MIT Technology Review

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. Week one of the Musk v. Altman trial: what it was like in the room Two of the most powerful figures in AI-Sam Altman and Elon Musk-are in the middle of...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. Two of the most powerful people in AI-Sam Altman and Elon Musk-began their face-off in court in Oakland, California, last week. Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that the millions he spent to...

In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into bankrolling the company. Along the way, he warnedthat AI could destroy us all and sat through...

Cybersecurity was already under strain before AI entered the stack. Now, as AI expands the attack surface and adds new complexity, the limits of legacy approaches are becoming harder to ignore. This session from MIT Technology Review's EmTech AI conference explores why security must be rethought with AI at its core, not layered on after...

Companies are taking control of their own data to tailor AI for their needs. The challenge lies in balancing ownership with the safe, trusted flow of highquality data needed to power reliable insights. This conversation from MIT Technology Review's EmTech AI conference examines how AI factories unlock new levels of scale, sustainability, and governance-positioning data...

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. A new US phone network for Christians aims to block porn and gender-related content A new US-wide cell phone network marketed to Christians is set to launch next week. It blocks...

Smack dab between Australia and South America, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Rainier is currently on a mission to map more than 8,000 square nautical miles of the Pacific seafloor in search of critical mineral deposits. But it isn't doing it alone; for a month starting this week, it will...

This past week delivered another gut punch for science in the US. This time, the target was the National Science Foundation-a federal agency that funds major research projects to the tune of around $9 billion. The foundation's efforts were overseen by a board of 22 prominent scientists. On Friday last week, they were all fired....

A new US-wide cell phone network marketed to Christians is set to launch next week. It blocks porn, which experts in network security say marks the first time a US cell plan has used network-level blocking for such content that can't be turned off even by adult account owners. It's also rolling out a filter...

The ultimate plan to live forever is a brand new body. This subscriber-only eBook explores R3 Bio, a small startup that has pitched a startling and ethically charged vision for brainless clones" to serve the role of backup human bodies. byAntonio Regalado March 30, 2026 Related Stories: Access all subscriber-only eBooks:

The San Francisco-based startup Goodfire just released a new tool, called Silico, that lets researchers and engineers peer inside an AI model and adjust its parameters-the settings that determine a model's behavior-during training. This could give model makers more fine-grained control over how this technology is built than was once thought possible. Goodfire claims Silico...

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. Digging for clues about the North Pole's past In the past, getting to the North Pole involved a treacherous trip through ice many meters thick. But last year, a research vessel...

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. It's time to make a plan for nuclear waste Today, nuclear energy enjoys rare support across the political spectrum. Public approval has spiked, and Big Tech is throwing money around to...

Today, nuclear energy enjoys a rare moment of support across the political spectrum in the US. Interest from tech companies that are scrambling to meet demand for massive data centers has sparked a resurgence of money and attention in the industry. That newfound interest is exactly why it's time to talk about an old problem:...

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. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI's future Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman head to trial this week in a case with sweeping consequences. Ahead...

After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI's highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterprise and might even oust...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. In February, I picked up a flyer at an anti-AI march in London. I can't say for sure whether or not its writers meant to riff on South Park's underpants gnomes. But...

Artificial intelligence may be dominating boardroom agendas, but many enterprises are discovering that the biggest obstacle to meaningful adoption is the state of their data. While consumer-facing AI tools have dazzled users with speed and ease, enterprise leaders are discovering that deploying AI at scale requires something far less glamorous but far more consequential: data...

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 reasons why DeepSeek's new model matters On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts...

On April 24, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. The model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek's previous models, V4 is open source, meaning it is available...

I don't need to tell you thatAI is everywhere. Or that it is being used, increasingly, in hospitals. Doctors are using AI to help them with note-taking. AI-based tools are trawling through patient records, flagging people who may require certain support or treatments. They are also used to interpret medical exam results and x-rays. A...

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 Nature issue When we talk about nature," we usually mean something untouched by humans. But little of that world exists today. From microplastics in rainforest wildlife to artificial light...

Fusion power could provide a steady, zero-emissions source of electricity in the future-if companies can get plants built and running. But a new study suggests that even if that future arrives, it might not come cheap. Technologies tend to get less expensive over time. Lithium-ion batteries are now about 90% cheaper than they were in...

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: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now What actually matters in AI right now? It's getting harder to tell amid the constant launches, hype, and warnings. To cut through...

Artificial intelligence is moving quickly in the enterprise, from experimentation to everyday use. Organizations are deploying copilots, agents, and predictive systems across finance, supply chains, human resources, and customer operations. By the end of 2025, half of companies used AI in at least three business functions, according to a recent survey. But as AI becomes...

Isegye Idol If you thought K-pop was weird, virtual idols-humans who perform as anime-style digital characters via motion capture-will blow your mind. My favorite is a girl group called Isegye Idol, created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber (a streamer who likewise performs as a digital persona). Isegye Idol's six members are anonymous, which seems to...

When people talk about nature," they're generally talking about things that aren't made by human beings. Rocks. Reefs. Red wolves. But while there is plenty of God's creation to go around, it is hard to think of anything on Earth that human hands haven't affected. In the Brazilian rainforest, scientists have found microplastics in the...

Los Angeles deserves its reputation as the quintessential car city-the rhythms of its 2,200 square miles are dictated by wide boulevards and concrete arcs of freeways. But it once had a world-class rail transit system, and for the last three decades, the city has been rebuilding a network of trolleys and subways. In May, a...

