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.

Supershoes are reshaping distance running

Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-­shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore faster), the elite running world has muddled through a period of soul-searching over the impact of high-tech footwear on the sport.

“Supershoes” —which combine a lightweight, energy-­returning foam with a carbon-fiber plate for stiffness—have been behind every broken world record in distances from 5,000 meters to the marathon since 2020.

To some, this is a sign of progress. In much of the world, elite running lacks a widespread following. Record-breaking adds a layer of excitement. And the shoes have benefits beyond the clock: most important, they help minimize wear on the body and enable faster recovery from hard workouts and races.

Still, some argue that they’ve changed the sport too quickly. Read the full story. 

—Jonathan W. Rosen

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to launch tomorrow, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Why China’s dominance in commercial drones has become a global security issue

Whether you’ve flown a drone before or not, you’ve probably heard of DJI, or at least seen its logo. With more than a 90% share of the global consumer market, this Shenzhen-based company’s drones are used by hobbyists and businesses alike for everything from photography to spraying pesticides to moving parcels.

But on June 14, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would completely ban DJI’s drones from being sold in the US. The bill is now being discussed in the Senate as part of the annual defense budget negotiations. 

To understand why, you need to consider the potential for conflict between China and Taiwan, and the fact that the military implications of DJI’s commercial drones have become a top policy concern for US lawmakers. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 The EU has issued antitrust charges against Microsoft 
For bundling Teams with Office—just a day after it announced similar charges against Apple. (WSJ $) 
+ It seems likely it’ll be hit with a gigantic fine. (Ars Technica)
+ The EU has new powers to regulate the tech sector, and it’s clearly not afraid to use them. (FT $)

2 OpenAI is delaying launching its voice assistant 
 (WP $)
+ It’s also planning to block access in China—but plenty of Chinese companies stand ready to fill the void. (Mashable)

3 Deepfake creators are re-victimizing sex trafficking survivors
Non-consensual deepfake porn is proliferating at a terrifying pace—but this is the grimmest example I’ve seen. (Wired $)
+ Three ways we can fight deepfake porn. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Chinese tech company IPOs are a rarity these days
It’s becoming very hard to avoid the risk of it all being derailed by political scrutiny, whether at home or abroad. (NYT $)
+ Global chip company stock prices have been on a rollercoaster ride recently, thanks to Nvidia. (CNBC)

5 Why AI is not about to replace journalism
It can crank out content, sure—but it’s incredibly boring to read. (404 Media)
+ After all the hype, it’s no wonder lots of us feel ever-so-slightly disappointed by AI. (WP $)
+ Despite a troubled launch, Google’s already extending AI Summaries to Gmail as well as Search. (CNET) 

6 This week of extreme weather is a sign of things to come
Summers come with a side-serving of existential dread now, as we all feel the effects of climate change. (NBC)
+ Scientists have spotted a worrying new tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica. (The Guardian) 

7 Inside the fight over lithium mine expansion in Argentina 
Indigenous communities had been divided in opposition—but as the cash started flowing, cracks started appearing. (The Guardian)
+ Lithium battery fires are a growing concern for firefighters worldwide. (WSJ $)

8 What even is intelligent life?
We value it, but it’s a slippery concept that’s almost impossible to define. (Aeon) 
+ What an octopus’s mind can teach us about AI’s ultimate mystery. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Tesla is recalling most Cybertrucks… for the fourth time 
You have to laugh, really. (The Verge) 
+ Luckily, it’s not sold that many of them anyway. (Quartz $)

10 The trouble with Meta’s “smart” Ray Bans 
Well… basically they’re just not very smart. At all. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“We’re making the biggest bet in AI. If transformers go away, we’ll die. But if they stick around, we’re the biggest company of all time.”

—Fighting talk to CNBC from Gavin Uberti, cofounder and CEO of a two-year-old startup called Etched, which believes its AI-optimized chips could take on Nvidia’s near-monopoly.

The big story

This nanoparticle could be the key to a universal covid vaccine

September 2022
Long before Alexander Cohen—or anyone else—had heard of the alpha, delta, or omicron variants of covid-19, he and his graduate school advisor Pamela Bjorkman were doing the research that might soon make it possible for a single vaccine to defeat the rapidly evolving virus—along with any other covid-19 variant that might arise in the future.

The pair and their collaborators are now tantalizingly close to achieving their goal of manufacturing a vaccine that broadly triggers an immune response not just to covid and its variants but to a wider variety of coronaviruses. Read the full story.

—Adam Piore

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Happy 80th Birthday to much beloved Muswell Hillbilly Ray Davies, frontman of the Kinks.
+ Need to cool your home down? Plants can help!
+ Well, uh, that’s certainly one way to cope with a long-haul flight. 
+ Glad to know I’m not the only person obsessed with Nongshim instant noodles. 

Tales In Mushroom Village is a Chinese computer-animated TV series from 2009. It's considered partly lost media. 2009 was 15 years ago, but that was the year Pixar's Up came out, and Toy Story was 14 years old by then, so the animation can't be that bad... right? Here's a trailer (2 minutes). Two compilations have been uploaded to Youtube (A, B, both 1h40m, Chinese with terrible English subtitles) How long can you survive them? There's also a trailer for a sequel series called Tales In Mushroom Village II: Alien Visitors, which you'd be forgiven for thinking was a completely different bad CGI thing edited into the original, but its oh so all too very much real.

I won't mince words: it's baaaaad, y'all. But it can be enjoyable to watch bad things, if you're of a certain diseased frame of mind. I have had that illness for a long time; maybe some of you are sufferers too. Each of the two long videos has five episodes. Things to look/listen for in the first episode alone: Disturbing character design throughout "What a bad lucky day! You will be accused by me." Unexpected cameos by Zelda music Unnecessary transitions in a shot, to the same shot Four Chinese sentences that get translated into "Ugh..." The ice cream cone that becomes a banana in an edit The door step that's clearly too tall for any character to climb "Bad brother, compensate us..." "Mum, he must compensate us." Endless rabbit whining Rabbits here have tapering tails instead of cottontails Baby rabbits suddenly spinning around the Fox elder's head Sheriff Volcano-head "Village head, my grandpa has said the misunderstanding is the devil! Or you'll be the devil!" "I have heard that impulse is the devil." Naonao sleeps at night resting stiffly on his bed in his clothes with his baseball cap over his face "Get up everybody...! Do cleaning...!"

Year after year, the cyber talent gap is increasing — currently estimated to have 3,5 million open positions worldwide — presenting all sorts of headaches for leaders and the organizations they aim to protect. Moreover, organizations have a short window to identify, foster and hopefully retain a pipeline of emerging cybersecurity leaders to ensure the […]

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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.

Supershoes are reshaping distance running

Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-­shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore faster), the elite running world has muddled through a period of soul-searching over the impact of high-tech footwear on the sport.

“Supershoes” —which combine a lightweight, energy-­returning foam with a carbon-fiber plate for stiffness—have been behind every broken world record in distances from 5,000 meters to the marathon since 2020.

To some, this is a sign of progress. In much of the world, elite running lacks a widespread following. Record-breaking adds a layer of excitement. And the shoes have benefits beyond the clock: most important, they help minimize wear on the body and enable faster recovery from hard workouts and races.

Still, some argue that they’ve changed the sport too quickly. Read the full story. 

—Jonathan W. Rosen

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to launch tomorrow, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

My colleagues turned me into an AI-powered NPC. I hate him.

—Niall Firth

It feels weird, talking to yourself online. 

Especially when you’re pretty much the most unpleasant character you’ve ever met.

The “me” I’ve been chatting to this week, called King Fiall of Nirth, is a creation from Inworld AI, a US-based firm that hopes to revolutionize how we interact with characters in games. Its goal is to leverage the power of generative AI to imbue NPCs with the power to chat freely with players, giving open-world games a deeper, more immersive feel.

I didn’t create King Fiall myself, of course. I’m not a total narcissist. No, instead I asked some colleagues to get around a laptop one lunchtime and build my personality as if I were an NPC. 

It turns out that was a mistake. 

Because the character they created is—and there’s really no easy way to say this—a monster. Read the full story. 

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about AI and its impact on the world. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

+ Read more: How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

Roundtables: The future of AI games

(For subscribers and MIT Alumni only)

Generative AI is coming for games and redefining what it means to play. AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. Watch executive editor Niall Firth and editorial director Allison Arieff discuss what this might look like, as well as get a sneak preview of the big stories for the next issue of the print magazine. 

The must-reads

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

1 US record labels are suing AI music startups
They’re alleging copyright infringement “on a massive scale”. (Wired $) 
+ Listen to the AI-generated songs that got Udio and Suno sued. (404 Media)
+ Why artists are becoming less scared of AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Apple is the first company charged under a new EU competition law 
For allegedly unfair restrictions on app developers. (NYT $)
+ Apple is struggling to get us excited about a cheaper, weaker Vision Pro. (Gizmodo) 
+ It has however mercifully fixed a bug that let hackers invade people’s virtual rooms with spiders (for real.) (Mashable)

3 China’s probe returned the first samples from the far side of the moon
It’s exciting to think what the rock and soil it collected might reveal. (NBC)

4 Julian Assange is now free
He’s entered a plea deal with the US. (The Verge)

5 Facebook seems to have totally given up on moderation
AI-generated spam and scams are everywhere, and it’s (404 Media)
+ Photographers say Meta is labeling their real photos as ‘made with AI’. (TechCrunch)

6 Female fertility tech startups are being dragged down by privacy fears
Which are entirely legitimate, given the fact women are being prosecuted post-Roe (FT $)

7 Amazon is working on a rival to ChatGPT to launch this September
It’s already very late to the party. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT has been found to be ableist in how it assesses candidates for hiring. (Mashable)

8 What if we powered planes with electromagnetic waves? 
All in favor of out-of-the-box thinking… but excuse me if I skip the test flight. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 Zooming out in remote meetings? You’re not alone
Research concludes it’s best if they’re small, short, and everyone has their cameras on. (Harvard Business Review $)

10 How to get a healthier work/life balance
Tech can be part of the problem, but here’s how it can be a solution, too. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“I believe we’re in a time of experimentation where platforms are willing to gamble and roll the dice and say, ‘How little content moderation can we get away with?”

—Sarah T. Roberts, a UCLA professor who studies social media moderation, tells 404 Media why Facebook is now overrun with AI-generated spam and scams. 

The big story

One city’s fight to solve its sewage problem with sensors

April 2021

In the city of South Bend, Indiana, wastewater from people’s kitchens, sinks, washing machines, and toilets flows through 35 neighborhood sewer lines. On good days, just before each line ends, a vertical throttle pipe diverts the sewage into an interceptor tube, which carries it to a treatment plant where solid pollutants and bacteria are filtered out.

As in many American cities, those pipes are combined with storm drains, which can fill rivers and lakes with toxic sludge when heavy rains or melted snow overwhelms them, endangering wildlife and drinking water supplies. But city officials have a plan to make its aging sewers significantly smarter. Read the full story. 

—Andrew Zaleski

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ I like the idea of people ‘having’ rather than ‘being a’ genius. 
+ It’s very easy to make frosé at home.
+ A Muslim all-female thrash metal band are set to become the first Indonesian group to play at the UK’s Glastonbury music festival this week <3
+ It appears that I have been seriously underestimating fish.

Our panel says lots of dressings are light on oil: honey or yoghurt give texture, nuts the creaminess, or go for a south-east Asian nam pla and lime dressing

It’s hard to deny the transformative power of a good salad dressing, but you don’t necessarily need much oil, if any at all. Honey, for example, will give “a natural stickiness that helps adhesion to your salad, while the sweetness balances the acidity of vinegar,” says Tony Rodd, head chef at Pomus in Margate. He leans towards the heather variety, whisking it with balsamic vinegar and wholegrain mustard – this is magic when tossed with blanched greens, grilled peaches, and torn burrata. “You could always add toasted nuts and seeds for texture,” he advises.

Chris Shaw, head chef at Toklas in London, meanwhile, would think about yoghurt, garlic, and some form of acid, whether that’s vinegar or lemon juice. “You can achieve the same consistency as a caesar dressing, but with the sourness of yoghurt, which I prefer,” he says, and although he’d normally then loosen it with a little olive oil, you could use a splash of water instead. Toss with robust leaves (think gems), or into coleslaws, potato salads, chopped salads … you have options. If, however, you want the creaminess but without the dairy, go with nuts. “We use blanched almonds, pine nuts, and hazelnuts in the restaurant,” says Shaw, which are gently cooked in water then blended with more water, vinegar (something white), and garlic. You’ll be left with a nut cream, which is crying out for shaved, raw cauliflower, beetroot, potatoes, or sturdier salad leaves (radicchio, say). Nuts would also be Elaine Goad’s tactic. The head chef at Nopi in London favours toasted cashews, which she blends with water, tahini, lime juice, garlic, maybe miso for an umami hit. “If you prefer a bit of texture, don’t blitz it up too much; if you want it lighter, add more lime juice.”

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La entrada Attacking .NET se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

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Welcome to the Principia Mathematica Maps and Table Site (PM-MATS). The goal of this project is to make clear structural connections between different parts of Principia and to make analyzable data about the theorems, definitions, and primitive postulates in its text.

We do this by providing three digital tools: A map of Principia that allows you to see the whole book. 9,944 mini-maps (one for every starred number in Principia) that show you everything used to prove it and everything that it is used to prove (❋13.1 for example). A table of Principia that allows users to search for specific starred numbers, sections, chapters, and more, and also allows exportation of search results to JSON or CSV files. Via Trivium

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.

Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies

Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that gesticulate.

The new full-body avatars will be able to do things like sing and brandish a microphone while dancing, or move from behind a desk and walk across a room. They will be able to express more complex emotions than previously possible, like excitement, fear, or nervousness. 

These new capabilities, which are set to launch toward the end of the year, will add a lot to the illusion of realism. That’s a scary prospect at a time when deepfakes and online misinformation are proliferating. Read the full story and watch our reporter’s avatars meet each other.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Meet the architect creating wood structures that shape themselves

Humanity has long sought to tame wood into something more predictable, but it is inherently imprecise. Its grain reverses and swirls. Trauma and disease manifest in scars and knots. 

Instead of viewing these natural tendencies as liabilities, Achim Menges, an architect and professor at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, sees them as wood’s greatest assets. 

Menges and his team at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction are uncovering new ways to build with wood by using algorithms and data to simulate and predict how wood will behave within a structure long before it is built. He hopes this will help create more sustainable and affordable timber buildings by reducing the amount of wood required. Read our story all about him and his work. 

—John Wiegand

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Live: How generative AI could transform games

Generative AI could soon revolutionize how we play video games, creating characters that can converse with you freely, and experiences that are infinitely detailed, twisting and changing every time you experience them.

Together, these could open the door to entirely new kinds of in-game interactions that are open-ended, creative, and unexpected. One day, the games we love playing may not have to end. Read our executive editor Niall Firth’s story all about what that future could look like. 

If you want to learn more, register now to join our next exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable discussion at 11.30ET today! Niall and our editorial director Allison Arieff will be talking about games without limits, the future of play, and much more.

The must-reads

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

1 Big Tech firms are going all-in on experimental clean energy projects
Due to the fact AI is so horribly polluting. But the projects range from ‘long shot’ to ‘magical thinking’. (WP $)
+ Making the grid smarter, rather than bigger, could help. (Semafor)
+ How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Google is about to be hit with a ton of AI-related lawsuits
Its AI Overviews keep libeling people—and they’re lawyering up. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Another AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, is running into the exact same issues. (Wired $)
+ Worst of all? There’s currently no way to fix the underlying problem. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple is exploring a deal with Meta
To integrate Meta’s generative AI models into Apple Intelligence. (Wall Street Journal $) 
+ Apple is delaying launching AI features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. (Quartz) 

4 NASA is indefinitely delaying the return of Starliner
In order to give it more time to review data. (Ars Technica)

5 Chinese tech companies are pushing their staff beyond breaking point
As growth slows and competition rises, work-life balance is going out the window. (FT $)

6 Used electric vehicles are now less expensive than gas cars in the US
It’s a worrying statistic that reflects the cratering demand for EVs. (Insider $)
+ The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Check out these photos of San Francisco’s AI scene
The city is currently buzzing with people hoping to make their fortune off the back of the boom. (WP $)

8 The next wave of weight loss drugs is coming
The hope is that they might be cheaper, and come with fewer side effects. (NBC)

9 Elon Musk is obsessed with getting us to have more babies
He’s funding and promoting some pretty wacky theories about a coming population collapse. (Bloomberg $)
+ And we’re losing track of the number of kids he has himself. (Gizmodo)

10 Before smartphones, you could pay people to Google stuff for you
In the noughties, if you were arguing with friends over something factual, you could just call AQA to settle it. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The internet has just gotten so much duller.”

