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. Eating disorders are on the rise. GLP-1s could make things worse. GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs of the last decade. But to some clinicians, they can...

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs of the last decade. But to some clinical psychologists, they can represent something more sinister-a potential trigger for eating disorders. A new report suggests that the global incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa shot up between 1990 and 2023-by a whopping 71%. By 2023,...

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. Opinion: We urgently need to monitor AI agents' actions in real time -Madhulika Srikumar and Claire Leibowicz from the Partnership on AI, a nonprofit advancing best practices in AI governance. AI...

This summer, hundreds of OpenAI agents tried to cheat on a cybersecurity test. They broke out of their test environment and successfully hacked Hugging Face, a site that they believed held clues about how they'd be graded. Around the same time, another OpenAI agent accessed private files from an Australian government website. It's a problem...

Climate change itself is increasingly fueling climate change. Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases are driving up global temperatures, setting off dangerous feedback loops that we have not fully accounted for in our climate models-or our emissions-reduction goals. Scientists have long warned that warming would propel further warming in various ways, but a growing number of...

Across a business, any number of AI platforms, systems, and tools may be at work simultaneously-for example, AI-powered customer platforms, conversational assistants, and workflow and process automation tools. Each one is sophisticated, advanced, and quick to respond. But, when set to work, the outcomes and actions that emerge may be wrong, confused, or lacking 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. AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models When Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup, he didn't think its data was worth much. But he's...

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. Will the real Anthropic please stand up? After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out...

Every manufacturer has its own industrial intelligence. Some is documented, and some resides in the knowledge of experienced workers. Consider an experienced operator preparing to restart a line after a changeover. The machine settings matter, but so does knowing how a particular material behaves, what happened during the previous shift, and when an apparently minor...

Transformers are a crucial but nearly invisible part of our grid. The devices help efficiently move power across long distances, but they're complicated and in short supply. And given that their basic design hasn't changed much for about a century, they could use an upgrade. As the world races to meet rising electricity demand from...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out the company's unique view of the technology it...

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. Opinion: The focus on AI safety disasters ignores everyday harms -Sam Hiner, cofounder of the Young People's Alliance, and Emma Leiken, executive director of the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund at...

Consider what passes for success in technology policy. An AI company promises that its chatbot will not encourage suicide. A social media platform makes it more difficult for children to buy fentanyl. These are important protections, and they should have existed all along. But companies can clear these low bars while continuing to make products...

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Are we there yet? A reality check on six big tech promises Some seemingly impossible feats are too good to give up on. Decoding a pet's yowls and yips? Absolutely. Scrubbing...

Earlier this week, I attended a screening of You Can See Everything, the buzzy new documentary about the disgraced former biotech CEO Elizabeth Holmes. I went in not really knowing what to expect. I'd avoided spoilers (and won't be giving anything away here, either!). I was wondering what new information this film could reveal, given...

The next competitive advantage in enterprise AI has less to do with which model you choose than with what you build around it. That's an important shift. For the past several years, much of the AI conversation has centered on model capability: bigger models, better reasoning, larger context windows, higher benchmark scores. Those advances have...

A scalable AI system requires a strong foundation. Data, engineering, platforms, operating models, and governance must converge to work as one. This session from MIT Technology Review's EmTech Future conference explores what it takes to build that foundation in a highly regulated environment and how a responsible, trustworthy implementation can turn emerging capabilities, including agentic...

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 far can we push computing? On a December evening in 1959, the physicist Richard Feynman gave a lecture called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." There is no physical...

Enterprise AI can generate recommendations, automate tasks, and help organizations make decisions faster. But without an understanding of how a business actually operates, even powerful models can miss the constraints and relationships that determine whether a decision is the right one. As companies look to move AI from experimentation into everyday operations, the challenge ahead...

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 Impossible issue We wanted our last print edition of 2026 to include a slate of stories that check in on impossible ideas. Why? Because it's fun to dream about...

I'd wager everyone has a rehearsed response to what's absolutely one of the world's worst interview questions: What's your biggest weakness?" Whenever I've gotten it, I take a slow-even pensive-breath and rattle off my line: I say no to myself too much." I won't lie. It's a bit shameless-a definite humblebrag. I'm a systems thinker:...

Just before the Artemis II crew began its historic slingshot around the moon this past April, NASA announced plans to build Space Reactor-1 Freedom. SR-1, the first-ever nuclear-reactor-powered interplanetary spacecraft, is meant to fly an uncrewed mission to Mars by the end of 2028, arriving in 2029. A successful mission would herald a new era...

We all know exercise is good for us. It builds muscle, strengthens bones, lowers blood pressure, and boosts mood. By deciphering how movement benefits the body, researchers hope to develop medicines that can offer some of the same perks-without the workout. The idea isn't to replace exercise but to bring its upsides to people who...

Humans are far from the only species with a gift for gab, and our furry, feathered, and finned friends could have a lot to tell us. Decoding how animals communicate with one another could offer a window into the inner lives of other species and help humans realize that animals are sentient creatures who think,...

Scrubbing Earth of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances-a.k.a. PFAS or forever chemicals-could eliminate a list of woes for people and planet. Used for decades in everything from nonstick pans to firefighting foams, PFAS have been linked to increased risks of fertility challenges, developmental delays, cancer, and reduced immune response. They are known for a strong bond...

