The Download: 2024’s biggest technology flops, and AI’s search for energy
They say you learn more from failure than success. If so, this is the story for you: MIT Technology Review’s...
World
The 8 worst technology failures of 2024
More: Israel conducted Lebanon pager attack… (Axios), A 9-Year-Old Girl Killed in Pager Attack Is Mourned in Lebanon (New York...
AI’s search for more energy is growing more urgent
Why it matters: Anduril, other companies in defense tech, and growing numbers of people within the Pentagon itself are increasingly...
Google’s big week was a flex for the power of big tech
First: Gemini 2. It’s impressive, with a lot of performance updates. But I have frankly grown a little inured by...
The Download: AI emissions and Google’s big week
“We’ve achieved peak data and there’ll be no more.” OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, tells the NeurIPS...
AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further
Since 2018, carbon emissions from data centers in the US have tripled. For the 12 months ending August 2024, data...
The Download: society’s techlash, and Android XR
The internet loves a good neologism, especially if it can capture a purported vibe shift or explain a new trend....
How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy
One thing the book is particularly effective at is deflating the myth that these entrepreneurs were somehow gifted seers of...
Why materials science is key to unlocking the next frontier of AI development
But this pace of innovation is not guaranteed, and the next frontier of technological advances—from the future of AI to...
The Download: Google’s Project Astra, and China’s export bans
3 How China secretly repatriates UyghursEven the United Nations is seemingly powerless to stop it. (WP $)+ Uyghurs outside China...
China banned exports of a few rare minerals to the US. Things could get messier.
Take lithium, a crucial component in those batteries. China has around 8% of the world’s lithium reserves but processes about...
Google’s new Project Astra could be generative AI’s killer app
MIT Technology Review got to try out Astra in a closed-door live demo last week. It was a stunning experience,...
The Download: Bluesky’s impersonators, and shaking up the economy with ChatGPT
—Melissa Heikkilä Like many others, I recently joined Bluesky. On Thanksgiving, I was delighted to see a private message from...
Bluesky has an impersonator problem
Both accounts were eventually deleted, but not before trying to get me to set up a crypto wallet and a...
The Download: Anduril’s new AI system, and how to use Sora
AI’s hype and antitrust problem is coming under scrutinyThe AI sector is plagued by a lack of competition and a...
We saw a demo of the new AI system powering Anduril’s vision for war
Right now, humans also have to translate between systems made by different manufacturers. One soldier might have to manually rotate...
AI’s hype and antitrust problem is coming under scrutiny
Last Thursday, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Eric Schmitt introduced a bill aimed at stirring up more competition for Pentagon contracts...
How to use Sora, OpenAI’s new video generating tool
What is Sora? Sora is a powerful AI video generation model that can create videos from text prompts, animate images,...
The Download: satellites’ climate impact, and OpenAI’s frantic release schedule
The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The USDA is launching...
OpenAI’s “12 days of shipmas” tell us a lot about the AI arms race
The Chat Every week, I talk to one of MIT Technology Review’s journalists to go behind the scenes of a...