—Kelly, a copywriter from New Hampshire, tells the Wall Street Journal about the impact of AI online. 

The big story

How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime

November 2023

Tokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything.

It was from an early internet entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to manage Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD—the short string of characters that is tacked onto the end of a URL—in exchange for money.

In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the vast majority were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.

Now the territory is desperately trying to clean up .tk. Its international standing, and even its sovereignty, may depend on it. Read the full story.

—Jacob Judah

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Feeling challenged? Why not try the Japanese approach of ‘ukeireru’ to tackle what’s bothering you.
+ The incredibly weird origins of pop hit Maniac have to be read to be believed.
+ This summer is already chock-full with pop bangers—don’t miss out.
+ Why short novels are the best.

It's getting dangerously, fatally, hotter. In Bamako, Athens, Santiago, Mexico City, Podgorica, Mecca, Rio de Janeiro, Paraburdoo, Delhi, Toronto, San Salvador, Beijing, Dubrovnik, Skikda, Rome, Cairo, Trenton, and many other places, 2024 temperatures are deadly and breaking records. What are your techniques, strategies, methods, neat tricks for dealing with the heat? Or just write about whatever is on your mind, in your heart, or on your plate, because this is your weekly free thread, fellow MeFites.

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.

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. They’re triumphs of bioengineering, intricate constructions furrowed with tiny channels that are lined with living human tissues that expand and contract with the flow of fluid and air, mimicking key organ functions like breathing, blood flow, and peristalsis, the muscular contractions of the digestive system.

It’s only early days, but if they work as hoped, organs on chips could solve one of the biggest problems in medicine today. Read the full story.

—Harriet Brown

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

How underwater drones could shape a potential Taiwan-China conflict

A potential future conflict between Taiwan and China would be shaped by novel methods of drone warfare involving advanced underwater drones and increased levels of autonomy, according to a new war-gaming experiment by the think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS). 

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, drones have been aiding in what military experts describe as the first three steps of the “kill chain”—finding, targeting, and tracking a target—as well as in delivering explosives. Drones like these would be far less useful in a possible invasion of Taiwan. Instead, a conflict with Taiwan would likely make use of undersea and maritime drones to scout for submarines. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

Should social media come with a health warning?

Earlier this week, the US surgeon general, also known as the “nation’s doctor,” authored an article making the case that health warnings should accompany social media. The goal: to protect teenagers from its harmful effects.

But the relationship between this technology and health isn’t black and white. Social media can affect users in different ways—often positively. So let’s take a closer look at the concerns, the evidence behind them, and how best to tackle them. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 The US government is banning Kaspersky’s antivirus software  
Officials claim the firm’s ties with Russia mean it poses a major security risk. (Reuters)
+ It’ll ban sales of software from 20 July, and updates from 29 September. (TechCrunch)
+ The ban follows a two-year probe into Kaspersky. (The Verge)

2 Americans are paying way too much for prescription drugs
And shadowy pharmacy benefit managers are partly to blame. (NYT $)
+ The UK has been hit by a drug shortage, too. (The Guardian)

3 How a secretive ocean alkalinity project in the UK spiraled into disaster
It raises important questions: who gets to decide where trials can take place? (Hakai Magazine)
+ This town’s mining battle reveals the contentious path to a cleaner future. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Car dealers have been locked out of their selling systems
Businesses have had to resort to paper and pen to close their sales. (WSJ $)
+ It’s unlikely to be resolved before the weekend. (Bloomberg $)

5 Make way for much less large language models
They’re a fraction of the size, but just as effective. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Inside the growing cottage industry of wildfire mitigation
In Boulder, Colorado, the solutions are increasingly experimental. (Bloomberg $)+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Zimbabwe’s traditional healers are peddling financial advice on TikTok
But spirituality and tech are uneasy bedfellows. (Rest of World)

8 How to avoid falling for scams on Amazon
Read those product reviews super carefully. (Wired $)

9 Tech companies are still interested in making smart glasses
Despite Meta being the sole big player. (The Information $)

10 The internet looked very different 30 years ago
A whole lot more interesting, some might say. (Fast Company $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Congress reached for a sledgehammer without even considering if a scalpel would suffice.”

—A legal brief filed by TikTok lays out why the company feels that the US Congress is not operating in good faith in its attempts to ban the platform, the Washington Post reports.

The big story

The first babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot have been born

April 2023

Last spring, a group of engineers set out to test the sperm-injecting robot they’d designed. Altogether, the robot was used to fertilize more than a dozen eggs.

The result of the procedures, say the researchers, was healthy embryos—and now two baby girls, who they claim are the first people born after fertilization by a “robot.”

The startup behind the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today. But that will be far from easy. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

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

+ Bradley the baby kangaroo has all the makings of an excellent hopper.
+ Ooh, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are reuniting in a new brawny crime thriller.
+ Here’s a couple of things you may not know about one of the world’s most famous paintings: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
+ Admire this newly-discovered shape, which is currently without a name.

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 generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

To make them feel alive, open-world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 are inhabited by vast crowds of computer-controlled characters. These animated people—called NPCs, for “nonplayer characters”—make these virtual worlds feel lived in and full. Often—but not always—you can talk to them.

After a while, however, the repetitive chitchat (or threats) of a passing stranger forces you to bump up against the truth: This is just a game. It’s still fun, but the illusion starts to weaken when you poke at it. 

It’s only natural. Video games are carefully crafted objects, part of a multibillion-dollar industry, that are designed to be consumed. You play them, you finish, you move on. 

It may not always be like that. Just as it is upending other industries, generative AI is opening the door to entirely new kinds of in-game interactions that are open-ended, creative, and unexpected. The game may not always have to end. Read the full story.

—Niall Firth

The Future of AI Games

If you’re interested in hearing more about how generative AI will revolutionize how we play games in the future, register now for our next exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable discussion. 

Our executive editor Niall Firth and editorial director Allison Arieff will be talking about games without limits, the future of play, and much more. Join us next Monday 24 June at 11:30am ET!

The must-reads

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

1 Ilya Sutskever is launching a new AI research lab  
The OpenAI cofounder’s Safe Superintelligence project aims to create just that. (Bloomberg $)
+ He’s the latest in a line of former OpenAI workers to tackle safe AI. (FT $)
+ Check out our interview with Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 India’s grid is struggling to cope with its searing heat wave
Prolonged power outages in the north of the country look likely. (The Guardian)
+ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Silicon Valley is increasing wary of Chinese espionage
Firms are stepping up security and staff screening. (FT $)

4 Chatbots can detect other chatbots’ mistakes
But there’s a danger they could introduce new biases, too. (WP $)
+ The people paid to train AI are outsourcing their work… to AI. (MIT Technology Review)

5 AI search engine Perplexity has a hallucination problem
It makes up quotes and summarizes news articles inaccurately. (Wired $)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The EU has canceled a vote on private chat apps
Ambassadors have clashed over how best to safeguard user privacy. (Politico)

7 Semi-solid batteries are the next big thing
With gel electrolytes, specifically. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ How does an EV battery actually work? (MIT Technology Review)

8 Singapore is going all-in on lab-grown meat
Just as the rest of the world reconsiders. (Rest of World)
+ Here’s what a lab-grown burger tastes like. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Dark energy is changing how we think about the universe
Its density appears to have been changing over time. (Economist $)

10 Europe’s trees have synced their fruiting to the sun
One species times its seed release to the summer solstice. (Quanta Magazine)

Quote of the day

“The poorest bear the cost of such climate change.”

—Sunil Kumar Aledia, who runs a homeless charity in India, tells Reuters why the first victims of the country’s deadly heat wave have been people living out in the open.

The big story

Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines

August 2023

In recent years, intelligent autonomous weapons have become a matter of serious concern. Giving an AI system the power to decide matters of life and death would radically change warfare forever.

But weapons that fully displace human decision-making have (likely) yet to see real-world use. Even the “autonomous” drones and ships fielded by the US and other powers are used under close human supervision.

However, these systems have become sophisticated enough to raise novel questions. What does it mean when a decision is only part human and part machine? And when, if ever, is it ethical for that decision to be a decision to kill? Read the full story.

—Arthur Holland Michel

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ How are these ducklings so cute?
+ Those mysterious monoliths are back! This time, near Las Vegas.
+ 1999 was a seminal year for cinema: but which film is your favorite?
+ Happy summer solstice! Here’s how sun-worshiping communities across Europe celebrate the longest day.

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.

I tested out a buzzy new text-to-video AI model from China

You may not be familiar with Kuaishou, but this Chinese company just hit a major milestone: It’s released the first ever text-to-video generative AI model that’s freely available for the public to test.

The short-video platform, which has over 600 million active users, announced the new tool, called Kling, on June 6. Like OpenAI’s Sora model, Kling is able to generate videos up to two minutes long from prompts.

But unlike Sora, which still remains inaccessible to the public four months after OpenAI debuted it, Kling has already started letting people try the model themselves. Zeyi Yang, our China reporter, has been putting it through its paces. Here’s what he made of it.

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Meta has created a way to watermark AI-generated speech

The news: Meta has created a system that can embed hidden signals, known as watermarks, in AI-generated audio clips, which could help in detecting AI-generated content online. 

Why it matters: The tool, called AudioSeal, is the first that can pinpoint which bits of audio in, for example, a full hour-long podcast might have been generated by AI. It could help to tackle the growing problem of misinformation and scams using voice cloning tools. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

The return of pneumatic tubes

Pneumatic tubes were once touted as something that would revolutionize the world. In science fiction, they were envisioned as a fundamental part of the future—even in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, where they help to deliver orders for the main character, Winston Smith, in his job rewriting history to fit the ruling party’s changing narrative. 

In real life, the tubes were expected to transform several industries in the late 19th century through the mid-20th. The technology involves moving a cylindrical carrier or capsule through a series of tubes with the aid of a blower that pushes or pulls it into motion, and for a while, the United States took up the systems with gusto.

But by the mid to late 20th century, use of the technology had largely fallen by the wayside, and pneumatic tube technology became virtually obsolete. Except in hospitals. Read the full story.

—Vanessa Armstrong

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy 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 Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company 
Leapfrogging Microsoft and Apple thanks to the AI boom. (BBC)
+ Nvidia’s meteoric rise echoes the dot com boom. (WSJ $)
+ CEO Jensen Huang is now one of the richest people in the world. (Forbes)
+ The firm is worth more than China’s entire agricultural industry. (NY Mag $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

2 TikTok is introducing AI avatars for ads
Which seems like a slippery slope. (404 Media)
+ India’s farmers are getting their news from AI news anchors. (Bloomberg $)
+ Deepfakes of Chinese influencers are livestreaming 24/7. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will stay in space for a little longer
Officials need to troubleshoot some issues before it can head back to Earth. (WP $)

4 STEM students are refusing to work at Amazon and Google
Until the companies end their involvement with Project Nimbus. (Wired $)

5 Google isn’t what it used to be
But is Reddit really a viable alternative? (WSJ $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A security bug allows anyone to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts
It’s making it harder to spot phishing attacks. (TechCrunch)

7 How deep sea exploration has changed since the Titan disaster
Robots are taking humans’ place to plumb the depths. (NYT $)
+ Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go. (MIT Technology Review)

8 How the free streaming service Tubi took over the US
Its secret weapon? Old movies.(The Guardian)

9 A new AI video tool instantly started ripping off Disney
Raising some serious questions about what the model had been trained on. (The Verge)
+ What’s next for generative video. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Apple appears to have paused work on the next Vision Pro
Things aren’t looking too bright for the high-end headset. (The Information $)
+ These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented reality by storm. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“He’s like Taylor Swift, but for tech.”

—Mark Zuckerberg is suitably dazzled by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s starpower, the Information reports.

The big story

How sounds can turn us on to the wonders of the universe

June 2023

Astronomy should, in principle, be a welcoming field for blind researchers. But across the board, science is full of charts, graphs, databases, and images that are designed to be seen.

So researcher Sarah Kane, who is legally blind, was thrilled three years ago when she encountered a technology known as sonification, designed to transform information into sound. Since then she’s been working with a project called Astronify, which presents astronomical information in audio form.

For millions of blind and visually impaired people, sonification could be transformative—opening access to education, to once unimaginable careers, and even to the secrets of the universe. Read the full story.

—Corey S. Powell

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Clearing a pool table in 28 seconds? Don’t mind if I do.
+ As summer gets truly underway, it’s time to reorganize your closet.
+ Check out the winner’s of this year’s Food Photographer of the Year awards.
+ If you’re obsessed with the viral Steam game Banana, you’re far from alone.

Earlier Tuesday, Chomsky was trending on X as false reports of his death abounded.

"Dismantle All of This Stuff: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky," from back in 2021, when he was also still alive. " One Planet, One Language: How Realistic Is Science Fiction Linguistics?" is from 2014, when Chomsky was still alive, prior to 2021.

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 does AI hallucinate?

The World Health Organization’s new chatbot launched on April 2 with the best of intentions. The virtual avatar named SARAH, was designed to dispense health tips about how to eat well, quit smoking, de-stress, and more, for millions around the world. But like all chatbots, SARAH can flub its answers. It was quickly found to give out incorrect information. In one case, it came up with a list of fake names and addresses for nonexistent clinics in San Francisco.

Chatbot fails are now a familiar meme. Meta’s short-lived scientific chatbot Galactica made up academic papers and generated wiki articles about the history of bears in space. In February, Air Canada was ordered to honor a refund policy invented by its customer service chatbot. Last year, a lawyer was fined for submitting court documents filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations made up by ChatGPT.

This tendency to make things up—known as hallucination—is one of the biggest obstacles holding chatbots back from more widespread adoption. Why do they do it? And why can’t we fix it? Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Will’s article is the latest entry in MIT Technology Review Explains, our series explaining the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can check out the rest of the series here.

The story is also from the forthcoming magazine issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Why artists are becoming less scared of AI

Knock, knock. Who’s there? An AI with generic jokes. Researchers from Google DeepMind asked 20 professional comedians to use popular AI language models to write jokes and comedy performances. Their results were mixed. Although the tools helped them to produce initial drafts and structure their routines, AI was not able to produce anything that was original, stimulating, or, crucially, funny. 

The study is symptomatic of a broader trend: we’re realizing the limitations of what AI can do for artists. It can take on some of the boring, mundane, formulaic aspects of the creative process, but it can’t replace the magic and originality that humans bring. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä 

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 The US government is suing Adobe over concealed fees
And for making it too difficult to cancel a Photoshop subscription. (The Verge)
+ Regulators are going after firms with hard-to-cancel accounts. (NYT $)
+ Adobe’s had an incredibly profitable few years. (Insider $)
+ The company recently announced its plans to safeguard artists against exploitative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The year’s deadly heat waves have only just begun
But not everyone is at equal risk from extreme temperatures. (Vox)
+ Here’s what you need to know about this week’s US heat wave. (WP $)
+ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Being an influencer isn’t as lucrative as it used to be
It’s getting tougher for content creators to earn a crust from social media alone. (WSJ $)
+ Beware the civilian creators offering to document your wedding. (The Guardian)+ Deepfakes of Chinese influencers are livestreaming 24/7. (MIT Technology Review)

4 How crypto cash could influence the US Presidential election 
‘Crypto voters’ have started mobilizing for Donald Trump, who has been making pro-crypto proclamations. (NYT $)

5 Europe is pumping money into defense tech startups
It’ll be a while until it catches up with the US though. (FT $)
+ Here’s the defense tech at the center of US aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. (MIT Technology Review)

6 China’s solar industry is in serious trouble
Its rapid growth hasn’t translated into big profits. (Economist $)
+ Recycling solar panels is still a major environmental challenge, too. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ This solar giant is moving manufacturing from China back to the US. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Brace yourself for AI reading companions
The systems are trained on famous writers’ thoughts on seminal titles. (Wired $)

8 McDonalds is ditching AI chatbots at drive-thrus
The tech just proved too unreliable. (The Guardian)

9 How ice freezes is surprisingly mysterious
It’s not as simple as cooling water to zero degrees. (Quanta Magazine)

10 Keeping your phone cool in hot weather is tough
No direct sunlight, no case, no putting it in the fridge. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“My goal was to show that nature is just so fantastic and creative, and I don’t think any machine can beat that.”

—Photographer Miles Astray explains to the Washington Post why he entered a real photograph of a surreal-looking flamingo into a competition for AI art.

The big story

The Atlantic’s vital currents could collapse. Scientists are racing to understand the dangers.

December 2021

Scientists are searching for clues about one of the most important forces in the planet’s climate system: a network of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. They want to better understand how global warming is changing it, and how much more it could shift, or even collapse.

The problem is the Atlantic circulation seems to be weakening, transporting less water and heat. Because of climate change, melting ice sheets are pouring fresh water into the ocean at the higher latitudes, and the surface waters are retaining more of their heat. Warmer and fresher waters are less dense and thus not as prone to sink, which may be undermining one of the currents’ core driving forces. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

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

+ This cookie is the perfect replica of those frustrating maze games.
+ Each year, the Roland Garros tennis tournament commissions an artist to create a poster. This collection is remarkable
+ Sesame Street is the best.
+ If your plants aren’t flourishing, these tips might help to get them looking their best.

