The Download: the North Pole’s future and humanoid data

This startup’s new mechanistic interpretability tool lets you debug LLMs

This startup’s new mechanistic interpretability tool lets you debug LLMs Goodfire wants to make training AI models more like good old-fashioned software engineering. The San Francisco–based startup Goodfire just released a new tool, called Silico, that lets researchers and engineers peer inside an AI model and adjust its parameters—the settings that determine a model’s behavior—during training. This could give model makers more fine-grained control over how this technology is built than was once thought possible. Goodfire claims Silico is the first off-the-shelf tool of its kind that can help developers debug all stages of the development process, from building a data set to training a model. The company says its mission is to make building AI models less like alchemy and more like a science. Sure, LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini can do amazing things. But nobody knows exactly how…

Exclusive eBook: Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones

Exclusive eBook: Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones Access a subscriber-only eBook on a startling and fairly graphic pursuit of human longevity that poses concerns about the ethics of cloning. This ebook is available only for subscribers. The ultimate plan to live forever is a brand new body. This subscriber-only eBook explores R3 Bio, a small startup that has pitched a startling and ethically charged vision for "brainless clones" to serve the role of backup human bodies. by Antonio Regalado March 20, 2026 Related Stories: - Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones - This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little - Stem-cell therapies that work: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025 Access all subscriber-only eBooks: Keep Reading Most Popular OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher An exclusive conversation with…

It’s time to make a plan for nuclear waste

It’s time to make a plan for nuclear waste With growing interest in nuclear power, handling waste should be part of the deal. Today, nuclear energy enjoys a rare moment of support across the political spectrum in the US. Interest from tech companies that are scrambling to meet demand for massive data centers has sparked a resurgence of money and attention in the industry. That newfound interest is exactly why it’s time to talk about an old problem: nuclear waste. In the US alone, nuclear reactors produce about 2,000 metric tons of high-level waste each year. And there’s nowhere to put it. Though newly popular, the nuclear program in the US is nothing new. The US hosts more reactors and production capacity than any other country in the world. And yet nearly seven decades after the first permanent nuclear facility…

The Download: storing nuclear waste and orchestrating agents

The Download: storing nuclear waste and orchestrating agents Plus: Elon Musk says Sam Altman “stole a charity” at the OpenAI trial. 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 time to make a plan for nuclear waste Today, nuclear energy enjoys rare support across the political spectrum. Public approval has spiked, and Big Tech is throwing money around to meet rising electricity demand. That newfound interest is exactly why it’s time to talk about an old problem: nuclear waste. In the US, nuclear reactors produce about 2,000 metric tons of high-level waste each year—and there’s nowhere to put it. Now, the need for a permanent storage solution is becoming urgent. Here’s what’s at stake. —Casey Crownhart This article is from The Spark, MIT…

The Download: Musk and Altman’s legal showdown, and AI’s profit problem

The Download: Musk and Altman’s legal showdown, and AI’s profit problem Plus: OpenAI has ended its exclusive partnership with Microsoft. 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. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman head to trial this week in a case with sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI’s IPO, the court could rule on whether the company can exist as a for-profit enterprise. It could even oust its leadership. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, claims he was deceived into bankrolling the firm under false pretenses. He’s seeking $134 billion in damages, the removal of Altman and president Greg Brockman, and the company’s restoration to a non-profit. Find out how the trial could…

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future Elon Musk says he’s suing to save the company’s mission. The case could have huge consequences for OpenAI and the AI race. After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterprise and might even oust its current executive leadership, including Altman. Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman deceived him into bankrolling the company in its early days by promising to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI that benefits humanity, only to later restructure the company to operate…

The Download: DeepSeek’s latest AI breakthrough, and the race to build world models

The Download: DeepSeek’s latest AI breakthrough, and the race to build world models Plus: China has blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus. 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. Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model matters On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that handles large amounts of text more efficiently. While the model remains open source, its performance matches leading closed-source rivals from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. It is also DeepSeek’s first release optimized Huawei’s Ascend chips—a key test of China’s dependence on Nvidia. Here are three ways V4 could shake up AI.…

