The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason
The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason

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 contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth —Jessica Hamzelou This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for…

The Download: AI “mind-reading” and creative uses for small batteries
The Download: AI “mind-reading” and creative uses for small batteries

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 “mind-reading” tool can reconstruct what you’re looking at based on a brain scan A new AI tool can guess what you’re looking at just by analyzing your brain scans—and…

The Download: OpenAI’s chief research officer explains its hacking response
The Download: OpenAI’s chief research officer explains its hacking response

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 not going to shoot ourselves in the foot” over hack fallout, says OpenAI’s chief research officer Two months after OpenAI’s agents hacked into the computers of AI company Hugging Face,…

The Download: climate tech companies to watch and AI’s discovery problem
The Download: climate tech companies to watch and AI’s discovery 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. Coming soon: our 2026 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch With the planet nearing 1.5 °C of warming, climate policies being unraveled, and Big Tech backpedaling on its climate ambitions,…

The Download: the Pentagon’s AI-powered lie detector and young organ limits
The Download: the Pentagon’s AI-powered lie detector and young organ limits

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 Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector The US government wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved lie detector, according to…

The Download: a bid to scrap the virtual wall and AI hits Climate Week
The Download: a bid to scrap the virtual wall and AI hits Climate Week

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 congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced plans to introduce legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along…

The Download: India’s smart glasses menace and AI’s trillion-dollar gamble
The Download: India’s smart glasses menace and AI’s trillion-dollar gamble

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. Smart glasses are already causing havoc in India When Shubnam saw an Instagram video of a Delhi protest they had attended, they realized a content creator wearing Meta smart glasses had…

The Download: why AI’s latest breakthroughs and fears may be more hype than reality
The Download: why AI’s latest breakthroughs and fears may be more hype than reality

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. Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype  —Timnit Gebru, executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), and Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of…

The Download: investigating deaths at the US border’s “virtual wall”
The Download: investigating deaths at the US border’s “virtual wall”

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 US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can’t it catch people before they die? When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the US in April 2024, the day before…

The Download: AI’s extinction risk and bioweapons threat
The Download: AI’s extinction risk and bioweapons threat

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. Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered On Wednesday, MIT Technology Review hosted a live Roundtables event that asked the question many seem to be asking right now: could…