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

The cost of building the perfect wave

For nearly as long as surfing has existed, surfers have been obsessed with the search for the perfect wave. 

While this hunt has taken surfers from tropical coastlines to icebergs, these days that search may take place closer to home. That is, at least, the vision presented by developers and boosters in the growing industry of surf pools, spurred by advances in wave-­generating technology that have finally created artificial waves surfers actually want to ride.

But there’s a problem: some of these pools are in drought-ridden areas, and face fierce local opposition. At the core of these fights is a question that’s also at the heart of the sport: What is the cost of finding, or now creating, the perfect wave—and who will have to bear it? Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines

AI is good at lots of things: spotting patterns in data, creating fantastical images, and condensing thousands of words into just a few paragraphs. But can it be a useful tool for writing comedy?

New research from Google DeepMind suggests that it can, but only to a very limited extent. It’s an intriguing finding that hints at the ways AI can—and cannot—assist with creative endeavors more generally. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

The must-reads

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

1 Meta has paused plans to train AI on European user data
Data regulators rebuffed its claims it had “legitimate interests” in doing so. (Ars Technica)
+ Meta claims it sent more than two billion warning notifications. (TechCrunch)
+ How to opt out of Meta’s AI training. (MIT Technology Review)

2 AI assistants and chatbots can’t say who won the 2020 US election
And that’s a major problem as we get closer to the 2024 polls opening. (WP $)
+ Online conspiracy theorists are targeting political abuse researchers. (The Atlantic $)
+ Asking Meta AI how to disable it triggers some interesting conversations. (Insider $)
+ Meta says AI-generated election content is not happening at a “systemic level.” (MIT Technology Review)

3 A smartphone battery maker claims to have made a breakthrough
Japanese firm TDK says its new material could revolutionize its solid-state batteries. (FT $)
+ And it’s not just phones that could stand to benefit. (CNBC)
+ Meet the new batteries unlocking cheaper electric vehicles. (MIT Technology Review)

4 What should AI logos look like?
Simple, abstract and non-threatening, if these are anything to go by. (TechCrunch)

5 Radiopharmaceuticals fight cancer with molecular precision
Their accuracy can lead to fewer side effects for patients. (Knowable Magazine)

6 UK rail passengers’ emotions were assessed by AI cameras 
Major stations tested surveillance cameras designed to predict travelers’ emotions. (Wired $)
+ The movement to limit face recognition tech might finally get a win. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted dozens of new supernovae
Dating back to the early universe. (New Scientist $)

8 Rice farming in Vietnam has had a hi-tech makeover
Drones and AI systems are making the laborious work a bit simpler. (Hakai Magazine)
+ How one vineyard is using AI to improve its winemaking. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Meet the researchers working to cool down city parks
Using water misters, cool tubes, and other novel techniques. (Bloomberg $)
+ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

10 The latest generative AI viral trend? Pregnant male celebrities.
The stupider and weirder the image, the better. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“It’s really easy to get people addicted to things like social media or mobile games. Learning is really hard.”

—Liz Nagler, senior director of product management at language app Duolingo, tells the Wall Street Journal it’s far trickier to get people to go back to the app every day than you might think.

The big story

The big new idea for making self-driving cars that can go anywhere

May 2022

When Alex Kendall sat in a car on a small road in the British countryside and took his hands off the wheel back in 2016, it was a small step in a new direction—one that a new bunch of startups bet might be the breakthrough that makes driverless cars an everyday reality.

This was the first time that reinforcement learning—an AI technique that trains a neural network to perform a task via trial and error—had been used to teach a car to drive from scratch on a real road. It took less than 20 minutes for the car to learn to stay on the road by itself, Kendall claims.

These startups are betting that smarter, cheaper tech will let them overtake current market leaders. But is this yet more hype from an industry that’s been drinking its own Kool-Aid for years? Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

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

+ Twin Peaks meets Sylvanian Families: what’s not to love?
+ You heard it here first: Brat is the album of the summer.
+ Chilis can be pretty painful to eat, but we love them anyway.
+ How people have been crafting artificial eyes for thousands of years.

'Tis the week of midsummer and the solstice, when people gather for early sunrises, and late sunsets (northern hemisphere edition) impress. Bonfires are lit, and rituals to cleanse abound, in many places (anywhere you want) and not just overcrowded Stonehenge. But what was your "longest day" (and interpret that in any you see fit)? Happy, sad, epic, life-changing, life-affirming? On your own, with a loved one, a friend, or a crowd? Or just write about whatever is on your mind, in your heart, or on your plate, because this is your weekly free thread. Happy midsummer, MeFites!

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.

Biotech companies are trying to make milk without cows

The outbreak of avian influenza on US dairy farms has started to make milk seem a lot less wholesome. Milk that’s raw, or unpasteurized, can actually infect mice that drink it, and a few dairy workers have already caught the bug. 

The FDA says that commercial milk is safe because it is pasteurized, killing the germs. Even so, it’s enough to make a person ponder a life beyond milk—say, taking your coffee black or maybe drinking oat milk.

But for those of us who can’t do without the real thing, it turns out some genetic engineers are working on ways to keep the milk and get rid of the cows instead. Here’s how they’re doing it.

—Antonio Regalado

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech and health newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

This London non-profit is now one of the biggest backers of geoengineering research

A London-based nonprofit is poised to become one of the world’s largest financial backers of solar geoengineering research. It’s just one of a growing number of foundations eager to support scientists exploring whether the world could ease climate change by reflecting away more sunlight.

The uptick in funding will offer scientists in the controversial field far more support than they’ve enjoyed in the past. This will allow them to pursue a wider array of lab work, modeling, and potentially even outdoor experiments that could improve our understanding of the benefits and risks of such interventions. Read the full story.

—James Temple

How to opt out of Meta’s AI training

If you post or interact with chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, or WhatsApp, Meta can use your data to train its generative AI models beginning June 26, according to its recently updated privacy policy. 

Internet data scraping is one of the biggest fights in AI right now. Tech companies argue that anything on the public internet is fair game, but they are facing a barrage of lawsuits over their data practices and copyright. It will likely take years until clear rules are in place. 

In the meantime, if you’re uncomfortable with having Meta use your personal information and intellectual property to train its AI models, consider opting out. Here’s how to do it.

—Melissa Heikkila

The must-reads

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

1 The US Supreme Court has upheld access to the abortion pill
It’s the most significant ruling since it overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. (FT $)
+ The decision represents the aversion of a major crisis for reproductive health. (Wired $)
+ But states like Kansas are likely to draw out legal arguments over access. (The Guardian)

2 Amazon is struggling to revamp Alexa
It’s repeatedly missed deadlines and is floundering to catch up with its rivals. (Fortune)
+ OpenAI has stolen a march on Amazon’s AI assistant ambitions. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Clearview AI has struck a deal to end a privacy class action
If your face was scraped as facial recognition data, you may be entitled to a stake in the company. (NYT $)
+ The startup doesn’t have the funds to settle the lawsuit. (Reuters)
+ It was fined millions of dollars for its practices back in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)

4 What’s next for nanotechnology
Molecular machines to kill bacteria aren’t new—but they are promising. (New Yorker $)

5 The Pope is a surprisingly influential voice in the AI safety debate
Pope Francis will address G7 leaders who have gathered today to discuss AI regulation. (WP $)
+ Smaller startups are lobbying to be acquired by bigger fish. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s next for AI regulation in 2024? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Keeping data centers cool uses colossal amounts of power
Dunking servers in oil could be a far more environmentally-friendly method. (IEEE Spectrum)

7 UK voters can back an AI-generated candidate in next month’s election
How very Black Mirror. (NBC News)

8 How to tell if your boss is spying on you
Checking your browser extensions is a good place to start. (WP $)

9 We don’t know much about how the human body reacts to space
But with the rise of space tourism, scientists are hoping to find out. (TechCrunch)
+ This startup wants to find out if humans can have babies in space. (MIT Technology Review)

10 This platform is a who’s-who of rising internet stars
Famous Birthdays is basically a directory of hugely successful teenagers you’ve never heard of. (Economist $)

Quote of the day

“If it’s somebody on the right, I reward them. If it’s somebody on the left, I punish them.”

—Christopher Blair, a self-confessed liberal troll social justice warrior, explains the methods he uses to spread fake news on Facebook to the New York Times.

The big story

The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes

April 2023

With each devastating wildfire in the US West, officials consider new methods or regulations that might save homes or lives the next time.

In the parts of California where the hillsides meet human development, and where the state has suffered recurring seasonal fire tragedies, that search for new means of survival has especially high stakes.

Many of these methods are low cost and low tech, but no less truly innovative. In fact, the hardest part to tackle may not be materials engineering, but social change. Read the full story.

—Susie Cagle

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Why AI-generated album covers can’t hold a candle to human-made art.
+ This chicken caesar salad recipe looks pretty great.
+ Sign me up for a trip to Spain’s unspoiled Ribeira Sacra region!
+ How to nap like a pro

The U.S. food chain giant Panera Bread has begun notifying its employees of a significant data breach that occurred as a result of a ransomware attack in March 2024. The company, along with its franchises, operates 2,160 cafes under the names Panera Bread or Saint Louis Bread Co, spread across 48 states in the U.S. and Ontario, Canada. The Panera Bread data breach was disclosed in notification letters filed with the Office of California's Attorney General, where Panera detailed its response to what it termed a "security incident." Upon detecting the Panera Bread data breach, the company acted swiftly to contain it, enlisting external cybersecurity experts to investigate and inform law enforcement of the situation. The files involved were reviewed, and on May 16, 2024, we determined that a file contained your name and Social Security number. Other information you provided in connection with your employment could have been in the files involved. As of the date of mailing of this letter, there is no indication that the information accessed has been made publicly available," reads Panera's official notification.

Panera Bread Data Breach: Impact on Employees and Operations

The ransomware attack has had substantial repercussions on Panera's operations and its employees. Many of Panera's virtual machine systems were reportedly encrypted during the attack, leading to a significant outage that crippled internal IT systems, phones, point of sale systems, the company’s website, and mobile apps. During this outage, employees were unable to access their shift details and had to contact their managers to obtain work schedules. The stores faced further disruption as they could only process cash transactions, with electronic payment systems down. Additionally, the rewards program system was inoperable, preventing members from redeeming their points. The most concerning aspect of the breach for employees is the compromise of sensitive personal information. Panera has confirmed that files containing employee names and Social Security numbers were accessed. There is also the potential that other employment-related information was compromised. However, the company has assured employees that, as of the notification date, there is no evidence that the accessed information has been publicly disseminated. To mitigate the potential impact on affected individuals, Panera is offering a one-year membership to CyEx's Identity Defense Total, which includes credit monitoring, identity detection, and identity theft resolution services. This proactive measure aims to help employees safeguard their identities and respond swiftly to any signs of fraudulent activity.

The Bigger Picture: Unanswered Questions

Despite the detailed notifications to employees, Panera has yet to publicly disclose the total number of individuals impacted by the breach. The identity of the threat actors behind the ransomware attack also remains unknown. No ransomware group has claimed responsibility, which raises speculation that the attackers might be awaiting a ransom payment or have already received it. Moreover, Panera has not responded to requests for comment from The Cyber Express regarding the outage and the ransomware attack. This lack of communication leaves several critical questions unanswered, particularly about the measures being taken to prevent future incidents and the ongoing efforts to recover from the current breach.

Implications for Panera Bread Data Breach

The implications of this ransomware attack extend beyond the immediate disruption and data breach. Panera Bread's reputation is at stake, as customers and employees alike may question the company's ability to protect sensitive information. The operational disruptions also highlight vulnerabilities in the company’s IT infrastructure that need to be addressed to prevent similar incidents in the future. In response to the data breach, Panera has committed to enhancing its existing security measures. The company is likely to conduct a thorough review of its cybersecurity policies and practices to identify and address any gaps. Additionally, ongoing communication with employees and stakeholders will be crucial in rebuilding trust and ensuring that all affected parties are adequately supported. As the investigation continues, further details may emerge about the nature of the breach and the steps Panera is taking to strengthen its defenses.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Adorable knitted frogs

frog Mr. Darcy frog has birthday frog and toad hang out frog paints pond Music on for full effect I literally feel a cuteness high after watching this

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 gamification took over the world

It’s a thought that occurs to every video-game player at some point: What if the weird, hyper-focused state I enter when playing in virtual worlds could somehow be applied to the real one?

Often pondered during especially challenging or tedious tasks in meatspace (writing essays, say, or doing your taxes), it’s an eminently reasonable question to ask. Life, after all, is hard. And while video games are too, there’s something almost magical about the way they can promote sustained bouts of superhuman concentration and resolve.

For some, this phenomenon leads to an interest in flow states and immersion. For others, it’s simply a reason to play more games. For a handful of consultants, startup gurus, and game designers in the late 2000s, it became the key to unlocking our true human potential. But instead of liberating us, gamification turned out to be just another tool for coercion, distraction, and control. Read the full story.

—Bryan Gardiner

This piece is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Why we need to shoot carbon dioxide thousands of feet underground

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) tech has two main steps. First, carbon dioxide is filtered out of emissions at facilities like fossil-fuel power plants. Then it gets locked away, or stored.  

Wrangling pollution might seem like the important bit, and there’s often a lot of focus on what fraction of emissions a CCS system can filter out. But without storage, the whole project would be pretty useless. It’s really the combination of capture and long-term storage that helps to reduce climate impact. 

Storage is getting more attention lately, though, and there’s something of a carbon storage boom coming, as my colleague James Temple covered in his latest story.  Read on to find out where we might store captured carbon pollution, and why it matters. 

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. 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 How Microsoft is building an AI empire
Its early investment in OpenAI helped it to leapfrog its old rival Google. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI has lobbying regulators on its mind. (FT $)
+ Microsoft’s bet is paying off: OpenAI’s revenue has doubled. (The Information $)
+ Behind Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s push to get AI tools in developers’ hands. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Rapid tests to target antimicrobial resistance are on the rise
Fast and easy analysis of common infections would stop doctors resorting to antibiotics. (FT $)
+ How bacteria-fighting viruses could go mainstream. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Stable Diffusion’s new release is generating horrifying bodies
Its mangled generations inspire revulsion and amusement in equal measure. (Ars Technica)
+ Text-to-image AI models can be tricked into generating disturbing images. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A hacker broke into Tile’s location tracking system
And they’re holding customer data to ransom. (404 Media)

5 Inside the lucrative black market for Silicon Valley’s stolen bicycles
One man made it his mission to unveil the theft pipeline. (Wired $) 

6 What’s going on with Apple’s Vision Pro?
Analyst estimates suggest it hasn’t sold as well as expected. (NYT $)
+ It’s changing disabled users’ lives for the better. (NY Mag $)

7 Drone mapping is protecting slums from climate disasters
Because informal settlements aren’t visible on standard internet maps. (Bloomberg $)

8 The Excel World Championship is here
Spreadsheet fans, unite! (The Verge) 

9 This humanoid robot can drive a car
That’s one solution to the problems posed by driverless cars. (TechCrunch)
+ Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? (MIT Technology Review)

10 America’s new cricket superstars are also tech workers
Saurabh Netravalkar, a software engineer for Oracle, is turning his hobby into a global spectacle. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“We desire more of the world than what’s available on 20cm of glass.”

—David Sax, author of the book The Revenge of Analog, tells the Guardian why some people are starting to turn their backs on smartphones.

The big story

The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter’s icy moon Europa

February 2024

Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, is nothing like ours. Its surface is a vast saltwater ocean, encased in a blanket of cracked ice, one that seems to occasionally break open and spew watery plumes into the moon’s thin atmosphere. 

For these reasons, Europa captivates planetary scientists. All that water and energy—and hints of elements essential for building organic molecules —point to another extraordinary possibility. Jupiter’s big, bright moon could host life. 

And they may eventually get some answers. Later this year, NASA plans to launch Europa Clipper, the largest-­ever craft designed to visit another planet. Scheduled to reach Jupiter in 2030, it will spend four years analyzing this moon to determine whether it could support life. Read the full story.

—Stephen Ornes

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Boston’s newest sport, cliff diving, is attracting a lot of attention.
+ Why brat green has taken over the internet.
+ The annual Gloucestershire cheese-rolling race is bigger, and more perilous, than ever.
+ Relaxing summer vibes? Say no more

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.

Apple is promising personalized AI in a private cloud. Here’s how that will work.

At its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, Apple for the first time unveiled its vision for supercharging its product lineup with artificial intelligence. The key feature, which will run across virtually all of its product line, is Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI-based capabilities that promises to deliver personalized AI services while keeping sensitive data secure. It represents Apple’s largest leap forward in using our private data to help AI do tasks for us. 