Listen to the session or watch below Subscribers saw a special edition of Roundtables simulcast live from EmTech AI, MIT Technology Review's signature conference for AI leadership. Subscribers got an exclusive first look at a new list capturing 10 key technologies, emerging trends, bold ideas, and powerful movements in AI that you need to know...

How does the physical matter in our brains translate into thoughts, sensations, and emotions? It's hard to explore that question without neurosurgery. But in a recent paper, MIT philosopher Matthias Michel, Lincoln Lab researcher Daniel Freeman, and colleagues outline a strategy for doing so with an emerging tool called transcranial focused ultrasound. This noninvasive technology...

Around 2.3 billion years ago, a pivotal period known as the Great Oxidation Event set the evolutionary course for oxygen-breathing life on Earth. But MIT geobiologists and colleagues have found evidence that some early forms of life evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before that. By mapping enzyme sequences from...

Heat generated by electronic devices is usually a problem, but a team led by Giuseppe Romano, a research scientist at MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, has found a way to use it for data processing that doesn't rely on electricity. In this analog computing method, input data is encoded not as binary 1s and 0s...

A long stretch of humid heat followed by a powerful thunderstorm is a familiar weather pattern in the tropics, but it's also becoming more common in midlatitude regions such as the US Midwest. A recent study by two MIT scientists identifies a key atmospheric condition that determines how hot, humid, and stormy such a region...

Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared ProsperityEdited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning and former executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the FutureMIT PRESS, 2026, $24.95 The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and LiveBy Alan Lightman, professor of the practice...

AtMIT, AI has become so pervasive that you can almost find your way into it without meaning to. Take Sili Deng, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Deng says she still doesn't know whether she'd have gone all in on artificial intelligence had it not been for the covid pandemic. She had joined the faculty...

If you've been to an eye doctor and had an image taken of the inside of your eye, chances are good it was done with optical coherence tomography (OCT)-a technology invented by clinician-scientist David Huang '85, SM '89, PhD '93, and now used in 40 million procedures per year. OCT is a noninvasive technique used...

When ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, it opened people's eyes to how easily generative AI could churn out vast amounts of human-seeming text from simple prompts. This quickly caught the attention of criminals, who soon began using large language models to produce malicious emails-both the untargeted spam kind and more sophisticated,...

AI systems have already gained impressive mastery over the digital world, but the physical world is still humanity's domain. As it turns out, building an AI system that can compose a novel or code an app is far easier than developing one that can fold laundry or navigate a city street. To get there, many...

For years, experts have warned that deepfakes-AI-generated videos, images, or audio recordings of people doing or saying things they haven't actually done in real life-could be deployed in malicious ways. These dangers are now here. Improvements in deepfake technology, and the widespread availability of easy-to-use and cheap (or free) generative models, have made it easier...

I was recently invited to join an app that would pay me cryptocurrency to film myself doing tasks like putting food into a bowl, microwaving it, and then taking it out. Another website suggested I try a new game in which I'd remotely control a robotic arm in Shenzhen, China, as it completed puzzles and...

When people say AI will speed up drug development or fear that it will bring about mass layoffs, what they have in mind-whether they know it or not-are AI agents. ChatGPT made large language models a mass consumer product. But to change the world, AI needs to do more than just talk back: It needs...

AI companies frequently invoke the possibility of AI-enabled scientific discovery as a justification for their existence: If the technology eventually cures cancer and solves climate change, then all the carbon emissions and slop videos will have been well worth it. Already, LLMs can assist scientists in all sorts of ways. They can point people to...

Silicon Valley AI companies follow a familiar playbook: Keep the secret sauce behind an API, and charge for every drop. China's leading AI labs are playing a different game: They ship models as downloadable open-weight" packages. This lets developers adapt the models and run them on their own hardware to build products without negotiating a...

Turns out not everyone wants to live in the future that AI companies are building. People from all walks of life are speaking out against rising electricity bills from data centers, disappearing jobs, chatbots' impact on teen mental health, the military's use of AI, and copyright infringement-among other concerns. This anti-AI movement is taking shape...

As AI agents increasingly work alongside humans across organizations, companies could be inadvertently opening a new attack surface. Insecure agents can be manipulated to access sensitive systems and proprietary data, increasing enterprise risk. In some modern enterprises, non-human identities (NHI) are outpacing human identities, and that trend will explode with agentic AI. Solid governance 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. The noise we make is hurting animals. Can we learn to shut up? As human society has expanded, animals have started struggling to hear one another. For many birds, the noise...

In the past, even with an icebreaker and during peak melt season, getting to the North Pole wasn't a sure bet. It took favorable winds to crack the frozen ocean surface, and ships had to fight through ice that had grown many meters thick over several winters. In the summer of 2025, though, Jochen Knies...

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. No one's sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all In February 2019, a group of scientists proposed a high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting idea that the National Science Foundation should...

If you want to capture something wolflike, it's best to embark before dawn. So on a morning this January, with the eastern horizon still pink-hued, I drove with two young scientists into a blanket of fog. Forty miles to the west, the industrial sprawl of Houston spawned a golden glow. Tanner Broussard's old Toyota Tacoma...

Tech workers in China are being instructed by their bosses to train AI agents to replace them-and it's prompting a wave of soul-searching among otherwise enthusiastic early adopters. Earlier this month a GitHub project called Colleague Skill, which claimed workers could use it to distill" their colleagues' skills and personality traits and replicate them with...