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Rumors of the ongoing death of software development — that it’s being slain by AI — are greatly exaggerated. In reality, software development is at a fork in the road: embracing the (currently) far-off notion of fully automated software development or acknowledging the work of a software developer is much more than just writing lines…

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 3D printing could make better cooling systems A new 3D-printed design could make an integral part of cooling systems like air conditioners or refrigerators smaller and more efficient, according to new research.…

A new 3D-printed design could make an integral part of cooling systems like air conditioners or refrigerators smaller and more efficient, according to new research.   Heat exchangers are devices that whisk away heat, and they’re everywhere—used in data centers, ships, factories, and buildings. The aim is to pass as much heat as possible from one…

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. Brain-computer interfaces face a critical test Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) are electrodes put in paralyzed people’s brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands from their neurons through a wire, or…

Tech companies are always trying out new ways for people to interact with computers—consider efforts like Google Glass, the Apple Watch, and Amazon’s Alexa. You’ve probably used at least one. But the most radical option has been tried by fewer than 100 people on Earth—those who have lived for months or years with implanted brain-computer…

On March 27, the results of the first clinical trial for a generative AI therapy bot were published, and they showed that people in the trial who had depression or anxiety or were at risk for eating disorders benefited from chatting with the bot.  I was surprised by those results, which you can read about…

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 first trial of generative AI therapy shows it might help with depression The first clinical trial of a generative AI therapy bot suggests it was as effective as human therapy for people…

The first clinical trial of a therapy bot that uses generative AI suggests it was as effective as human therapy for participants with depression, anxiety, or risk for developing eating disorders. Even so, it doesn’t give a go-ahead to the dozens of companies hyping such technologies while operating in a regulatory gray area.  A team…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A tech company accumulates a ton of user data, hoping to figure out a business model later. That business model never arrives, the company goes under, and the data is in the wind.  The latest version of that story emerged on March 24, when the onetime genetic…

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. Anthropic can now track the bizarre inner workings of a large language model The news: The AI firm Anthropic has developed a way to peer inside a large language model and watch what…

This week, MIT Technology Review published a piece on bodyoids—living bodies that cannot think or feel pain. In the piece, a trio of scientists argue that advances in biotechnology will soon allow us to create “spare” human bodies that could be used for research, or to provide organs for donation. If you find your skin…

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. With the recent news that the Atlantic’s editor in chief was accidentally added to a group Signal chat for American leaders planning a bombing in Yemen,…

The AI firm Anthropic has developed a way to peer inside a large language model and watch what it does as it comes up with a response, revealing key new insights into how the technology works. The takeaway: LLMs are even stranger than we thought. The Anthropic team was surprised by some of the counterintuitive…

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 a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there Gavesh’s journey had started, seemingly innocently, with a job ad on Facebook promising work he desperately needed. Instead, he found himself…

Glaciers generally move so slowly you can’t see their progress with the naked eye. (Their pace is … glacial.) But these massive bodies of ice do march downhill, with potentially planet-altering consequences.   There’s a lot we don’t understand about how glaciers move and how soon some of the most significant ones could collapse into the…

Heading north in the dark, the only way Gavesh could try to track his progress through the Thai countryside was by watching the road signs zip by. The Jeep’s three occupants—Gavesh, a driver, and a young Chinese woman—had no languages in common, so they drove for hours in nervous silence as they wove their way…

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. China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused. Just months ago, China’s boom in data center construction was at its height, fueled by both government…

Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. While AI models are certainly capable of creating interesting and sometimes entertaining material, their output isn’t necessarily useful. Google DeepMind is hoping that…

A year or so ago, Xiao Li was seeing floods of Nvidia chip deals on WeChat. A real estate contractor turned data center project manager, he had pivoted to AI infrastructure in 2023, drawn by the promise of China’s AI craze.  At that time, traders in his circle bragged about securing shipments of high-performing Nvidia…

OpenAI has released a new image generator that’s designed less for typical surrealist AI art and more for highly controllable and practical creation of visuals—a sign that OpenAI thinks its tools are ready for use in fields like advertising and graphic design.  The image generator, which is now part of the company’s GPT-4o model, was…

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. Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine Many challenges in medicine stem, in large part, from a common root cause: a severe shortage of ethically-sourced human bodies. There might be a way…

This story was originally published in October 2024. In March 2025, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy and announced its plans to “facilitate a sale process to maximize the value of its business.” MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done.  Things aren’t looking good for 23andMe. The consumer DNA testing company recently parted ways with…

A few weeks ago, when I was at the digital rights conference RightsCon in Taiwan, I watched in real time as civil society organizations from around the world, including the US, grappled with the loss of one of the biggest funders of global digital rights work: the United States government. As I wrote in my…

Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? Why do so few drugs that enter clinical trials receive regulatory approval? And why is the waiting list for organ transplantation so long? These challenges stem in large part from a common root cause: a severe…