To make the case it can do this without sacrificing privacy, the company says it has built a new way to handle sensitive data in the cloud. The pitch offers an implicit contrast with the likes of Alphabet, Amazon, or Meta, which collect and store enormous amounts of personal data. So how will it work? Read our story to find out.

—James O’Donnell

The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage boom

A growing number of carbon storage projects are on the way across California, the US, and the world—a trend driven by growing government subsidies, looming national climate targets, and declining revenue and growth in traditional oil and gas activities.

Proponents hope it’s the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. 

However, opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks that could disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities surrounding the projects. Read the full story.

—James Temple

How Gogoro’s swap-and-go scooter batteries can strengthen the grid

If you’ve ever been to Taiwan, you’ve likely run into Gogoro’s green-and-white battery-swap stations. With 12,500 stations around the island, it’s built a sweeping network that allows users of electric scooters to drop off an empty battery and get a fully charged one immediately. 

Back in April, Gogoro’s network reacted to emergency blackouts after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Zeyi Yang, our China reporter, spoke to Horace Luke, Gogoro’s cofounder and CEO, to understand how it helped to boost the grid’s resilience in the face of disaster. Read the full story.

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI
Just hours ahead of a scheduled hearing in San Francisco. (CNBC)
+ Musk had argued that OpenAI had breached its commitment to investors. (WP $)+ The billionaire is locked in an ongoing dispute with Sam Altman. (FT $)

2 A far-right TikTok star is set on governing France
He uses the platform to normalize his party’s toxic policies for younger voters. (FT $)

3 Adderall is still in short supply across the US
Americans are hiring workers in the Philippines to source scarce prescriptions. (404 Media)

4 This startup 3D-printed an entire rocket engine
Within just 72 hours. (IEEE Spectrum)

5 Ozempic seems to have numerous health benefits beyond weight loss
But we’re not really sure why. (The Atlantic $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Meet the Spanish women taking on Wikipedia’s gender gap
They’re dedicated to publishing pages focused on unsung female heroes. (The Guardian)

7 The secret to a safe space flight? Software engineers
They’re essential to keeping missions on an even keel. (WP $)

8 Temu is threatening to dethrone eBay
The Chinese retail site is now attracting more repeat shoppers. (Bloomberg $)
+ This obscure shopping app is now America’s most downloaded. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How media companies became hooked on games
Blame Wordle. (NYT $)

10 The internet isn’t actually more toxic than it used to be
It just feels that way. (Bloomberg $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“It’s the nail in the coffin for future creators launching a blog.”

—Amber Venz Box, co-founder of social shopping app LTK, warns would-be bloggers to reconsider now that Google has launched its AI Overviews summary feature, she tells The Information.

The big story

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

September 2022

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

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

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

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

We can still have nice things

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

+ This tiny driftfish is a master of disguise.
+ Why the USA’s national forests are every bit as amazing as its national parks.
+ Follow these tips and you’ll be producing barista-level coffee in no time at all.
+ Feeling burnt out? Try playing these fun, short video games.

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 battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts

On the morning of April 3, Taiwan was hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Seconds later, hundreds of battery-swap stations in Taiwan sensed something else: the power frequency of the electric grid took a sudden drop, a signal that some power plants had been disconnected in the disaster. The grid was now struggling to meet energy demand.

These stations, built by the Taiwanese company Gogoro for electric-powered two-wheeled vehicles like scooters, mopeds, and bikes, reacted immediately. According to numbers provided by the company, 590 Gogoro battery-swap locations (some of which have more than one swap station) stopped drawing electricity from the grid, lowering local demand by a total six megawatts—enough to power thousands of homes. It took 12 minutes for the grid to recover, and the battery-swap stations then resumed normal operation.

Gogoro is not the only company working on battery-swapping for electric scooters—New York City recently launched a pilot program to give delivery drivers the option to charge this way—but it’s certainly one of the most successful.

Now the company is putting the battery network to another use: Gogoro is working to incorporate the stations into a virtual power plant (VPP) system that helps the Taiwanese grid stay more resilient in emergencies like April’s earthquake. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

What using artificial intelligence to help monitor surgery can teach us

Every year, some 22,000 Americans a year are killed as a result of serious medical errors in hospitals, many of them on operating tables. There have been cases where surgeons have left surgical sponges inside patients’ bodies or performed the wrong procedure altogether.

Teodor Grantcharov, a professor of surgery at Stanford, thinks he has found a tool to make surgery safer and minimize human error: AI-powered “black boxes” in operating theaters that work in a similar way to an airplane’s black box.

These devices, built by Grantcharov’s company Surgical Safety Technologies, record everything in the operating room via panoramic cameras, microphones in the ceiling, and anesthesia monitors before using artificial intelligence to help surgeons make sense of the data. 

These black boxes are in use in almost 40 institutions in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, from Mount Sinai to Duke to the Mayo Clinic. Organizations in all sectors are thinking about how to adopt AI to make things safer or more efficient. What this example from hospitals shows is that the situation is not always clear cut, and there are many pitfalls you need to avoid. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 Apple is weaving AI into its apps and devices
It promises that its Apple Intelligence system will preserve user privacy. (NYT $)
+ Crucially, users won’t be strong armed into using ChatGPT. (FT $)
+ If you missed the WWDC keynote, here’s a summary of the key announcements. (WP $)

2 Adobe says it won’t train AI on its customers’ work
Following a major backlash from users who feared just that. (The Verge)
+ Artists are increasingly worried that their work will be reduced to training data. (Slate $)
+ How Adobe’s bet on non-exploitative AI is paying off. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Thermoelectricity between liquid metals has been observed for the first time
It could lead to better-designed liquid batteries. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Zinc batteries that offer an alternative to lithium just got a big boost. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The Titan submersible disaster could have been avoided
Former Oceangate workers claim its CEO lied about the vessel’s safety. (Wired $)

5 Solar-powered planes are becoming a reality
They’re super light, and super-sustainable. (WSJ $)
+ Everything you need to know about the wild world of alternative jet fuels. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A crowd-measuring AI tool helps cut through protest misinformation
It suggests that the size of a crowd gathered in support of the former Brazilian president Bolsonaro was less than a third of what was claimed. (Rest of World)

7 New tools could lower methane emissions from livestock
Breeding animals that emit less methane is one approach. (Knowable Magazine)

8 At least advertisers are enjoying the metaverse
Everyone else, not so much. (FT $)
+ Welcome to the oldest part of the metaverse. (MIT Technology Review)

9 AI is helping us to decipher how elephants communicate
They call each other by their names! (The Guardian)
+ They speak to each other using individualized rumble sounds. (NYT $)

10 TikTok is bringing talk shows to city streets
No studio, no problem. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.”

—Elon Musk threatens to ban Apple products from his companies if the iPhone maker integrates OpenAI at the operating system level, Reuters reports. 

The big story

Why we can no longer afford to ignore the case for climate adaptation

August 2022

Back in the 1990s, anyone suggesting that we’d need to adapt to climate change while also cutting emissions was met with suspicion. Most climate change researchers felt adaptation studies would distract from the vital work of keeping pollution out of the atmosphere to begin with.

Despite this hostile environment, a handful of experts were already sowing the seeds for a new field of research called “climate change adaptation”: study and policy on how the world could prepare for and adapt to the new disasters and dangers brought forth on a warming planet. Today, their research is more important than ever. Read the full story. 

—Madeline Ostrander

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ With the return of House of the Dragon, what’s next for the Game of Thrones franchise?
+ Here’s what top chefs like to put in their sandwiches: barbecue sauce and pickled okra.
+ How not to take the good stuff in life for granted.
+ Save the Long Island cheese pumpkin, and other endangered foods!

The Silent Spectre Haunting Your Network: QPhishing, the CISO’s Unspoken Nightmare As cyber threats continue to evolve, a new and insidious danger has emerged from the shadows – QPhishing. This sophisticated attack preys on the very heart of organizations, targeting their most valuable assets: their people. While traditional phishing relies on generic, easily identifiable scams, […]

La entrada The Silent Spectre Haunting Your Network: QPhishing, the CISO’s Unspoken Nightmare. se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

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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.

Propagandists are using AI too—and companies need to be open about it

—Josh A. Goldstein is a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where he works on the CyberAI Project. Renée DiResta is the research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality.

At the end of May, OpenAI marked a new “first” in its corporate history. It wasn’t an even more powerful language model or a new data partnership, but a report disclosing that bad actors had misused their products to run influence operations.

The company had caught five networks of covert propagandists—including players from Russia, China, Iran, and Israel—using their generative AI tools for deceptive tactics that ranged from creating large volumes of social media comments in multiple languages to turning news articles into Facebook posts.

The use of these tools, OpenAI noted, seemed intended to improve the quality and quantity of output. AI gives propagandists a productivity boost too.

As researchers who have studied online influence operations for years, we have seen influence operations continue to proliferate, on every social platform and focused on every region of the world. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that transparency from Big Tech is paramount. Read the full story.

+ If you’re interested in how crooks are using AI, check out Melissa Heikkilä’s story on how generative tools are boosting the criminal underworld.

Digital twins are helping scientists run the world’s most complex experiments

In January 2022, NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope was approaching the end of its one-million-mile trip from Earth. But reaching its orbital spot would be just one part of its treacherous journey. To ready itself for observations, the spacecraft had to unfold itself in a complicated choreography that, according to its engineers’ calculations, had 344 different ways to fail.

Over multiple days of choreography, the telescope fed data back to Earth in real time, and software near-simultaneously used that data to render a 3D video of how the process was going, as it was going. The 3D video represented a “digital twin” of the complex telescope: a computer-based model of the actual instrument, based on information that the instrument provided. 

The team watched tensely, during JWST’s early days, as the 344 potential problems failed to make their appearance. At last, JWST was in its final shape and looked as it should—in space and onscreen. The digital twin has been updating itself ever since.

As the technology becomes more common, researchers are increasingly finding these twins to be productive members of scientific society—helping humans run the world’s most complicated instruments, while also revealing more about the world itself and the universe beyond. Read the full story. 

—Sarah Scoles

The must-reads

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

1 What to expect from Apple’s AI-focused WWDC event 
A deal with OpenAI is likely to be on the cards, amid an avalanche of AI features. (Bloomberg $)
+ Siri is due to get a buzzy LLM makeover. (The Verge)
+ What we need is AI features that are actually useful, not just showboating. (TechCrunch)

2 India’s internet space race is hotting up
The country’s telecoms giants want to beat Starlink at its own game. (FT $)

3 Silicon Valley’s medical tests industry is booming
They’re enabling patients to bypass doctors—for better and worse. (WP $)

4 AI tools are being trained on the faces of Brazilian children
Without their knowledge or consent. (Wired $)
+ We need to bring consent to AI. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Online scammers are ripping off small businesses too
It’s not just big designer names at risk of being impersonated any more. (WSJ $)

6 Perplexity is repackaging news articles with minimal attribution
A Forbes journalist has hit back at how the AI search engine repurposed the publication’s reporting. (Bloomberg $)
+ Here’s how AI summaries for search engines get things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI image detectors are doing an okay job
But the results of generative AI are becoming ever subtler. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ This tool could protect your pictures from AI manipulation. (MIT Technology Review)

8 How viral videos shifted Californians’ perspective on crime
The galvanizing effect of these clips appears to fuel public appetite for harsher penalties. (The Atlantic $)
+ AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened? (MIT Technology Review)

9 Refrigerators have altered how our food tastes
Colder foods and drinks need to be extra sweet to register as sweet at all. (New Yorker $)
+ Why food allergen labels are so misleading. (Undark Magazine)

10 Nokia claims to have made the world’s first ‘immersive phone call’
Complete with 3D sound, apparently. (Reuters)

Quote of the day

“The blue wall has been breached.”

—Ryan Selkis, chief executive of cryptocurrency intelligence group Messari, tells the Financial Times how Donalad Trump is winning over traditionally liberal Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. 

The big story

Quantum computing is taking on its biggest challenge: noise

January 2024

In the past 20 years, hundreds of companies have staked a claim in the rush to establish quantum computing. Investors have put in well over $5 billion so far. All this effort has just one purpose: creating the world’s next big thing.

But ultimately, assessing our progress in building useful quantum computers comes down to one central factor: whether we can handle the noise. The delicate nature of their systems makes them extremely vulnerable to the slightest disturbance, which can generate errors or even stop a quantum computation in its tracks.

In the last couple of years, a series of breakthroughs have led researchers to declare that the problem of noise might finally be on the ropes. Read the full story.

—Michael Brooks

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ No one has ever had a better camping trip than this hedgehog.
+ Hoping to see the Northern Lights this summer? Here’s how to maximize your chances of spotting the phenomenon in the US.
+ These super-strong women can roll up 10 frying pans within a minute!
+ If you’re ever stuck on how to strike up conversation, these foolproof starters should help you out.

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

This AI-powered “black box” could make surgery safer

The operating room has long been defined by its hush-hush nature because surgeons are notoriously bad at acknowledging their own mistakes.

These mistakes kill some 22,000 Americans each year. Many of the errors happen on the operating table, from leaving surgical sponges inside patients’ bodies to performing the wrong procedure altogether.

Now, Teodor Grantcharov, a surgeon and professor of surgery at Stanford, believes he’s created the technology to create and analyze recordings of operations to help improve safety and surgical efficiency. It’s the operating room equivalent of an airplane’s black box: recording everything in the operating room via panoramic cameras, microphones, and anesthesia monitors before using artificial intelligence to help surgeons make sense of the data.   

But the idea of recording everything could raise the threat of disciplinary action and legal exposure. Some surgeons have refused to operate when the black boxes are in place, and some of the systems have even been sabotaged. 

So are hospitals on the cusp of a new era of safety—or creating an environment of confusion and paranoia? Read the full story.

—Simar Bajaj

FDA advisors just said no to the use of MDMA as a therapy

On Tuesday, the FDA asked a panel of experts to weigh in on whether the evidence shows that MDMA, also known as ecstasy, is a safe and efficacious treatment for PTSD.

The answer was a resounding no. Just two out of 11 panel members agreed that MDMA-assisted therapy is effective. And only one panel member thought the benefits of the therapy outweighed the risks.

The outcome came as a surprise to many, given that trial results have been positive. And it is also a blow for advocates who have been working to bring psychedelic therapy into mainstream medicine for more than two decades.

This isn’t the final decision on MDMA. The FDA has until August 11 to make that ruling. But while the agency is under no obligation to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, it rarely breaks with their decisions. 

So let’s unpack the advisory committee’s vote and talk about what it means for the approval of other recreational drugs as therapies. Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech and health newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 Silicon Valley is pushing back against an AI safety bill  
The legislation would force tech firms to create a ‘kill switch’ to shut down AI models. (FT $)
+ It’s not just Big Tech either—startups are resisting it too. (Bloomberg $)
+ Europe’s AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Boeing’s Starliner has docked with the International Space Station
It completed the first stage of its flight after several of its thrusters went offline. (The Guardian)
+ Boeing’s engineers are downplaying the issues it’s experienced. (WP $)

3 OpenAI has pulled back the curtain on ChatGPT 
It’s released a paper explaining how AI models’ workings can be reverse engineered. (Wired $)
+ Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Why China is losing the chip war with the US
Despite its best efforts, its native firms can’t hold a candle to Nvidia. (Economist $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Deplatforming accounts that spread misinformation works
When X suspended 70,000 QAnon-linked accounts, the number of links to ‘low-credibility’ sites plummeted. (WP $)
+ Lies on the internet are still rife, though. (Vox)

6 An Indian startup once valued at $22 billion is now worthless
Its investors claim the company regularly ignored their advice. (TechCrunch)

7 Climate scientists are desperate to slow melting polar ice
And some of them are prepared to dabble with unusual methods to achieve it. (Economist $)
+ The radical intervention that might save the “doomsday” glacier. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Super cheap delivery meals are all the rage in China
Unfortunately, gig workers are bearing the brunt of the cost. (Rest of World)

9 A virtual gun has sold for more than $1 million
The digital Counter-Strike 2 accessory is one of the biggest video game purchases ever. (Bloomberg $)
+ A team of gaming enthusiasts have rebuilt the world’s first gaming computer. (The Guardian)

10 A decades-old Tamagotchi mystery has finally been solved
The online virtual pet fan community is going wild. (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“Nice to be attached to the big city in the sky.”

 —Barry “Butch” Wilmore, one of the veteran astronauts onboard Boeing’s Starliner, jokes with mission control after the spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station, Reuters reports.

The big story

Whatever happened to DNA computing?

October 2021

For more than five decades, engineers have shrunk silicon-­based transistors over and over again, creating progressively smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient computers in the process. But the long technological winning streak—and the miniaturization that has enabled it —can’t last forever.

