Each time you’ve heard a borderline outlandish idea of what AI will be capable of, it often turns out that Sam Altman was, if not the first to articulate it, at least the most persuasive and influential voice behind it. …
It’s a weird time to be an AI doomer. This small but influential community of researchers, scientists, and policy experts believes, in the simplest terms, that AI could get so good it could be bad—very, very bad—for humanity. Though many…
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. Expanded carrier screening: Is it worth it? Carrier screening tests would-be parents for hidden genetic mutations that might…
It’s a scorching October day in Bangkok and I’m wandering through the exhibits at the Thai Space Expo, held in one of the city’s busiest shopping malls, when I do a double take. Amid the flashy space suits and model…
This week I’ve been thinking about babies. Healthy ones. Perfect ones. As you may have read last week, my colleague Antonio Regalado came face to face with a marketing campaign in the New York subway asking people to “have your 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. Solar geoengineering startups are getting serious Solar geoengineering aims to manipulate the climate by bouncing sunlight back into…
Solar geoengineering aims to manipulate the climate by bouncing sunlight back into space. In theory, it could ease global warming. But as interest in the idea grows, so do concerns about potential consequences. A startup called Stardust Solutions recently raised…
In this exclusive subscriber-only eBook, you’ll learn about a new method that scientists have uncovered to look at the ways our bodies are aging. by Jessica Hamzelou October 14, 2025 Table of Contents: Related Stories: Access all subscriber-only eBooks:
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 one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change—for…
At a regional hospital, a cardiac patient’s lab results sit behind layers of encryption, accessible to his surgeon but shielded from those without strictly need-to-know status. Across the street at a credit union, a small business owner anxiously awaits the…
Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change—for a price. The Israel-based geoengineering startup has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch specially equipped aircraft into the stratosphere. Once…
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 State of AI: A vision of the world in 2030 There are huge gulfs of opinion when…
Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday, writers from both publications debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. You can read the rest of…
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. 4 technologies that didn’t make our 2026 breakthroughs list If you’re a longtime reader, you probably know that…
If you’re a longtime reader, you probably know that our newsroom selects 10 breakthroughs every year that we think will define the future. This group exercise is mostly fun and always engrossing, but at times it can also be quite…
The past year has marked a turning point in the corporate AI conversation. After a period of eager experimentation, organizations are now confronting a more complex reality: While investment in AI has never been higher, the path from pilot to…
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 chatbots can sway voters better than political advertisements The news: Chatting with a politically biased AI model is…
One day this fall, I watched an electronic sign outside the Broadway-Lafayette subway station in Manhattan switch seamlessly between an ad for makeup and one promoting the website Pickyourbaby.com, which promises a way for potential parents to use genetic tests…
In January 2024, the phone rang in homes all around New Hampshire. On the other end was Joe Biden’s voice, urging Democrats to “save your vote” by skipping the primary. It sounded authentic, but it wasn’t. The call was a…
In 2024, a Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, Shamaine Daniels, used an AI chatbot named Ashley to call voters and carry on conversations with them. “Hello. My name is Ashley, and I’m an artificial intelligence volunteer for Shamaine Daniels’s run…
Most organizations feel the imperative to keep pace with continuing advances in AI capabilities, as highlighted in a recent MIT Technology Review Insights report. That clearly has security implications, particularly as organizations navigate a surge in the volume, velocity, and…
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. OpenAI has trained its LLM to confess to bad behavior What’s new: OpenAI is testing a new way…
Sometimes geothermal hot spots are obvious, marked by geysers and hot springs on the planet’s surface. But in other places, they’re obscured thousands of feet underground. Now AI could help uncover these hidden pockets of potential power. A startup company…
As many of us are ramping up with shopping, baking, and planning for the holiday season, nuclear power plants are also getting ready for one of their busiest seasons of the year. Here in the US, nuclear reactors follow predictable…
OpenAI is testing another new way to expose the complicated processes at work inside large language models. Researchers at the company can make an LLM produce what they call a confession, in which the model explains how it carried 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. Everything you need to know about AI and coding AI has already transformed how code is written, but…
In 1913, Henry Ford cut the time it took to build a Model T from 12 hours to just over 90 minutes. He accomplished this feat through a revolutionary breakthrough in process design: Instead of skilled craftsmen building a car…
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 State of AI: Welcome to the economic singularity —David Rotman and Richard Waters Any far-reaching new technology…
Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday for the next two weeks, writers from both publications will debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global…
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. An AI model trained on prison phone calls now looks for planned crimes in those calls A US…
We have some exciting news: Nominations are now open for MIT Technology Review’s 2026 Innovators Under 35 competition. This annual list recognizes 35 of the world’s best young scientists and inventors, and our newsroom has produced it for more than…
A US telecom company trained an AI model on years of inmates’ phone and video calls and is now piloting that model to scan their calls, texts, and emails in the hope of predicting and preventing crimes. Securus Technologies president…