Every year, traffic crashes kill more than one million people, and they're the leading cause of death for children and young adults. In the US, 100 people a day lose their lives this way, in many cases not on highways but on rural and local streets. Traffic deaths are a leading cause of preventable death,...

The rise of the lithium-ion battery, which powers everything from the smallest personal electronics to gargantuan energy storage systems, has been nothing short of revolutionary. But as anyone who's boarded a plane in the last decade could tell you, storing and pumping out energy by moving charged lithium ions through a liquid electrolyte soup has...

The average American throws out around 81 pounds of clothing each year, and there are few options for recycling it. MIT engineers hope to cut down on that textile waste with a new type of yarn. The thermoplastic yarn mimics the properties of conventional elastic yarns, which typically combine spandex with polyester or nylon. Those...

A high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet can help some people lose weight, and some research has shown that it may protect against colon cancer. But a new study suggests that such a ketogenic diet may also increase the risk of cancer in the small intestine. This type of diet forces the body to burn fatty acids instead...

Strokes leave 5 million people with long-term impairments each year, and a growing shortage of physical therapists makes it hard for them to get the care they need. A new approach tries to solve that problem by combining artificial intelligence and human therapy. Johannes Lachner, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor...

These are images of quizzes I took in 3.091, Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry, in the fall of 1980. One is my very first exam at MIT, and getting 49 out of 100 was a soul-crushing experience. I can still picture the TA, Leszek Pawlowicz, PhD '87, returning my paper. He had a big smile on...

In corporate America, Stanley Anderson '79 says, executives often assume that their peers grew up in privileged circumstances. He did not. I spent my early years trying not to get recruited into gangs, getting shot at, watching my friends get murdered, and thinking that if I don't leave, I will die," says Anderson, who was...

Alissa Totman '13 was a sophomore when she joined MIT BrainTrust, a student-run organization that connects Institute undergraduates and people with brain injuries for support and socializing. That group was a great way to learn about the human experience of what people go through when they experience a brain injury," she says. And it laid...

Growing up on a small farm in Nebraska, Megan Donahue '85 discovered the wider world by reading her way through her local library. Today, she is learning how the wider universe works by studying galaxy clusters. Donahue discovered her passion for physics in that library at age 12 and started her path into astronomy thanks...

Tomas Villalon Jr. '14 was raised in San Antonio, Texas, but vividly remembers smog hanging over the city his family came from-Monterrey, Mexico, a steel manufacturing and metal fabrication hub. Even as a child, he realized it was problematic to breathe that air. I'm motivated because I've seen what metal-making does," says Villalon, who majored...

Imagine your company just discovered electricity. At first only a few machines run on it, and nobody worries about efficiency - consumption is low and the value is obvious. But once electricity becomes infrastructure, every process depends on it, and the question changes from can we use it?" to how efficiently are we using it?"...

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 were looking at it wrong": The explosive claim that's upended the AI world I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks." With those simple words of...

The current narrative around artificial intelligence in the workplace is largely driven by Silicon Valley. But treating the tech sector as an island misses the actual trends in technology adoption-tech is just the first industry in line. As generative AI and automation tools mature, the shifts currently reshaping software engineering and product management will inevitably...

Andrew Haverdink, a tall grad student in a rain bib and rubber boots, wrenched a double-handed drill from the frozen soil that underlies much of Alaska's Denali National Park and then unclipped the hollow barrel from the end of the bit. He knelt in front of a blue tarp, lined the barrel up with a...

Generative AI models run on powerful chips known as GPUs, which depend on stacks of specialized memory chips packaged with the processor. To meet growing demand for memory, Samsung is building a massive new semiconductor manufacturing complex in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. Three fabs already operate around the clock, and a fourth is coming online. Construction...

In the fall of 2025, Jeff Dodge set up a six-foot folding table in the cafeteria of Cane Bay High School in Summerville, South Carolina, to conduct a taste test. When the first rush of about 150 hungry students hit, he was waiting with slow cookers filled with steaming marinara sauce and meatballs. Kids love...

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. Until recently, you could divide internet users into just two categories: bots and people. Websites have long allowed bots to perform automated tasks, like capturing the content of web pages, but rules...

I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks." With those simple words of optimism, Nick Cammarata, a researcher at the AI startup Goodfire, kicked off a 26,000-word blog post that has knocked the AI world on its head, sparking wild speculation as well as cautious (and not-so-cautious) celebration. Cammarata's claim is...

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Inside the quest to combat Arctic fires and save the planet's frozen carbon -James Temple In July 2021, a wildfire burned through a forest on the University of Alaska, Fairbanks campus,...

In the middle of an especially warm July in 2021, a wildfire ignited in a thick forest of black spruce and peeling paper birch trees on the northern campus of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The blaze, possibly sparked by lightning, burned across the dry carpet of feather mosses and lichen before climbing into the...

What do AI agents do if you don't tell them to do anything? The answer looks a lot like play. Researchers repeatedly stranded them alone on a virtual desert island for 30 hours in an experiment reminiscent of the movies Cast Away or Home Alone. The agents-copies of Claude Opus 4.7 nicknamed Eko-were able to...

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of science and technology to help you understand what's coming next. You can read more from the series here. On the evening of December 29, 1959, at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech, the physicist Richard Feynman gave a lecture called There's...

Listen to the session or watch below Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn't yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Watch...