The Download: RIP EV tax credits, and OpenAI’s new valuation
1 OpenAI has become the world’s most valuable startup Move aside, SpaceX. (Bloomberg $) + OpenAI is now valued at an eye-watering $500 billion. (FT $) + The valuation came after workers…
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The Download: OpenAI’s caste bias problem, and how AI videos are made
Caste bias is rampant in OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT, according to an MIT Technology Review investigation. Though CEO Sam Altman boasted about India being its second-largest…
The Download: shoplifter-chasing drones, and Trump’s TikTok deal
Shoplifters in the US could soon be chased down by drones The news: Flock Safety, whose drones were once reserved for police departments, is now offering them for private-sector security,…
The Download: growing threats to vulnerable languages, and fact-checking Trump’s medical claims
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 and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable…
The Download: accidental AI relationships, and the future of contraception
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 surprisingly easy to stumble into a…
The Download: the CDC’s vaccine chaos
Every year, MIT Technology Review selects one individual whose work we admire to recognize as Innovator of the Year. For 2025, we chose Sneha Goenka, who designed the computations behind…
The Download: AI-designed viruses, and bad news for the hydrogen industry
Artificial intelligence can draw cat pictures and write emails. Now the same technology can compose a working genome. A research team in California says it used AI to propose new genetic…
The Download: measuring returns on R&D, and AI’s creative potential
—Matthew Raine, whose 16-year old son Adam died by suicide after repeatedly sharing his intentions with ChatGPT, gives evidence to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating chatbot…
The Download: regulators are coming for AI companions, and meet our Innovator of 2025
As long as there has been AI, there have been people sounding alarms about what it might do to us: rogue superintelligence, mass unemployment, or environmental ruin. But another threat…
When does iOS 26 come out? Date and time you can download the new iPhone operating system around the world
It’s a big day for iPhone owners around the world today. That’s because Apple will release the iPhone’s new iOS 26 operating system to the public. iOS 26 sports the most significant…
The Download: America’s gun crisis, and how AI video models work
This week, the Trump administration released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again.…
The Download: Trump’s impact on science, and meet our climate and energy honorees
Every year MIT Technology Review celebrates accomplished young scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors from around the world in our Innovators Under 35 list. We’ve just published the 2025…
The Download: AI’s energy future
Three big things we still don’t know about AI’s energy burden —James O’Donnell Earlier this year, when my colleague Casey Crownhart and I spent six months researching the climate and…
The Download: meet our AI innovators, and what happens when therapists use AI covertly
In Silicon Valley’s imagined future, AI models are so empathetic that we’ll use them as therapists. They’ll provide mental-health care for millions, unimpeded by the pesky requirements for…
The Download: longevity myths, and sewer-cleaning robots
—Jessica Hamzelou Earlier this week, my editor forwarded me a video of the leaders of Russia and China talking about immortality. “These days at 70 years old you are still a child,”…
The Download: unnerving AI avatars, and Trump’s climate gift to China
—Rhiannon Williams Earlier this summer, I visited the AI company Synthesia to give it what it needed to create a hyperrealistic AI-generated avatar of me. The company’s avatars are a…
The Download: sustainable architecture, and DeepSeek’s success
Despite decades of green certifications, better material sourcing, and the use of more sustainable materials, the built environment is still responsible for a third of global emissions…
The Download: therapists secretly using AI, and Apple AirPods’ hearing aid potential
One more thing Supershoes are reshaping distance running Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore…
The Download: AI doppelgängers in the workplace, and using lidar to measure climate disasters
—James O'Donnell Digital clones—AI models that replicate a specific person—package together a few technologies that have been around for a while now: hyperrealistic video models to match…
The Download: humans in space, and India’s thorium ambitions
One more thing How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime Tokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last…
The Download: Google’s AI energy use, and the AI Hype Index
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 still not giving us the full picture on…
The Download: introducing: the Security issue
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 Security issue It would be naïve…
The Download: Google’s AI energy expenditure, and handing over DNA data to the police
Google has just released a report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy…
The Download: Ukraine’s Starlink repair shop, and predicting solar storms
Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue in the fight against Russia. It’s how troops in battle zones stay connected with faraway HQs; it’s how many of the drones…