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 we still don’t know about weight-loss drugs Weight-loss drugs have been back in the news this week.…
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. Weight-loss drugs have been back in the news this week. First, we heard…
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 year’s UN climate talks avoided fossil fuels, again Over the past few weeks in Belem, Brazil, attendees…
If we didn’t have pictures and videos, I almost wouldn’t believe the imagery that came out of this year’s UN climate talks. Over the past few weeks in Belem, Brazil, attendees dealt with oppressive heat and flooding, and at one…
Today’s IT leaders face competing mandates to do more (“make us an ‘AI-first’ enterprise—yesterday”) with less (“no new hires for at least the next six months”). VMware has become a focal point of these dueling directives. It remains central to…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How AI is changing the economy There’s a lot at stake when it comes to understanding how AI…
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Last year, the fantasy author Joanna Maciejewska went…
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 AlphaFold: A conversation with a Google DeepMind Nobel laureate In 2017, fresh off a PhD…
For decades, business continuity planning meant preparing for anomalous events like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, or regional power outages. In anticipation of these rare disasters, IT teams built playbooks, ran annual tests, crossed their fingers, and hoped they’d never have to…
Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday, writers from both publications debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. In this week’s conversation MIT…
In 2017, fresh off a PhD on theoretical chemistry, John Jumper heard rumors that Google DeepMind had moved on from building AI that played games with superhuman skill and was starting up a secret project to predict the structures of…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the man building a starter kit for civilization You live in a house you designed and built…
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. We’re learning more about what vitamin D does to our bodies At a checkup a few years ago,…
It has started to get really wintry here in London over the last few days. The mornings are frosty, the wind is biting, and it’s already dark by the time I pick my kids up from school. The darkness in…
Everything is a conspiracy theory now. MIT Technology Review’s series, “The New Conspiracy Age,” explores how this moment is changing science and technology. Watch a discussion with our editors and Mike Rothschild, journalist and conspiracy theory expert, about how we…
Digital resilience—the ability to prevent, withstand, and recover from digital disruptions—has long been a strategic priority for enterprises. With the rise of agentic AI, the urgency for robust resilience is greater than ever. Agentic AI represents a new generation of…
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. Three things to know about the future of electricity The International Energy Agency recently released the latest version…
One of the dominant storylines I’ve been following through 2025 is electricity—where and how demand is going up, how much it costs, and how this all intersects with that topic everyone is talking about: AI. Last week, the International Energy…
Manufacturing is getting a major system upgrade. As AI amplifies existing technologies—like digital twins, the cloud, edge computing, and the industrial internet of things (IIoT)—it is enabling factory operations teams to shift from reactive, isolated problem-solving to proactive, systemwide optimization.…
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. Quantum physicists have shrunk and “de-censored” DeepSeek R1 The news: A group of quantum physicists at Spanish firm…
A group of quantum physicists claims to have created a version of the powerful reasoning AI model DeepSeek R1 that strips out the censorship built into the original by its Chinese creators. The scientists at Multiverse Computing, a Spanish firm…
The Ryder Cup is an almost-century-old tournament pitting Europe against the United States in an elite showcase of golf skill and strategy. At the 2025 event, nearly a quarter of a million spectators gathered to watch three days of fierce…
Training an AI model to predict equipment failures is an engineering achievement. But it’s not until prediction meets action—the moment that model successfully flags a malfunctioning machine—that true business transformation occurs. One technical milestone lives in a proof-of-concept deck; the…
Google today unveiled Gemini 3, a major upgrade to its flagship multimodal model. The firm says the new model is better at reasoning, has more fluid multimodal capabilities (the ability to work across voice, text or images), and will 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 State of AI: How war will be changed forever —Helen Warrell & James O’Donnell It is July…
Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday, writers from both publications debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. In this conversation, Helen Warrell,…
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 is the chance your plane will be hit by space debris? The risk of flights being hit…
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. In mid-October, a mysterious object cracked the windshield of a packed…
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. OpenAI’s new LLM exposes the secrets of how AI really works The news: ChatGPT maker OpenAI has built…
Earlier this week, the UK’s science minister announced an ambitious plan: to phase out animal testing. Testing potential skin irritants on animals will be stopped by the end of next year, according to a strategy released on Tuesday. By 2027, researchers…
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has built an experimental large language model that is far easier to understand than typical models. That’s a big deal, because today’s LLMs are black boxes: Nobody fully understands how they do what they do. Building a…
Google DeepMind has built a new video-game-playing agent called SIMA 2 that can navigate and solve problems in a wide range of 3D virtual worlds. The company claims it’s a big step toward more general-purpose agents and better real-world robots. …
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 is changing how we quantify pain Researchers around the world are racing to turn pain—medicine’s most subjective…