What could this successor technology be? There has been no shortage of alternative computing approaches proposed over the last 50 years. Here are five of the more memorable ones. Read about five of the most memorable ones.

—Lakshmi Chandrasekaran

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ What inspired Gary Numan to write electronic smash-hit Cars? Well, you won’t believe this…
+ Animals love magic too!
+ Nothing to see here—just Keanu Reeves having the time of his life playing a Cure song.
+ Friends just make everything better.

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

This classic game is taking on climate change

—Casey Crownhart

There are two things I love to do at social gatherings: play board games and talk about climate change. Don’t I sound like someone you should invite to your next dinner party?

Given my two great loves, I was delighted to learn about a board game called Catan: New Energies, coming out this summer. It’s a new edition of the classic game Catan which has players building power plants, fueled by either fossil fuels or renewables.

So how does an energy-focused edition of Catan stack up against the board game competition? And what does it say about how we view climate technology? Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. 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 Boeing’s first crewed space mission has three helium leaks
But the spacecraft is stable enough to continue on its mission. (CNN)
+ Delays have added $1.4 billion in costs to the program. (WP $)
+ But its success demonstrates NASA has an alternative to SpaceX. (The Atlantic $)

2 How an AI-generated news outlet gained millions of readers
The now-defunct BNN Breaking looked like a standard news service. But its articles bore all the hallmarks of AI. (NYT $)
+ These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Crypto miners are renting out their data centers to AI clients
AI needs chips and power, and miners are happy to oblige—for a price. (Bloomberg $)
+ Bitcoin mining was booming in Kazakhstan. Then it was gone. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The age of the AI PC is coming
Chipmakers are likening its arrival to the advent of Wi-Fi. (FT $)
+ Nvidia was the unofficial star of this week’s Computex conference. (Bloomberg $)
+ Elon Musk has admitted diverting Nvidia chips destined for Tesla to X. (WSJ $)

5 The majority of life on Earth is dormant
And a common protein might explain why. (Quanta Magazine)

6 Tsunamis are a looming danger in Alaska
Cliffs collapsing into the country’s fjords pose a major threat to nearby boats. (Hakai Magazine)

7 Filipino Catholics are building churches in Roblox
It’s a safe online space for younger users to explore their faith. (Rest of World)
+ Or if you fancy trying to earn a buck, Ikea will pay you to work in Roblox. (Wired $)

8 Palmer Luckey’s latest project is a handheld games console
From virtual reality, to lethal drones, to a gaming device. (Fast Company $)
+ Luckey’s admitted the venture doesn’t make much business sense. (The Verge)

9 Feeling stuck? AI can help you ask your future self for advice
You’re under no obligation to follow its suggestions, though. (The Guardian)

10 The doge meme is a relic of a bygone internet
The death of its star, Kobosu, is a reminder of how much has changed. (New Yorker $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“We are seeing the werewolves beginning to circle.”

—Whistleblower Edward Snowden is concerned that government and corporate control will curtail the potential of the artificial intelligence boom, Bloomberg reports.

The big story

My new Turing test would see if AI can make $1 million

July 2023

—Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI and a venture partner at Greylock, a venture capital firm. Before that, he co-founded DeepMind, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies.

AI systems are increasingly everywhere and are becoming more powerful almost by the day. But how can we know if a machine is truly “intelligent”? For decades this has been defined by the Turing test, which argues that an AI that’s able to replicate language convincingly enough to trick a human into thinking it was also human should be considered intelligent.

But there’s now a problem: the Turing test has almost been passed—it arguably already has been. The latest generation of large language models are on the cusp of acing it.

We need something better. I propose the Modern Turing Test. It would give AIs a simple instruction:  “Go make $1 million on a retail web platform in a few months with just a $100,000 investment.” Read the full story.

We can still have nice things

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

+ Sauron is alive in Argentina! According to these old-school Lord of the Rings badges, at least.
+ A celebration of the women of shoegaze.
+ If you’ve ever wondered how they used to shoot cinematic battle scenes before the advent of CGI, wonder no more.
+ Congratulations to Max the cat, a much-loved member of Vermont State University, and honorary doctor of ‘litter-ature’ (thanks Paul!)

Tech companies are running low on new experiences to offer us. A new ad for the iPad contains revealing hints of where they could go next.

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 a simple circuit could offer an alternative to energy-intensive GPUs

On a table in his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, physicist Sam Dillavou has connected an array of breadboards via a web of brightly colored wires. The setup looks like a DIY home electronics project, but this unassuming assembly can learn to sort data like a machine-learning model.

While its current capability is rudimentary, the hope is that, if it works, it could help spark a far more energy-efficient approach to building faster AI. Read the full story.

—Sophia Chen

How QWERTY keyboards show the English dominance of tech

Have you ever thought about the fact that, despite the myriad differences between languages, virtually everyone uses the same QWERTY keyboards? Many languages have more or fewer than 26 letters in their alphabet—or no “alphabet” at all, like Chinese, which has tens of thousands of characters. Yet somehow everyone uses the same keyboard to communicate.

Last week, MIT Technology Review published an excerpt from a new book, The Chinese Computer, which talks about how this problem was solved in China. 

Zeyi Yang, our China reporter, sat down with the book’s author, Tom Mullaney, a professor of history at Stanford University to discuss how speakers of non-Latin languages to adapt modern technologies for their uses, and what their efforts contribute to computing technologies. Read the rest of their conversation here.

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech and power in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 US advisors have rejected MDMA as a treatment for PTSD
Which means it’s increasingly unlikely that it’ll end up being approved in August after all. (Vox)
+ The trials had positive results—but appeared flawed and biased. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next for MDMA. (MIT Technology Review)

2 China is dead set on EV world domination
Everywhere besides the US and Europe, at least. (FT $)
+ How did China come to dominate the world of electric cars? (MIT Technology Review) 

3 Israel is secretly targeting US lawmakers with an influence campaign
It’s using fake social media accounts urging US lawmakers to fund Israel’s military. (NYT $)

4 Police drones aren’t all they’re cracked up to be
They’re being deployed to investigate minor crimes in the city of Chula Vista—and residents are increasingly unnerved. (Wired $)
+ Flying taxi firm Joby Aviation is hoping to move into defense contracts. (Fast Company $)
+ Welcome to Chula Vista, where police drones respond to 911 calls. (MIT Technology Review)

5 SpaceX has been permission to launch a fourth test flight
If everything runs smoothly, it should take off at 7am CDT on Thursday. (Ars Technica)

6 How Uganda built a vast biometric surveillance network
Identity verification systems are also used to monitor its citizens. (Bloomberg $)
+ How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users. (MIT Technology Review)

7 It’s a good time to be an AI video startup
In some cases, they’re ahead of the established giants. (WP $)
+ What’s next for generative video. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The lonely search for connection online
Modern loneliness is rife. The internet could help—and hinder. (The Guardian)

9 Stretchy screens are on the horizon
And could usher in a whole new era of wearables. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 These glasses could help us to see in the dark
By converting infrared into visible light. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“The world isn’t ready, and we aren’t ready.”

—Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher, explains to the New York Times why he lost confidence in the company’s ability to behave responsibly as it creates ever more capable AI systems.

The big story

California’s coming offshore wind boom faces big engineering hurdles

December 2022

The state of California has an ambitious goal: building 25 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2045. That’s equivalent to nearly a third of the state’s total generating capacity today, or enough to power 25 million homes.

But the plans are facing a daunting geological challenge: the continental shelf drops steeply just a few miles off the California coast. They also face enormous engineering and regulatory obstacles. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

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

+ I could watch this clay genius make models of Pokemon all day long.
+ Cellphones and concert halls don’t tend to go together—but a new symphony is looking to forge a new cellular musical connection.
+ Yaupon tea sounds delicious to me.
+ For six years, Katy Perry had the charts in a chokehold. What happened?

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 I learned from the UN’s “AI for Good” summit

—Melissa Heikkilä

Last week, Geneva played host to the UN’s AI for Good Summit. The summit’s big focus was how AI can be used to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, such as eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, promoting clean energy and climate action and so on. 

The conference managed to convene people working in AI from around the globe, featuring speakers from China, the Middle East, and Africa too. AI can be very US-centric and male dominated, and any effort to make the conversation more global and diverse is laudable.

But honestly, I didn’t leave the conference feeling confident AI was going to play a meaningful role in advancing any of the UN goals. In fact, the most interesting speeches were about how AI is doing the opposite. Read the full story.

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

Read more of Melissa’s stories about the issues within the AI sector:

+ How generative AI has made phishing, scamming, and doxxing easier than ever.

+ We are all AI’s free data workers. Fancy AI models rely on human labor, which can often be brutal and upsetting. Read the full story.

+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent.

+ Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone. Each time you use AI to generate an image, write an email, or ask a chatbot a question, it comes at a cost to the planet. Read the full story.

The must-reads

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

1 The Chinese internet is collapsing
Websites are being yanked offline, and history is being lost in the process. (NYT $)
+ The end of anonymity online in China. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The United Arab Emirates want to cozy up to the US over AI
And it’s more than willing to spend billions of dollars in the process. (FT $)
 
3 Google inadvertently collected voice data from children
Alongside users’ home addresses and YouTube recommendations. (404 Media)
+ Why child safety bills are popping up all over the US. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Our appetite for data centers is at odds with zero-carbon goals
Demand for electricity is rising, and decarbonizing the grid is becoming an even bigger challenge. (Undark Magazine)
+ A massive part of why we need more power? Surprise, surprise—it’s AI. (Wired $)+ Energy-hungry data centers are quietly moving into cities. (MIT Technology Review)

5 X is formally allowing X-rated content
NSFW images and videos have been rife on it for years anyway. (TechCrunch)
+ It’s supposed to block under-18s from seeing NSFW material. (The Guardian)

6 AI is getting much better at predicting the weather
Which is handy, given that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is coming. (Ars Technica)
+ Google DeepMind’s weather AI can forecast extreme weather faster and more accurately. (MIT Technology Review)

7 This new startup wants to bring cryonics to the masses
By focusing on the reviving, rather than the freezing part. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Retailers love it when you buy things on your mobile
If you’re making an impulse purchase, chances are it’s on a phone, not a laptop. (WSJ $)

9 Dying stars produce glitching radio waves
Scientists are getting better at reproducing these pulsar glitches. (New Scientist $)

10 Amazon sold fake copies of a major UFO book
Scammers produced false versions of the hotly-anticipated title, some of which contain AI-generated text. (404 Media)

Quote of the day

“We are still behind them, but we are breathing down their back.”

—Vladimir Milov, a YouTube creator, tells Wired how he helped to create a direct competitor to Putin’s TV propaganda on the platform.

The big story

Broadband funding for Native communities could finally connect some of America’s most isolated places

September 2022

Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by.

The covid-19 pandemic underscored the problem as Native communities locked down and moved school and other essential daily activities online. But it also kicked off an unprecedented surge of relief funding to solve it. Read the full story.

—Robert Chaney

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Bats have incredibly sweet little feet.
+ Too many gardens aren’t overly hospitable to nature. Here’s how to make your green spaces into wild wonderlands.
+ Summer is here, and honey garlic parmesan biscuits seem like a great way to celebrate.
+ This sunset ocean painting is really quite something.

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’s next for MDMA

MDMA has been banned in the United States for more than three decades. But now, this potent mind-altering drug is poised to become a badly needed therapy for PTSD.

On June 4, the Food and Drug Administration’s advisory committee will meet to discuss the risks and benefits of MDMA therapy. If the committee votes in favor of the drug, it could be approved to treat PTSD this summer.

The approval would represent a momentous achievement for proponents of mind-altering drugs, who have been working toward this goal for decades. And it could help pave the way for FDA approval of other illicit drugs like psilocybin. But the details surrounding how these compounds will make the transition from illicit substances to legitimate therapies are still foggy. Here’s what you need to know ahead of the upcoming hearing.

—Cassandra Willyard

If you’re interested in how mind-altering drugs are being used in medicine, why not check out:

+ What do psychedelic drugs do to our brains? AI could help us find out. Why the words people used to describe their trip experiences could lead to better drugs to treat mental illness. Read the full story.+ Psychedelics are being scientifically researched now more than ever. This time, women might finally benefit.+ VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence. On key metrics, a VR experience elicited a response indistinguishable from subjects who took medium doses of LSD or magic mushrooms. Read the full story.

+ One patient in a trial describes his “life-changing” experience with MDMA-assisted therapy.
+ But there is a danger that mind-altering substances are being overhyped as wonder drugs.

The must-reads

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

1 Boeing has rescheduled a historic space flight for Wednesday
The company’s first crewed flight was canceled at the last minute on Saturday. (Reuters)
+ The flight was grounded after a faulty ground power unit was uncovered. (CNN)
+ Boeing has been trying to fly astronauts into space for years. (The Atlantic $)

2 Adobe has ceased selling Ansel Adams-style images generated by AI
The late photographer’s estate has been trying to get them taken down for months. (The Verge)
+ This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 How successful has America’s Chips Act been?
The government effort has awarded billions to chipmakers, but it’s a long game. (WSJ $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Social media videos encourage Chinese migrants to move to the US
But the cheery clips fail to capture the reality of moving to a foreign country. (The Markup)

5 This is what AI thinks a beautiful woman looks like
Light-skinned, thin, and impossibly glamorous. (WP $)
+ How it feels to be sexually objectified by an AI. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Inside the messy ethics of brain implants
The invasive surgery is restricted to disabled patients—for now. (FT $)
+ Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Learning more about the placenta could help prevent stillbirths
Many stillbirths have unidentified causes. Observing the placenta could help. (The Atlantic $)

8 The internet isn’t fun any more
And it hasn’t been for almost a decade. (Vox)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Driverless car racing sounds seriously weird
It’s incredibly technically challenging, and entirely absent of thrills. (Ars Technica)

10 This app has reinvented the walkie talkie
For the TikTok generation. (TechCrunch)

Quote of the day

“I believe it’s as significant as Windows 95.”

—Cristiano Amon, chief executive of semiconductor company Qualcomm, hypes up its latest chip with a comparison to Microsoft’s seminal computer software, Bloomberg reports.  

The big story

How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town

April 2022

If you had taken a gamble in 2017 and purchased Bitcoin, today you might be a millionaire many times over. But while the industry has provided windfalls for some, local communities have paid a high price, as people started scouring the world for cheap sources of energy to run large Bitcoin-mining farms.

It didn’t take long for a subsidiary of the popular Bitcoin mining firm Coinmint to lease a Family Dollar store in Plattsburgh, a city in New York state offering cheap power. Soon, the company was regularly drawing enough power for about 4,000 homes. And while other miners were quick to follow, the problems had already taken root. Read the full story.

—Lois Parshley

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Aww, this tiny seal could not be happier after his bath.
+ Photographer Rankin’s archive of 90s photos are beyond cool.
+ Astrolabes were the must-have gadgets of the Middle Ages.
+ I don’t remember this version of Les Misérables?

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 Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong

When Google announced it was rolling out its artificial intelligence-powered search feature earlier this month, the company promised that “Google will do the googling for you.”The new feature, called AI Overviews, provides brief, AI-generated summaries highlighting key information and links on top of search results.

Unfortunately, AI systems are inherently unreliable. And within days of AI Overviews being released in the US, users quickly shared examples of the feature suggesting that its users add glue to pizza, eat at least one small rock a day, and that former US president Andrew Johnson earned university degrees between 1947 and 2012, despite dying in 1875. 

Yesterday, Liz Reid, head of Google Search, announced that the company has been making technical improvements to the system.

But why is AI Overviews returning unreliable, potentially dangerous information in the first place? And what, if anything, can be done to fix it? Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

AI-directed drones could help find lost hikers faster

If a hiker gets lost in the rugged Scottish Highlands, rescue teams sometimes send up a drone to search for clues of the individual’s route. But with vast terrain to cover and limited battery life, picking the right area to search is critical.

Traditionally, expert drone pilots use a combination of intuition and statistical “search theory”—a strategy with roots in World War II–era hunting of German submarines—to prioritize certain search locations over others.

Now researchers want to see if a machine-learning system could do better. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

What’s next for bird flu vaccines

In the US, bird flu has now infected cows in nine states, millions of chickens, and—as of last week—a second dairy worker. There’s no indication that the virus has acquired the mutations it would need to jump between humans, but the possibility of another pandemic has health officials on high alert. Last week, they said they are working to get 4.8 million doses of H5N1 bird flu vaccine packaged into vials as a precautionary measure. 

The good news is that we’re far more prepared for a bird flu outbreak than we were for covid. We know so much more about influenza than we did about coronaviruses. And we already have hundreds of thousands of doses of a bird flu vaccine sitting in the nation’s stockpile.