Rebuilding the data stack for AI

Sponsored Rebuilding the data stack for AI Enterprise AI hinges on high-accuracy outputs, requiring better data context, unified architectures, and rigorous measurement frameworks, says Bavesh Patel, senior vice president at Databricks, and Rajan Padmanabhan, unit technology officer at Infosys. In partnership withInfosys Topaz Artificial intelligence may be dominating boardroom agendas, but many enterprises are discovering that the biggest obstacle to meaningful adoption is the state of their data. While consumer-facing AI tools have dazzled users with speed and ease, enterprise leaders are discovering that deploying AI at scale requires something far less glamorous but far more consequential: data infrastructure that is unified, governed, and fit for purpose. That gap between AI ambition and enterprise readiness is becoming one of the defining challenges of this next phase of digital transformation. As Bavesh Patel, senior vice president of Databricks, puts it, “the…

The missing step between hype and profit

The missing step between hype and profit Coding aside, even the best AI systems struggle to be economically viable in the workplace. What happens then? This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In February, I picked up a flyer at an anti-AI march in London. I can’t say for sure whether or not its writers meant to riff on South Park’s underpants gnomes. But if they did, they nailed it: “Step 1: Grow a digital super mind,” it read. “Step 2: ? Step 3: ?” Produced by Pause AI, an international activist group that co-organized the protest, it ended with this plea to the reader: “Pause AI until we know what the hell Step 2 is.” In the South Park episode “Gnomes,” which…

Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model matters

Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model matters The long-awaited V4 is more efficient and a win for Chinese chipmakers. On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek’s previous models, V4 is open source, meaning it is available for anyone to download, use, and modify. V4 marks DeepSeek’s most significant release since R1, the reasoning model it launched in January 2025. R1, which was trained on limited computing resources, stunned the global AI industry with its strong performance and efficiency, turning DeepSeek from a little-known research team into China’s best-known AI company almost overnight. It also helped set off a wave of open-weight model…

Health-care AI is here. We don’t know if it actually helps patients.

Health-care AI is here. We don’t know if it actually helps patients. The tools may be accurate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll improve health outcomes. I don’t need to tell you that AI is everywhere. Or that it is being used, increasingly, in hospitals. Doctors are using AI to help them with notetaking. AI-based tools are trawling through patient records, flagging people who may require certain support or treatments. They are also used to interpret medical exam results and X-rays. A growing number of studies suggest that many of these tools can deliver accurate results. But there’s a bigger question here: Does using them actually translate into better health outcomes for patients? We don’t yet have a good answer. That’s what Jenna Wiens, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, and Anna Goldenberg of the University of Toronto,…

The Download: supercharged scams and studying AI healthcare

The Download: supercharged scams and studying AI healthcare Plus: DeepSeek has unveiled its long-awaited new AI model. 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 in a new era of AI-driven scams When ChatGPT was released in late 2022, it showed how easily generative AI could create human-like text. This quickly caught the eye of cybercriminals, who began using LLMs to compose malicious emails. Since then, they’ve adopted AI for everything from turbocharged phishing and hyperrealistic deepfakes to automated vulnerability scans. Many organizations are now struggling to cope with the sheer volume of cyberattacks. AI is making them faster, cheaper, and easier to carry out, a problem set to worsen as more cybercriminals adopt these tools—and their capabilities improve. Read the full story…

Will fusion power get cheap? Don’t count on it.

Will fusion power get cheap? Don’t count on it. New research suggests that cost declines could be slow for the technology. Fusion power could provide a steady, zero-emissions source of electricity in the future—if companies can get plants built and running. But a new study suggests that even if that future arrives, it might not come cheap. Technologies tend to get less expensive over time. Lithium-ion batteries are now about 90% cheaper than they were in 2013. But historically, different technologies tend to go through this curve at different rates. And the cost of fusion might not sink as quickly as the prices of batteries or solar. It’s tricky to make any predictions about the cost of a technology that doesn’t exist yet. But when there’s billions of dollars of public and private funding on the line, it’s worth considering…