Last week, we hosted EmTech MIT, MIT Technology Review’s annual flagship conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the course of three days of main-stage sessions, I learned about innovations in AI, biotech, and robotics. But as you might imagine, some of…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. What it’s like to be in the middle of a conspiracy theory (according to a conspiracy theory expert)…
For years, many chief information officers (CIOs) looked at VMware-to-cloud migrations with a wary pragmatism. Manually mapping dependencies and rewriting legacy apps mid-flight was not an enticing, low-lift proposition for enterprise IT teams. But the calculus for such decisions has…
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 quest to find out how our bodies react to extreme temperatures Climate change is subjecting vulnerable people…
AI and quantum technologies are dramatically reconfiguring how cybersecurity functions, redefining the speed and scale with which digital defenders and their adversaries can operate. The weaponization of AI tools for cyberattacks is already proving a worthy opponent to current defenses.…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why it’s so hard to bust the weather control conspiracy theory It was October 2024, and Hurricane Helene…
Welcome to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday for the next six weeks, writers from both publications will debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. 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. The first new subsea habitat in 40 years is about to launch Vanguard feels and smells like a…
Vanguard feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides…
This week, we heard that Tom Brady had his dog cloned. The former quarterback revealed that his Junie is actually a clone of Lua, a pit bull mix that died in 2023. Brady’s announcement follows those of celebrities like Paris…
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 conspiracy theories infiltrated the doctor’s office As anyone who has googled their symptoms and convinced themselves that…
Picture it: I’m minding my business at a party, parked by the snack table (of course). A friend of a friend wanders up, and we strike up a conversation. It quickly turns to work, and upon learning that I’m a…
The US- and UK-based company Quantinuum today unveiled Helios, its third-generation quantum computer, which includes expanded computing power and error correction capability. Like all other existing quantum computers, Helios is not powerful enough to execute the industry’s dream money-making algorithms,…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why the for-profit race into solar geoengineering is bad for science and public trust —David Keith is the…
This year, we’ve seen a real-time experiment playing out across the technology industry, one in which AI’s software engineering capabilities have been put to the test against human technologists. And although 2025 may have started with AI looking strong, the…
Last week, an American-Israeli company that claims it’s developed proprietary technology to cool the planet announced it had raised $60 million, by far the largest known venture capital round to date for a solar geoengineering startup. The company, Stardust, says…
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 AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time —Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor Are…
The State of AI is a collaboration between the Financial Times & MIT Technology Review examining the ways in which AI is reshaping global power. Every Monday for the next six weeks, writers from both publications will debate one aspect…
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. Here’s the latest company planning for gene-edited babies The news: A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured…
Demand for copper is surging, as is pollution from its dirty production processes. The founders of one startup, Still Bright, think they have a better, cleaner way to generate the copper the world needs. The company uses water-based reactions, based…
A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely create genetically edited babies, marking the largest known investment into the taboo technology. The new company, called Preventive, is being…
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 do so many people think the Fruit of the Loom logo had a cornucopia? Quick question: Does…
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the season of the sniffles. As the weather turns, we’re all spending more time indoors. The kids have been back at school for a couple of months. And cold germs are…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the new conspiracy age Everything is a conspiracy theory now. Conspiracists are all over the White House,…
Bill Gates doesn’t shy away or pretend modesty when it comes to his stature in the climate world today. “Well, who’s the biggest funder of climate innovation companies?” he asked a handful of journalists at a media roundtable event last…
The timing was eerie. On November 21, 1963, Richard Hofstadter delivered the annual Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University. Hofstadter was a professor of American history at Columbia University who liked to use social psychology to explain political history, the…
According to internet listicles, the animated sitcom The Simpsons has predicted the future anywhere from 17 to 55 times. “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” the newly sworn-in President Lisa Simpson declared way back…
In this exclusive subscirber-only ebook you’ll learn how the emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next. by James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart…
Four years is a lifetime when it comes to artificial intelligence. Since the first edition of this study was published in 2021, AI’s capabilities have been advancing at speed, and the advances have not slowed since generative AI’s breakthrough. For…
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. DeepSeek may have found a new way to improve AI’s ability to remember The news: An AI model…
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Just about all businesses these days seem to…
An AI model released by Chinese AI company DeepSeek uses new techniques that could significantly improve AI’s ability to “remember.” Released last week, the optical character recognition (OCR) model works by extracting text from an image and turning it into…
The market is officially three years post ChatGPT and many of the pundit bylines have shifted to using terms like “bubble” to suggest reasons behind generative AI not realizing material returns outside a handful of technology suppliers. In September, the…