The bad news is we would need more than 600 million doses to cover everyone in the US, at two shots per person. And the process we typically use to produce flu vaccines takes months and relies on massive quantities of chicken eggs—one of the birds that’s susceptible to avian flu. Read about why we still use a cumbersome, 80-year-old vaccine production process to make flu vaccines—and how we can speed it up.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech and health newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 Russia, Iran and China used generative AI in covert propaganda campaigns
But their efforts weren’t overly successful. (NYT $) 
+ The groups used the generative AI models to write social media posts. (WP $)
+ NSO Group spyware has been used to hack Russian journalists living abroad. (Bloomberg $)
+ How generative AI is boosting the spread of disinformation and propaganda. (MIT Technology Review)

2 TikTok is reportedly working on a clone of its recommendation algorithm
Splitting its source code could trigger the creation of a US-only version of the app. (Reuters)
+ TikTok is attempting to convince the US of its independence from China. (The Verge)

3 A man in England has received a personalized cancer vaccine
Elliot Pfebve is the first patient to receive the jab as part of a major trial. (The Guardian)
+ Cancer vaccines are having a renaissance. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Amazon’s drone delivery business has cleared a major hurdle
US regulators have approved its drones to fly longer distances. (CNBC)

5 OpenAI has launched a version of ChatGPT for universities
ChatGPT Edu is supposed to help institutions deploy AI “responsibly.” (Forbes)
+ ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Chile is fighting back against Big Tech’s data centers
Activists aren’t happy with the American giants’ lack of transparency. (Rest of World)
+ Energy-hungry data centers are quietly moving into cities. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Israel is tracking subatomic particles to map underground areas
Archaeologists avoid digging in places with religious significance. (Bloomberg $)

8 Ecuador is in serious trouble 
Drought and power outages are making daily life increasingly difficult. (Wired $)
+ Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How to fight the rise of audio deepfakes
A wave of new techniques could make it easier to tackle the convincing clips. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Here’s what it’s like to come across your nonconsensual AI clone. (404 Media)
+ An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary. (MIT Technology Review)

10 The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted its most distant galaxy yet
The JADES-GS-z14-0 galaxy was captured as it was a mere 290 million years after the Big Bang. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“Despite what Donald Trump thinks, America is not for sale to billionaires, oil and gas executives, or even Elon Musk.”

—James Singer, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, mocks Trump’s attempts to court Musk and other mega donors to fund his reelection campaign, the Financial Times reports.

The big story

How to fix the internet

October 2023

We’re in a very strange moment for the internet. We all know it’s broken. But there’s a sense that things are about to change. The stranglehold that the big social platforms have had on us for the last decade is weakening.

There’s a sort of common wisdom that the internet is irredeemably bad. That social platforms, hungry to profit off your data, opened a Pandora’s box that cannot be closed.

But the internet has also provided a haven for marginalized groups and a place for support. It offers information at times of crisis. It can connect you with long-lost friends. It can make you laugh.

The internet is worth fighting for because despite all the misery, there’s still so much good to be found there. And yet, fixing online discourse is the definition of a hard problem. But don’t worry. I have an idea. Read the full story. 

—Katie Notopoulos

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 tweet ’em at me.)+ It’s peony season!
+ Forget giant squid—there’s colossal squid living in the depths of the ocean.
+  Is a long conversation in a film your idea of cinematic perfection, or a drawn-out nightmare?
+ Here’s how to successfully decompress after a long day at work.

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

The messy quest to replace drugs with electricity

In the early 2010s, electricity seemed poised for a hostile takeover of your doctor’s office. Research into how the nervous system—the highway that carries electrical messages between the brain and the body— controls the immune response was gaining traction.

And that had opened the door to the possibility of hacking into the body’s circuitry and thereby controlling a host of chronic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and diabetes, as if the immune system were as reprogrammable as a computer.

To do that you’d need a new class of implant: an “electroceutical.” These devices would replace drugs. No more messy side effects. And no more guessing whether a drug would work differently for you and someone else. In the 10 years or so since, around a billion dollars has accreted around the effort. But electroceuticals have still not taken off as hoped.

Now, however, a growing number of researchers are starting to look beyond the nervous system, and experimenting with clever ways to electrically manipulate cells elsewhere in the body, such as the skin.

Their work suggests that this approach could match the early promise of electroceuticals, yielding fast-healing bioelectric bandages, novel approaches to treating autoimmune disorders, new ways of repairing nerve damage, and even better treatments for cancer. Read the full story.

—Sally Adee

Why bigger EVs aren’t always better

SUVs are taking over the world—larger vehicle models made up nearly half of new car sales globally in 2023, a new record for the segment. 

There are a lot of reasons to be nervous about the ever-expanding footprint of vehicles, from pedestrian safety and road maintenance concerns to higher greenhouse-gas emissions. But in a way, SUVs also represent a massive opportunity for climate action, since pulling the worst gas-guzzlers off the roads and replacing them with electric versions could be a big step in cutting pollution. 

It’s clear that we’re heading toward a future with bigger cars. Here’s what it might mean for the climate, and for our future on the road. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. 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 A pro-Palestinian AI image has been shared millons of times
But social media activism critics feel it’s merely performative. (WP $)
+ The smooth, sanitized picture is inescapable across Instagram and TikTok. (Vox)
+ It appears to have originated from Malaysia. (The Guardian)

2 OpenAI is struggling to rein in its internal rows
Six months after Sam Altman returned as CEO following a coup, divisions remain. (FT $)
+ A nonprofit created by former Facebook workers is experiencing similar problems. (Wired $)

3 Chinese EV makers are facing a new hurdle in the US
A new bill could quadruple import duties on Chinese EVs to 100% (TechCrunch)
+ Why China’s EV ambitions need virtual power plants. (MIT Technology Review)

4 India’s election wasn’t derailed by deepfakes
AI fakery was largely restricted to trolling, rather than malicious interference. (Rest of World)
+ Meta says AI-generated election content is not happening at a “systemic level” (MIT Technology Review)

5 Extreme weather events are feeding into each other
It’s becoming more difficult to separate disasters into standalone events. (Vox)
+ Our current El Niño climate event is about to make way for La Niña. (The Atlantic $)
+ Last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years. Here’s how we know. (MIT Technology Review)

6 It’s high time to stop paying cyber ransoms
Paying criminals isn’t stopping attacks, experts worry. (Bloomberg $)

7 How programmatic advertising facilitated the spread of misinformation
Algorithmically-placed ads are funding shadowing operations across the web. (Wired $)

8 Smart bandages could help to heal wound faster
Sensor-embedded dressings could help doctors to monitor ailments remotely. (WSJ $)

9 Move over smartphones—the intelliPhones are coming
It’s a lame name for the AI-powered phones of tomorrow. (Insider $) 

10 The content creators worth paying attention to
Algorithms are no substitution for enthusiastic human curators. (New Yorker $)

Quote of the day

“It’s not about managing your home, it’s about what’s happening. That’s like, ‘Hey, there’s raccoons in my backyard.’”

—Liz Hamren, CEO of smart doorbell company Ring, explains the firm’s pivot away from fighting neighborhood crime and towards keeping tabs on wildlife to Bloomberg.

The big story

House-flipping algorithms are coming to your neighborhood

April 2022

When Michael Maxson found his dream home in Nevada, it was not owned by a person but by a tech company, Zillow. When he went to take a look at the property, however, he discovered it damaged by a huge water leak. Despite offering to handle the costly repairs himself, Maxson discovered that the house had already been sold to another family, at the same price he had offered.

During this time, Zillow lost more than $420 million in three months of erratic house buying and unprofitable sales, leading analysts to question whether the entire tech-driven model is really viable. For the rest of us, a bigger question remains: Does the arrival of Silicon Valley tech point to a better future for housing or an industry disruption to fear? 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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ What mathematics can tell us about the formation of animal patterns.
+ How much pasta is too much pasta?
+ Here’s how to stretch out your lower back—without risking making it worse.
+ Over on the Thailand-Malaysia Border, food is an essential signifier of identity.

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.

Quartz, cobalt, and the waste we leave behind

It is easy to convince ourselves that we now live in a dematerialized ethereal world, ruled by digital startups, artificial intelligence, and financial services.

Yet there is little evidence that we have decoupled our economy from its churning hunger for resources. We are still reliant on the products of geological processes like coal and quartz, a mineral that’s a rich source of the silicon used to build computer chips, to power our world.

Three recent books aim to reconnect readers with the physical reality that underpins the global economy. Each one fills in dark secrets about the places, processes, and lived realities that make the economy tick, and reveals just how tragic a toll the materials we rely on take for humans and the environment. Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford

The story is from the current print issue of MIT Technology Review, which is on the theme of Build. If you don’t already, subscribe now to receive future copies once they land.

If you’re interested in the minerals powering our economy, why not take a look at my colleague James Temple’s pieces about how a US town is being torn apart as communities clash over plans to open a nickel mine—and how that mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies.

The must-reads

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

1 Blacklisted Chinese firms are rebranding as American
In a bid to swerve the Biden administration’s crackdown on national security concerns. (WSJ $)+ The US has sanctioned three Chinese nationals over their links to a botnet. (Ars Technica)

2 More than half of cars sold last year were SUVs
The large vehicles are major contributors to the climate crisis. (The Guardian)
+ Three frequently asked questions about EVs, answered. (MIT Technology Review)

3 A record number of electrodes have been placed on a human brain
The more electrodes, the higher the resolution for mapping brain activity. (Ars Technica)
+ Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A former FTX executive has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison
Ryan Salame had been hoping for a maximum of 18 months. (CoinDesk)

5 Food delivery apps are hemorrhaging money 
The four major platforms are locked in intense competition for diners. (FT $)

6 Saudi Arabia is going all in on building solar farms
It’s looking beyond its oil empire to invest in other promising forms of energy. (NYT $)
+ The world is finally spending more on solar than oil production. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Clouds are a climate mystery
Experts are trying to integrate them into climate models—but it’s tough work. (The Atlantic $)
+ ‘Bog physics’ could work out how much carbon is stored in peat bogs. (Quanta Magazine)

8 An 11-year old crypto mystery has finally been solved
To crack into a $3 million fortune. (Wired $)

9 AI models are pretty good at spotting bugs in software
The problem is, they’re also prone to making up new flaws entirely. (New Scientist $)
+ How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Beware promises made by airmiles influencers
While some of their advice is sound, it pays to play the long game. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.”

—Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member, explains how the company’s board was not informed in advance about the release of its blockbuster AI system in November 2022, the Verge reports.

The big story

Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s left when the hype is gone?

December 2022

It was clear that OpenAI was on to something. In late 2021, a small team of researchers was playing around with a new version of OpenAI’s text-to-image model, DALL-E, an AI that converts short written descriptions into pictures: a fox painted by Van Gogh, perhaps, or a corgi made of pizza. Now they just had to figure out what to do with it.

Nobody could have predicted just how big a splash this product was going to make. The rapid release of other generative models has inspired hundreds of newspaper headlines and magazine covers, filled social media with memes, kicked a hype machine into overdrive—and set off an intense backlash from creators.

The exciting truth is, we don’t really know what’s coming next. While creative industries will feel the impact first, this tech will give creative superpowers to everybody. Read the full story. 

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

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

+ These baby tiger cubs are just too cute.
+ Meet me at El Califa de León, the world’s first taquería to receive a Michelin star.
+ This feather sounds like a bargain, frankly.
+ Did you know that Sean Connery was only 12 years older than Harrison Ford when he played his father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?

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 the quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete

—This is an excerpt from The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney, published on May 28 by The MIT Press. It has been lightly edited.

When a young Chinese man sat down at his QWERTY keyboard in 2013 and rattled off an enigmatic string of letters and numbers, his forty-four keystrokes marked the first steps in a process known as “input” or shuru.

Shuru is the act of getting Chinese characters to appear on a computer monitor or other digital device using a QWERTY keyboard or trackpad.

The young man, Huang Zhenyu, was one of around 60 contestants in the 2013 National Chinese Characters Typing Competition. His keyboard did not permit him to enter these characters directly, however, and so he entered the quasi-gibberish string of letters and numbers instead: ymiw2klt4pwyy1wdy6…

But Zhenyu’s prizewinning performance wasn’t solely noteworthy for his impressive typing speed—one of the fastest ever recorded. It was also premised on the same kind of “additional steps” as the first Chinese computer in history that led to the discovery of autocompletion. Read the rest of the excerpt here.

If you’re interested in tech in China, why not check out some of our China reporter Zeyi Yang’s recent reporting (and subscribe to his weekly newsletter China Report!)

+ GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training data is polluted by spam and porn websites. The problem, which is likely due to inadequate data cleaning, could lead to hallucinations, poor performance, and misuse. Read the full story.

+ Why Hong Kong is targeting Western Big Tech companies in its ban of a popular protest song.

+ Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. People are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Read the full story.

The must-reads

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

1 Election officials want to pre-bunk harmful online campaigns
It’s a bid to prevent political hoaxes from ever getting off the ground. (WP $)
+ Fake news verification tools are failing in India. (Rest of World)
+ Three technology trends shaping 2024’s elections. (MIT Technology Review)

2 OpenAI has started training the successor to GPT-4
Just weeks after it revealed an updated version, GPT-4o. (NYT $)
+ OpenAI’s new GPT-4o lets people interact using voice or video in the same model. (MIT Technology Review)

3 China is bolstering its national semiconductor fund
To the tune of $48 billion. (WSJ $)
+ It’s the third round of the country’s native chip funding program. (FT $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build
The US needs to learn how to cut costs without cutting corners. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to reopen a nuclear power plant. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Laser systems could be the best line of defense against military drones
The Pentagon is investing in BlueHalo’s AI-powered laser technology. (Insider $)
+ The US military is also pumping money into Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. (Wired $)
+ Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Klarna’s marketing campaigns are the product of generative AI
The fintech firm claims the technology will save it $10 million a year. (Reuters)

7 The US has an EV charging problem
Would-be car buyers are still nervous about investing in EVs. (Wired $)
+ Micro-EVs could offer one solution. (Ars Technica)
+ Toyota has unveiled new engines compatible with alternative fuels. (Reuters)

8 Good luck betting on anything that’s not sports in the US
The outcome of a major election, for example. (Vox)
+ How mobile money supercharged Kenya’s sports betting addiction. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Perfectionist parents are Facetuning their children
It goes without saying: don’t do this. (NY Mag $)

10 Why a movie version of The Sims never got off the ground
The beloved video game would make for a seriously weird cinema spectacle. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“Once materialism starts spreading, it can have a bad influence on teenagers.”

—Chinese state media Beijing News explains why China has started cracking down on luxurious influencers known for their ostentatious displays of wealth, the Financial Times reports.

The big story

Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML

December 2023

Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences. 

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

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

—Tiffany Ng

We can still have nice things

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

+ Enjoy this potted history of why we say okay, and where it came from.
+ There is something very funny about Elton John calling The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa “the rat and the pig.”
+ The best of British press photography is always worth a peruse.
+ I had no idea that Sisqo’s Thong Song used an Eleanor Rigby sample.

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.

That viral video showing a head transplant is a fake. But it might be real someday. 

An animated video posted this week has a voice-over that sounds like a late-night TV ad, but the pitch is straight out of the far future. The arms of an octopus-like robotic surgeon swirl, swiftly removing the head of a dying man and placing it onto a young, healthy body. 

This is BrainBridge, the animated video claims—“the world’s first revolutionary concept for a head transplant machine, which uses state-of-the-art robotics and artificial intelligence to conduct complete head and face transplantation.”

BrainBridge is not a real company—it’s not incorporated anywhere. Yet it’s not merely a provocative work of art. This video is better understood as the first public billboard for a hugely controversial scheme to defeat death that’s recently been gaining attention among some life-extension proponents and entrepreneurs. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

Noise-canceling headphones use AI to let a single voice through

Modern life is noisy. If you don’t like it, noise-canceling headphones can reduce the sounds in your environment. But they muffle sounds indiscriminately, so you can easily end up missing something you actually want to hear.

A new prototype AI system for such headphones aims to solve this. Called Target Speech Hearing, the system gives users the ability to select a person whose voice will remain audible even when all other sounds are canceled out.

Although the technology is currently a proof of concept, its creators say they are in talks to embed it in popular brands of noise-canceling earbuds and are also working to make it available for hearing aids. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Splashy breakthroughs are exciting, but people with spinal cord injuries need more

—Cassandra Willyard

This week, I wrote about an external stimulator that delivers electrical pulses to the spine to help improve hand and arm function in people who are paralyzed. This isn’t a cure. In many cases the gains were relatively modest.

The study didn’t garner as much media attention as previous, much smaller studies that focused on helping people with paralysis walk. Tech that allows people to type slightly faster or put their hair in a ponytail unaided just doesn’t have the same allure.

For the people who have spinal cord injuries, however, incremental gains can have a huge impact on quality of life. So who does this tech really serve? Read the full story.