The Download: introducing the Nature issue

The Download: introducing the Nature issue Plus: Trump signaled he’s open to reversing the Anthropic ban. 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 Nature issue When we talk about “nature,” we usually mean something untouched by humans. But little of that world exists today. From microplastics in rainforest wildlife to artificial light in the Arctic Ocean, human influence now reaches every corner of Earth. In this context, what even is nature? And should we employ technology to try to make the world more “natural”? In our new Nature issue, MIT Technology Review grapples with these questions. We investigate birds that can’t sing, wolves that aren’t wolves, and grass that isn’t grass. We look for the meaning of life under Arctic ice,…

There is no nature anymore

There is no nature anymore No part of the globe is free of human fingerprints. Should we deploy technology to change it back? When people talk about “nature,” they’re generally talking about things that aren’t made by human beings. Rocks. Reefs. Red wolves. But while there is plenty of God’s creation to go around, it is hard to think of anything on Earth that human hands haven’t affected. In the Brazilian rainforest, scientists have found microplastics in the bellies of animals ranging from red howler monkeys to manatees. In remotest Yakutia, where much of the earth remains untrodden by human feet, the carbon in the sky above melts the permafrost below. In the Arctic Ocean, artificial light from ship traffic—on the rise as the polar ice cap melts away—now disrupts the nightly journey of zooplankton to the ocean surface, one…

One town’s scheme to get rid of its geese

One town’s scheme to get rid of its geese Public officials in one California burgh spent nearly $400,000 on tech to flush out waterfowl. “Pull over!” I order my brother one sunny February afternoon. Our target is in sight: a gaggle of Canada geese, pecking at grass near the dog park. As I approach, tiptoeing over their grayish-white poop, I notice that one bird wears a white cuff around its slender black neck. It’s a GPS tracker—part of a new tech-centered campaign to drive the geese out of my hometown of Foster City, California. About 300 geese live in this sleepy Bay Area suburb, equal to nearly 1% of our human population—and some say this town isn’t big enough for the both of us. Goose poop notoriously blanketed our middle school’s lawn, and the birds have hassled residents for generations.…

3 things Michelle Kim is into right now

3 things Michelle Kim is into right now MIT Technology Review’s editorial fellow shares what she’s been thinking about lately. Isegye Idol If you thought K-pop was weird, virtual idols—humans who perform as anime-style digital characters via motion capture—will blow your mind. My favorite is a girl group called Isegye Idol, created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber (a streamer who likewise performs as a digital persona). Isegye Idol’s six members are anonymous, which seems to let them deploy a rare breed of honesty and humor. They play games (League of Legends, Go, Minecraft), chitchat, and perform kitschy music that’s somewhere between anime soundtrack and video-game score. It’s very DIY—and very intimate. And the group’s wild popularity speaks to the mood of Gen Z South Koreans, famously lonely and culturally adrift—struggling to find work, giving up on dating, trying to find…

AI needs a strong data fabric to deliver business value

Sponsored AI needs a strong data fabric to deliver business value A modern data fabric makes it possible to turn existing enterprise knowledge into a trusted foundation for AI. In partnership withSAP Artificial intelligence is moving quickly in the enterprise, from experimentation to everyday use. Organizations are deploying copilots, agents, and predictive systems across finance, supply chains, human resources, and customer operations. By the end of 2025, half of companies used AI in at least three business functions, according to a recent survey. But as AI becomes embedded in core workflows, business leaders are discovering that the biggest obstacle is not model performance or computing power but the quality and the context of the data on which those systems rely. AI essentially introduces a new requirement: Systems must not only access data — they must understand the business context behind…

The Download: introducing the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now

The Download: introducing the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now Plus: An unauthorized group has reportedly accessed Anthropic’s Mythos. 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: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now What actually matters in AI right now? It’s getting harder to tell amid the constant launches, hype, and warnings. To cut through the noise, MIT Technology Review’s reporters and editors have distilled years of analysis into a new essential guide: the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now. The list builds on our annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies, but takes a wider view of the ideas, topics, and research shaping AI, spotlighting the trends and breakthroughs shaping the world. We’ll be unpacking one item from the…