some combination of cutting greenhouse-gas pollution and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. After years of small-scale sustainability work, SBTi is growing rapidly, and governments are paying attention. 

But while the group has earned praise for reeling the private sector into constructive conversations about climate emissions, its rising influence has also attracted scrutiny and raised questions about why a single organization is setting the standards for many of the world’s largest companies. Read the full story.

—Ian Morse

We can still have nice things

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

+ The leaders of Japan and South Korea drummed up a viral moment with a jam session this week. 
+ Struggle during the cold, dark winter months? Here’s how to make things easier for yourself. 
+ If you like getting lost in the depths of Wikipedia, Freakpages is for you. 
+ From Pluribus to Stranger Things, we really can’t get enough of hive mindsin stories lately. ($)

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.