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 Google’s AI search is advising people to put glue on pizza 
These tools clearly aren’t ready to provide billions of users with accurate answers. (The Verge)
+ That $60 million Google paid Reddit for its data sure looks questionable. (404 Media)
+ But who’s legally responsible here? (Vox)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Russia is increasingly interfering with Ukraine’s Starlink service
It’s disrupting Ukraine’s ability to collect intelligence and conduct drone attacks. (NYT $)

3 Taiwan is prepared to shut down its chipmaking machines if China invades
China is currently circling the island on military exercises. (Bloomberg $)
+ Meanwhile, China’s PC makers are on the up. (FT $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

4 X is planning on hiding users’ likes
Elon Musk wants to encourage users to like ‘edgy’ content without fear. (Insider $)

5 The scammer who cloned Joe Biden’s voice could be fined $6 million
Regulators want to make it clear that political AI manipulation will not be tolerated. (TechCrunch)
+ He’s due to appear in court next month. (Reuters)
+ Meta says AI-generated election content is not happening at a “systemic level.” (MIT Technology Review)

6 NSO Group’s former CEO is staging a comeback
Shalev Huloi resigned after the US blacklisted the company. (The Intercept)

7 Rivers in Alaska are running orange
It’s highly likely that climate change is to blame. (WP $)
+ It’s looking unlikely that we’re going to limit global warming to 1.5°C. (New Scientist $)

8 We’re learning more about one of the world’s rarest elements
Promethium is extremely radioactive, and extremely unstable. (New Scientist $)

9 Children can’t really become music lovers without a phone
Without cassette players or CDs, streaming seems the only option.(The Guardian)

10 AI art will always look cheap
It’s no substitute for the real deal. (Vox)
+ This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Naming space as a warfighting domain was kind of forbidden, but that’s changed.”

—Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown explains how the US is preparing to fight adversaries in space, Ars Technica reports.

The big story

How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation 

March 2021

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March 2018, it would kick off Facebook’s largest publicity crisis to date. It compounded fears that the algorithms that determine what people see were amplifying fake news and hate speech, and prompted the company to start a team with a directive that was a little vague: to examine the societal impact of the company’s algorithms.

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela was a natural pick to head it up. In his six years at Facebook, he’d created some of the first algorithms for targeting users with content precisely tailored to their interests, and then he’d diffused those algorithms across the company. Now his mandate would be to make them less harmful. However, his hands were tied, and the drive to make money came first. Read the full story.

—Karen Hao

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Zillow is the wild west of home listings. This Twitter (sorry, X) account collates some of the best.
+ COUSIN! We love you, Ebon Moss-Bachrach!
+ Gimme all the potato salad.
+ Much sad: rest in power Kabosu, the beautiful shiba inu whose tentative face launched a thousand memes.

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.

Meta says AI-generated election content is not happening at a “systemic level”

Meta has seen strikingly little AI-generated misinformation around the 2024 elections despite major votes in countries such as Indonesia, Taiwan, and Bangladesh, said the company’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, on Wednesday.

“The interesting thing so far—I stress, so far—is not how much but how little AI-generated content [there is],” said Clegg during an interview at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As voters will head to polls this year in more than 50 countries, experts have raised the alarm over AI-generated political disinformation and the prospect that malicious actors will use generative AI and social media to interfere with elections. And even well-resourced tech giants like Meta are struggling to keep up. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

To read more about elections and AI, check out:

+ How generative AI is boosting the spread of disinformation and propaganda. Governments are now using the tech to amplify censorship. Read the full story.

+ Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation. Read the full story.

AI is an energy hog. This is what it means for climate change.

Tech companies keep finding new ways to bring AI into every facet of our lives. But the  technology comes with rising electricity demand. You may have seen the headlines proclaiming that AI uses as much electricity as small countries, that it’ll usher in a fossil-fuel resurgence, and that it’s already challenging the grid.

So how worried should we be about AI’s electricity demands? Casey Crownhart, our climate reporter, has dug into the data. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. 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 A second human has been diagnosed with bird flu 
Thankfully, the Michigan farmworker has since recovered. (NY Mag $)
+ Shares in vaccine makers are rising as a result. (FT $)
+ Here’s what you need to know about the current outbreak. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Nvidia has reported stratospheric growth
The chipmaker’s revenue grew a whopping 262% over the past quarter. (FT $)
+ That’s $14 billion worth of profit. (The Verge)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

3 News Corp has struck a deal with OpenAI
News from the media giant’s newspapers will appear in ChatGPT responses. (WP $)
+ The deal is valued at more than $250 million. (WSJ $)
+ Meta is reported to be interested in making deals with news outlets, too. (Insider $)

4  The US is planning on suing Ticketmaster
A collection of states and the Justice Department will accuse it of running a monopoly. (NYT $)

5 We know that Russia wants to put a nuke in space
But beyond that, details are pretty unclear. (Vox)
+ How to fight a war in space (and get away with it) (MIT Technology Review)

6 The US House of Representative has passed a crypto bill
Despite the Securities regulator’s misgivings. (Reuters)

7 Amazon wants a new challenge: tackling your returns
It’s running a pilot at several warehouses to test if it can manage returns as well as deliveries. (The Information $)

8 Weight loss drugs are really expensive
Their high price tag is forcing doctors to get creative. (The Atlantic $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

9 What we lose when we use apps to speed read books
Squishing down books into brief summaries doesn’t exactly make for a joyful reading experience. (New Yorker $)

10 How to make your phone work for you
No more doomscrolling! (WSJ $)
+ How to log off. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“The AI revolution starts with Nvidia, and in our view, the AI party is just getting started.”

—Analyst Dan Ives, from Wedbush Securities, explains why investors will be following chipmaker Nvidia even more closely after the company announced blockbuster financial results, the Guardian reports.

The big story

The quest to learn if our brain’s mutations affect mental health

August 2021

Scientists have struggled in their search for specific genes behind most brain disorders, including autism and Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike problems with some other parts of our body, the vast majority of brain disorder presentations are not linked to an identifiable gene.

But a University of California, San Diego study published in 2001 suggested a different path. What if it wasn’t a single faulty gene—or even a series of genes—that always caused cognitive issues? What if it could be the genetic differences between cells?

The explanation had seemed far-fetched, but more researchers have begun to take it seriously. Scientists already knew that the 85 billion to 100 billion neurons in your brain work to some extent in concert—but what they want to know is whether there is a risk when some of those cells might be singing a different genetic tune. Read the full story.

—Roxanne Khamsi

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Who knew that Sting had been secretly working on a ferry all this time?
+ That’s some seriously impressive skipping.
+ America is home to some of the most beautiful train rides on Earth.
+ This Middle Earth tattoo is bonkers.

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.

Five ways criminals are using AI

Artificial intelligence has brought a big boost in productivity—to the criminal underworld.

Generative AI provides a new, powerful tool kit that allows malicious actors to work far more efficiently and internationally than ever before. Over the past year, cybercriminals have mostly stopped developing their own AI models. Instead, they are opting for tricks with existing tools that work reliably.

That’s because criminals want an easy life and quick gains. For any new technology to be worth the unknown risks associated with adopting it—for example, a higher risk of getting caught—it has to be better and bring higher rewards than what they’re currently using. Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter, has rounded up five ways criminals are using AI now.

 OpenAI’s latest blunder shows the challenges facing Chinese AI models

Last week’s release of GPT-4o, a new AI “omnimodel”, was supposed to be a big moment for OpenAI. But just days later, it feels as if the company is in big trouble. From the resignation of most of its safety team to Scarlett Johansson’s accusation that it replicated her voice for the model against her consent, it’s now in damage-control mode.

On top of that, the data it used to train GPT-4o’s tokenizer—a tool that helps the model parse and process text more efficiently—is polluted by Chinese spam websites. As a result, the model’s Chinese token library is full of phrases related to pornography and gambling. This could worsen some problems that are common with AI models: hallucinations, poor performance, and misuse. 

But OpenAI is not the only company struggling with this problem: there are some steep challenges associated with training large language models to speak Chinese. Read our story to learn more.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 AI just got a little less mysterious
Anthropic has delved into how artificial neural networks work. (NYT $)
+ Understanding more about how AI makes decisions could help us control it.  (Wired $)
+ Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Google is testing ads in its AI-generated search results
Sponsored query answers? No thanks. (Reuters)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

3 China has created a chatbot trained on the thoughts of Xi Jinping
But we’ll have to wait to see how popular that’ll be, as it’s still a way off from being released to the wider public. (FT $)
+ Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Our drinking water is major hacking target
Default passwords are to blame. (IEEE Spectrum)

5 Humane is looking for a buyer
Just weeks after its AI pin device got slated in reviews. (Bloomberg $)

6 How a massive corporation covered up the dangers of forever chemicals
And kept selling them afterwards. (New Yorker $)
+ The race to destroy PFAS, the forever chemicals. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Inside the fight for America’s broadband
Campaign groups are clashing with service providers over access. (Ars Technica)

8 Sailboats are making a comeback
And the sails have had a high-tech makeover. (Economist $)

9 Can beef ever really be climate-friendly?
The US branded a meat packer environmentally friendly. Pressure groups aren’t so sure.  (Undark Magazine)
+ How I learned to stop worrying and love fake meat. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Admire the beauty of Earth from the ISS
These new photographs are truly breathtaking. (The Atlantic $)

Quote of the day

“I wish we had called it ‘different intelligence’. Because I have my intelligence. I don’t need any artificial intelligence.”

—Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, is worried about people giving AI systems too much credit, he tells Bloomberg.

The big story

Bringing the lofty ideas of pure math down to earth

April 2023

—Pradeep Niroula

Mathematics has long been presented as a sanctuary from confusion and doubt, a place to go in search of answers. Perhaps part of the mystique comes from the fact that biographies of mathematicians often paint them as otherworldly savants.

As a graduate student in physics, I have seen the work that goes into conducting delicate experiments, but the daily grind of mathematical discovery is a ritual altogether foreign to me. And this feeling is only reinforced by popular books on math, which often take the tone of a pastor dispensing sermons to the faithful.

Luckily, there are ways to bring it back down to earth. Popular math books seek a fresher take on these old ideas, be it through baking recipes or hot-button political issues. My verdict: Why not? It’s worth a shot. Read the full story.

We can still have nice things

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

+ Spare a thought for the Kyles of the world, 706 of whom traveled to the city of Kyle, Texas, only to be told they hadn’t broken a world record.
+ Why are spirographs so hypnotic?
+ If you’re into Impressionism, there’s a whole host of impressive-looking shows taking place this year.
+ Here’s what went down when the Beach Boys met the Beatles.

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 models can outperform humans in tests to identify mental states

Humans are complicated beings. The ways we communicate are multilayered, and psychologists have devised many kinds of tests to measure our ability to infer meaning and understanding from interactions with each other. 

AI models are getting better at these tests. New research published has found that some large language models perform as well as, and in some cases better than, humans when presented with tasks designed to test the ability to track people’s mental states, known as “theory of mind.” 

This doesn’t mean AI systems are actually able to work out how we’re feeling. But it does demonstrate that these models are performing better and better in experiments designed to assess abilities that psychologists believe are unique to humans. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

And, if you’re interested in learning more about why the way we test AI is so flawed, read this piece by our senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven.

A device that zaps the spinal cord gave paralyzed people better control of their hands

Fourteen years ago, a journalist named Melanie Reid attempted a jump on horseback and fell. The accident left her mostly paralyzed from the chest down. Eventually she regained control of her right hand, but her left remained, in her own words, “useless.”

Now, thanks to a new noninvasive device that delivers electrical stimulation to the spinal cord, she has regained some control of her left hand. She can use it to sweep her hair into a ponytail, scroll on a tablet, and even squeeze hard enough to release a seatbelt latch. These may seem like small wins, but they’re crucial.

Reid was part of a 60-person clinical trial, from which the vast majority of participants benefited. The trial was the last hurdle before the researchers behind the device could request regulatory approval, and they hope it might be approved in the US by the end of the year. Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

Join us at EmTech Digital this week!

Between the world leaders gathering in Seoul for the second AI Safety Summit this week and Google and OpenAI’s launches of their supercharged new models, Astra and GPT-4o, the timing could not be better. AI feels hotter than ever.  

This year’s EmTech Digital, MIT Technology Review’s flagship AI conference, will be all about how we can harness the power of generative AI while mitigating its risks,and how the technology will affect the workforce, competitiveness, and democracy. We will also get a sneak peek into the AI labs of Google, OpenAI, Adobe, AWS, and others. 

It’ll be held at the MIT campus and streamed live online from tomorrow, May 22-23. Readers of The Download get 30% off tickets with the code DOWNLOADD24—here’s how to register. See you there!

For a sneak peek at some of the most exciting sessions on the agenda, check out the latest edition of The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 Scarlett Johansson denied OpenAI permission to use her voice 
But it created the eerily similar ‘Sky’ voice for its chatbots anyway. (Rolling Stone $)
+ OpenAI took down the voice after Johansson’s lawyers got in touch. (NYT $)
+ The company is reportedly talking with her legal team. (The Verge)
+ GPT-4o was weirdly flirty during its launch demo. (MIT Technology Review)

2 A host of chipmaker startups want to overtake Nvidia
But the GPU giant is number one for a reason. (Economist $)
+ Nvidia’s rivals are backing an initiative to break its industry stranglehold. (FT $)
+ Modern chips need major computing power. Maybe light could help? (Quanta Magazine)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Can we really credit an AI chatbot for preventing suicide?
Chatbots are notoriously unpredictable—and that’s problematic. (404 Media)
+ A chatbot helped more people access mental-health services. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The current strain of bird flu could, in theory, jump to pigs
Which would be seriously bad news for humans. (The Atlantic $)
+ The viral outbreak has killed tens of millions of birds to date. (NY Mag $)
+ Here’s what you need to know about bird flu. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The gig economy is attracting older workers
The problem is, their policies are rarely designed to accommodate older people. (Rest of World)

6 A brain implant has restored a paralyzed man’s bilingual abilities
It suggests that the brain isn’t overly picky about which language it’s handling. (Ars Technica)
+ Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Deleted photos have cropped up in iPhone’s users camera rolls
At what point is something truly eradicated, then? (Wired $)
+ Apple has issued a fix, but not an explanation. (The Verge)

8 Google is pivoting away from its ambitious moonshots
So its employees are taking a risk and going it alone. (Bloomberg $)
+ We need a moonshot for computing. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Do you voicenote?
If you don’t yet, it’s only a matter of time until your friends start forcing you. (WP $)

10 This electric spoon tricks your tongue into tasting salt
Pass the—oh never mind. (Reuters)

Quote of the day

“Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”

—Justice James Mellor, a UK judge, rules that computer scientist Craig Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in his quest to prove he is bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Wired reports.

The big story

How one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies

January 2024

On a farm near Tamarack, Minnesota, Talon Metals has uncovered one of America’s densest nickel deposits. Now it wants to begin tunneling deep into the rock to extract hundreds of thousands of metric tons of mineral-rich ore a year.

If regulators approve the mine, it could mark the starting point in what this mining exploration company claims would become the country’s first complete domestic nickel supply chain, running from the bedrock beneath the Minnesota earth to the batteries in electric vehicles across the nation.

Their experience forms a fascinating microcosm of how the Inflation Reduction Act’s rich subsidies are starting to filter down through the US economy. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

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

+ Over in London, the Science Museum’s weird and wonderful collection of random household gadgets is entering its final weeks.
+ Devastating news: the TikTok of the man in a bus in a hammock isn’t real.
+ Put the laptop away! European cafes have had enough of them.
+ If you’re planning a cruise this summer, here’s some handy tips on minimizing your chances of getting seasick.

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.

GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training data is polluted by spam and porn websites

Soon after OpenAI released GPT-4o last Monday, some Chinese speakers started to notice that something seemed off about this newest version of the chatbot: the tokens it uses to parse text were full of spam and porn phrases.

Humans read in words, but LLMs read in tokens, which are distinct units in a sentence that have consistent and significant meanings. GPT-4o is supposed to be better than its predecessors at handling multi-language tasks, and many of the advances were achieved through a new tokenization tool that does a better job compressing texts in non-English languages.

But, at least when it comes to the Chinese language, the new tokenizer used by GPT-4o has introduced a disproportionate number of meaningless phrases—and experts say that’s likely due to insufficient data cleaning and filtering before the tokenizer was trained. If left unresolved, it could lead to hallucinations, poor performance, and misuse. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

Astronomers are enlisting AI to prepare for a data downpour

In deserts across Australia and South Africa, astronomers are planting forests of metallic detectors that will together scour the cosmos for radio signals. When it boots up in five years or so, the Square Kilometer Array Observatory will look for new information about the universe’s first stars and the different stages of galactic evolution. 

But after synching hundreds of thousands of dishes and antennas, astronomers will quickly face a new challenge: combing through some 300 petabytes of cosmological data a year—enough to fill a million laptops. So in preparation for the information deluge, astronomers are turning to AI for assistance. Read the full story.

—Zack Savitsky

Join us for Future Compute

If you’re interested in learning more about how to navigate the rapid changes in technology, Future Compute is the conference for you. It’s designed to help teach leaders strategic vision, agility, and a deep understanding of emerging technologies, and is held tomorrow, May 21, on MIT’s campus. Join us in-person or online by registering today.

EmTech Digital kicks off this week

The pace of AI development is truly breakneck these days—and we’ve got a sneak peek at what’s coming next. If you want to learn about how Google plans to develop and deploy AI, come and hear from its vice president of AI, Jay Yagnik, at our flagship AI conference, EmTech Digital. 

We’ll hear from OpenAI about its video generation model Sora too, and Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, will also join MIT Technology Review’s executive editor Amy Nordrum for an exclusive interview on stage. 

It’ll be held at the MIT campus and streamed live online this week on May 22-23. Readers of The Download get 30% off tickets with the code DOWNLOADD24—here’s how to register. See you there!

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 OpenAI to overhaul iOS18 
In the hopes it’ll give Apple an edge over rivals Google and Microsoft. (Bloomberg $)
+ OpenAI and Google recently launched their own supercharged AI assistants. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Blue Origin took six customers to the edge of space on Sunday
It’s the company’s first tourist flight in almost two years. (CNN)
+ Space tourism hasn’t exactly got off the ground yet. (WP $)

3 How TikTok users are skirting around its weight-loss drug promotion ban
Talking in code is becoming increasingly common. (WP $)
+ A new kind of weight-loss therapy is on the horizon. (Fast Company $)
+ What don’t we know about Ozempic? Quite a lot, actually. (Vox)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

4 Chinese companies are pushing ‘AI-in-a-box’ products
They’re sold as all-in-one cloud computing solutions, much to cloud providers’ chagrin. (FT $)

5 Microscopic blood clots could explain the severity of long covid 
But doctors are calling for rigorous peer review before any solid conclusions can be made. (Undark Magazine)
+ Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How hackers saved stalled Polish trains
It looks as though the locomotives’ manufacturer could be behind the breakdown. (WSJ $)

7 We’re getting closer to making an HIV vaccine
A successful trial is giving researchers new hope. (Wired $)
+ Three people were gene-edited in an effort to cure their HIV. The result is unknown. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Most healthy people don’t need to track their blood glucose
That doesn’t stop companies trying to sell you their monitoring services, though. (The Guardian)

9 Filming strangers is public is not okay
And yet, people keep doing it. Why? (Vox)

10 Beware the spread of AI slop
Spam is no longer a strong enough term—the latest wave of AI images is slop. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“It’s a process of trust collapsing bit by bit, like dominoes falling one by one.”

—An anonymous OpenAI insider tells Vox that safety-minded employees are losing faith in the company’s CEO Sam Altman.

The big story

What does GPT-3 “know” about me?

August 2022

One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it.

These models’ power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If you’ve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the world’s most popular LLMs.

Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review’s AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on her—and how it could be misused. So she put OpenAI’s GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Sea urchins just love tiny hats
+ There’s nothing better than a Lego optical illusion of sorts.
+ Waking up each morning can be tough. Maybe a better alarm is the way forward?
+ Out of the way: it’s the annual worm charming championships!

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 cuddly robots could change dementia care

Companion animals can stave off some of the loneliness, anxiety, and agitation that come with Alzheimer’s disease, according to studies. Sadly, people with Alzheimer’s aren’t always equipped to look after pets, which can require a lot of care and attention.

Enter cuddly robots. The most famous are Golden Pup, a robotic golden retriever toy that cocks its head, barks and wags its tail, and Paro the seal, which can sense touch, light, sound, temperature, and posture. As robots go they’re decidedly low tech, but they can provide comfort and entertainment to people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Now researchers are working on much more sophisticated robots for people with cognitive disorders—devices that leverage AI to converse and play games—that could change the future of dementia care. Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

What tech learned from Daedalus

Today’s climate-change kraken may have been unleashed by human activity, but reversing course and taming nature’s growing fury seems beyond human means, a quest only mythical heroes could fulfill. 

Yet the dream of human-powered flight—of rising over the Mediterranean fueled merely by the strength of mortal limbs—was also the stuff of myths for thousands of years. Until 1988.

That year, in October, MIT Technology Review published the aeronautical engineer John Langford’s account of his mission to retrace the legendary flight of Daedalus, described in an ancient Greek myth. Read about how he got on.

—Bill Gourgey

The story is from the current print issue of MIT Technology Review, which is on the fascinating theme of Build. If you don’t already, subscribe now to receive future copies once they land.

Get ready for EmTech Digital 

AI is everywhere these days. If you want to learn about how Google plans to develop and deploy AI, come and hear from its vice president of AI, Jay Yagnik, at our flagship AI conference, EmTech Digital. We’ll hear from OpenAI about its video generation model Sora too, and Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, will also join MIT Technology Review’s executive editor Amy Nordrum for an exclusive interview on stage. 

It’ll be held at the MIT campus and streamed live online next week on May 22-23. Readers of The Download get 30% off tickets with the code DOWNLOADD24—register here for more information. See you there! 

Thermal batteries are hot property

Thermal batteries could be a key part of cleaning up heavy industry and cutting emissions. Casey Crownhart, our in-house battery expert, held a subscriber-only online Roundtables event yesterday digging into why they’re such a big deal. If you missed it, we’ve got you covered—you can watch a recording of how it unfolded here. 

To keep ahead of future Roundtables events, make sure you subscribe to MIT Technology Review. Subscriptions start from as little as $8 a month.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI has struck a deal with Reddit 
Shortly after Google agreed to give the AI firm access to its content. (WSJ $)
+ The forum’s vocal community are unlikely to be thrilled by the decision. (The Verge)
+ Reddit’s shares rocketed after news of the deal broke. (FT $)
+ We could run out of data to train AI language programs. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Tesla’s European gigafactory is going to get even bigger
But it still needs German environmental authorities’ permission. (Wired $)

3 Help! AI stole my voice
Voice actors are suing a startup for creating digital clones without their permission. (NYT $)
+ The lawsuit is seeking to represent other voiceover artists, too. (Hollywood Reporter $)

4 The days of twitter.com are over
The platform’s urls had retained its old moniker. But no more. (The Verge)

5 The aviation industry is desperate for greener fuels
The future of their businesses depends on it. (FT $)
+ A new report has warned there’s no realistic or scalable alternative. (The Guardian)
+ Everything you need to know about the wild world of alternative jet fuels. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The time for a superconducting supercomputer is now
We need to overhaul how we compute. Superconductors could be the answer. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ What’s next for the world’s fastest supercomputers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 How AI destroyed a once-vibrant online art community
DeviantArt used to be a hotbed of creativity. Now it’s full of bots. (Slate $)
+ This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it. (MIT Technology Review)

8 TV bundles are back in a big way
Streaming hasn’t delivered on its many promises. (The Atlantic $)

9 This creator couple act as “digital parents” to their fans in China
Jiang Xiuping and Pan Huqian’s loving clips resonate with their million followers. (Rest of World)
+ Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. (MIT Technology Review)

10 We’re addicted to the exquisite pain of sharing memes
If your friend has already seen it, their reaction could ruin your day. (GQ)

Quote of the day

“It was a good idea, but unfortunately people took advantage of it and it brought out their lewd side. People got carried away.”

—Aaron Cohen, who visited the video portal connecting New York and Dublin, is disappointed that the art installation was shut down after enthusiastic users took things too far, he tells the Guardian.

The big story

Psychedelics are having a moment and women could be the ones to benefit

August 2022

Psychedelics are having a moment. After decades of prohibition, they are increasingly being employed as therapeutics. Drugs like ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin mushrooms are being studied in clinical trials to treat depression, substance abuse, and a range of other maladies.

And as these long-taboo drugs stage a comeback in the scientific community, it’s possible they could be especially promising for women. Read the full story.

—Taylor Majewski

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Is it possible to live by the original constitution in present day New York City? The answer is yes: if you don’t mind being bombarded with questions.
+ These Balkan recipes sound absolutely delicious.
+ The Star Wars: The Phantom Menace backlash is mind boggling to this day.
+ Love to party? Get yourself to these cities, stat.

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

This grim but revolutionary DNA technology is changing how we respond to mass disasters

Last August, a wildfire tore through the Hawaiian island of Maui. The list of missing residents climbed into the hundreds, as friends and families desperately searched for their missing loved ones. But while some were rewarded with tearful reunions, others weren’t so lucky.
Over the past several years, as fires and other climate-change-fueled disasters have become more common and more cataclysmic, the way their aftermath is processed and their victims identified has been transformed.

The grim work following a disaster remains—surveying rubble and ash, distinguishing a piece of plastic from a tiny fragment of bone—but landing a positive identification can now take just a fraction of the time it once did, which may in turn bring families some semblance of peace swifter than ever before. Read the full story.

—Erika Hayasaki

OpenAI and Google are launching supercharged AI assistants. Here’s how you can try them out.

This week, Google and OpenAI both announced they’ve built supercharged AI assistants: tools that can converse with you in real time and recover when you interrupt them, analyze your surroundings via live video, and translate conversations on the fly. 

Soon you’ll be able to explore for yourself to gauge whether you’ll turn to these tools in your daily routine as much as their makers hope, or whether they’re more like a sci-fi party trick that eventually loses its charm. Here’s what you should know about how to access these new tools, what you might use them for, and how much it will cost. 

—James O’Donnell

Last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years. Here’s how we know.

The summer of 2023 in the Northern Hemisphere was the hottest in over 2,000 years, according to a new study released this week.

There weren’t exactly thermometers around in the year 1, so scientists have to get creative when it comes to comparing our climate today with that of centuries, or even millennia, ago. 

Casey Crownhart, our climate reporter, has dug into how they figured it out. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

Recent highly publicized scandals have gotten the physics community worried about its reputation—and its future. Over the last five years, several claims of major breakthroughs in quantum computing and superconducting research, published in prestigious journals, have disintegrated as other researchers found they could not reproduce the blockbuster results. 

Last week, around 50 physicists, scientific journal editors, and emissaries from the National Science Foundation gathered at the University of Pittsburgh to discuss the best way forward. Read the full story to learn more about what they discussed.

—Sophia Chen

The must-reads

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

1 Google has buried search results under new AI features  
Want to access links? Good luck finding them! (404 Media)
+ Unfortunately, it’s a sign of what’s to come. (Wired $)
+ Do you trust Google to do the Googling for you? (The Atlantic $)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Cruise has settled with the pedestrian injured by one of its cars
It’s awarded her between $8 million and $12 million. (WP $)
+ The company is slowly resuming its test drives in Arizona. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s next for robotaxis in 2024. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Microsoft is asking AI staff in China to consider relocating
Tensions between the countries are rising, and Microsoft worries its workers could end up caught in the cross-fire. (WSJ $)
+ They’ve been given the option to relocate to the US, Ireland, or other locations. (Reuters)
+ Three takeaways about the state of Chinese tech in the US. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Car rental firm Hertz is offloading its Tesla fleet
But people who snapped up the bargain cars are already running into problems. (NY Mag $)

5 We’re edging closer towards a quantum internet
But first we need to invent an entirely new device. (New Scientist $)
+ What’s next for quantum computing. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Making computer chips has never been more important
And countries and businesses are vying to be top dog. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Your smartphone lasts a lot longer than it used to
Keeping them in good working order still takes a little work, though. (NYT $)

8 Psychedelics could help lessen chronic pain
If you can get hold of them. (Vox)
+ VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Scientists are plotting how to protect the Earth from dangerous asteroids
Smashing them into tiny pieces is certainly one solution. (Undark Magazine)
+ Earth is probably safe from a killer asteroid for 1,000 years. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Elon Musk still wants to fight Mark Zuckerberg 
The grudge match of the century is still rumbling on. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“This road map leads to a dead end.” 

—Evan Greer, director of advocacy group Fight for the Future, is far from impressed with US Senators’ ‘road map’ for new AI regulations, they tell the Washington Post.

The big story

The two-year fight to stop Amazon from selling face recognition to the police 

June 2020

In the summer of 2018, nearly 70 civil rights and research organizations wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos demanding that Amazon stop providing Rekognition, its face recognition technology, to governments. 

Despite the mounting pressure, Amazon continued pushing Rekognition as a tool for monitoring “people of interest”. But two years later, the company shocked civil rights activists and researchers when it announced that it would place a one-year moratorium on police use of the software. Read the full story.

—Karen Hao

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ This old school basketball animation is beyond cool.
+ Your search for the perfect summer read is over: all of these sound fantastic.
+ Analyzing the color theory in Disney’s Aladdin? Why not!
+ Never buy a bad cantaloupe again with these essential tips.

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.

Google’s Astra is its first AI-for-everything agent

What’s happening: Google is set to launch a new system called Astra later this year. It promises that it will be the most powerful, advanced type of AI assistant it’s ever launched. 

What’s an agent? The current generation of AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, can retrieve information and offer answers, but that is about it. But this year, Google is rebranding its assistants as more advanced “agents,” which it says could show reasoning, planning, and memory skills and are able to take multiple steps to execute tasks. 

The big picture: Tech companies are in the middle of a fierce competition over AI supremacy, and  AI agents are the latest effort from Big Tech firms to show they are pushing the frontier of development. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Technology is probably changing us for the worse—or so we always think

Do we use technology, or does it use us? Do our gadgets improve our lives or just make us weak, lazy, and dumb? These are old questions—maybe older than you think. You’re probably familiar with the way alarmed grown-ups through the decades have assailed the mind-rotting potential of search engines, video games, television, and radio—but those are just the recent examples.

Here at MIT Technology Review, writers have grappled with the effects, real or imagined, of tech on the human mind for over a century. But while we’ve always greeted new technologies with a mixture of fascination and fear, something interesting always happens. We get used to it. Read the full story.

—Timothy Maher

MIT Technology Review is celebrating our 125th anniversary with an online series that draws lessons for the future from our past coverage of technology. Check out this piece from the series by David Rotman, our editor at large, about how fear AI will take our jobs is nothing new.

Hong Kong is safe from China’s Great Firewall—for now

Last week, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal granted an injunction that permits the city government to go to Western platforms like YouTube and Spotify and demand they remove the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong,” because the government claims it has been used for sedition.

Aside from the depressing implications for pro-democracy movements’ decline in Hong Kong, this lawsuit has also been an interesting case study of the local government’s complicated relationship with internet control. Although it’s tightening its grip, it’s still wary of imposing full-blown ‘Great Firewall’ style censorship. Read the full story to find out why.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech and power in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Ilya Sutskever is leaving OpenAI  
Where its former chief scientist goes next is anyone’s guess. (NYT $)
+ It’s highly likely Sutskever’s new project will be focussed on AGI. (WP $)
+ Read our interview with Sutskever from last October. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US AI roadmap is here
Senators claim it’s the “broadest and deepest” piece of AI legislation to date. (WP $)
+ What’s next for AI regulation in 2024? (MIT Technology Review)

3 A real estate mogul has made a bid to acquire TikTok
Frank McCourt has thrown his hat into the ring to own the company’s US business. (WSJ $)
+ The depressing truth about TikTok’s impending ban. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Neuralink’s brain implant issues are nothing new
Insiders claim that the firm has known about problems with the implant’s wires for years. (Reuters)

5 Wannabe mothers are finding sperm donors on Facebook 
The industry’s sky-high fees are driving women to the social network. (NY Mag $)
+ I took an international trip with my frozen eggs to learn about the fertility industry. (MIT Technology Review)

6 We’re getting a better idea of how long you can expect to lose weight on Wegovy
But we still don’t know how long people have to keep taking the drug to maintain it. (Ars Technica)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

7 What do DNA tests for the masses really achieve?
Most customers don’t really need to know if they’re genetically predisposed to hate cilantro or not. (Bloomberg $)

8 How to save rainforests from wildfires
Even lush green spaces aren’t safe from flames. (Hakai Magazine)
+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Memestocks are mounting a major comeback
It’s like 2021 all over again. (Vox)

10 Mark Zuckerberg’s just turned 40
It looks like his new rapper look is here to stay. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.”

—Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, offers a measured response to the news that Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company in a post on X.

The big story

How to measure all the world’s fresh water

December 2021

The Congo River is the world’s second-largest river system after the Amazon. More than 75 million people depend on it for food and water, as do thousands of species of plants and animals. The massive tropical rainforest sprawled across its middle helps regulate the entire Earth’s climate system, but the amount of water in it is something of a mystery.

Scientists rely on monitoring stations to track the river, but what was once a network of some 400 stations has dwindled to just 15. Measuring water is key to helping people prepare for natural disasters and adapt to climate change—so researchers are increasingly filling data gaps using information gathered from space. Read the full story.

—Maria Gallucci

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ The Cookie Monster had no right to go this hard!
+ It’s time to make product design great again. But how, exactly?
+ The universe is humming all the time, but no one really knows why.
+ Who here remembers the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES?