Roundtables: Inside OpenAI’s Empire with Karen Hao
Recorded on June 30, 2025 AI journalist Karen Hao’s book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, tells the story of OpenAI’s rise to power and its far-reaching impact all over the world. Hear from Karen Hao, former MIT Technology Review senior editor, and executive editor Niall Firth for a conversation exploring…
MIT Technology Review
The Download: meet RFK Jr’s right-hand man, and inside OpenAI
This is today’s edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet Jim O’Neill, the longevity enthusiast who is now RFK Jr.’s right-hand man When Jim O’Neill was nominated to be the second in command at the US Department of Health and Human Services,…
MIT Technology Review
Meet Jim O’Neill, the longevity enthusiast who is now RFK Jr.’s right-hand man
When Jim O’Neill was nominated to be the second in command at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Dylan Livingston was excited. As founder and CEO of the lobbying group Alliance for Longevity Initiatives (A4LI), Livingston is a member of a community that seeks to extend human lifespan. O’Neill is “kind of one…
MIT Technology Review
The Download: how to clean up AI data centers, and weight-loss drugs’ side effects
This is today’s edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This battery recycling company is now cleaning up AI data centers In a sandy industrial lot outside Reno, Nevada, rows of battery packs that once propelled electric vehicles are now powering a small…
MIT Technology Review
We’re learning more about what weight-loss drugs do to the body
Weight-loss drugs are this decade’s blockbuster medicines. Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro help people with diabetes get their blood sugar under control and help overweight and obese people reach a healthier weight. And they’re fast becoming a trendy must-have for celebrities and other figure-conscious individuals looking to trim down. They became so hugely popular…
MIT Technology Review
This battery recycling company is now cleaning up AI data centers
In a sandy industrial lot outside Reno, Nevada, rows of battery packs that once propelled electric vehicles are now powering a small AI data center. Redwood Materials, one of the US’s largest battery recycling companies, showed off this array of energy storage modules, sitting on cinder blocks and wrapped in waterproof plastic, during a press…
MIT Technology Review
The Download: Google DeepMind’s DNA AI, and heatwaves’ impact on the grid
This is today’s edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Google’s new AI will help researchers understand how our genes work When scientists first sequenced the human genome in 2003, they revealed the full set of DNA instructions that make a person. But…
MIT Technology Review
It’s officially summer, and the grid is stressed
It’s crunch time for the grid this week. As I’m writing this newsletter, it’s 100 °F (nearly 38 °C) here in New Jersey, and I’m huddled in the smallest room in my apartment with the shades drawn and a single window air conditioner working overtime. Large swaths of the US have seen brutal heat this…
MIT Technology Review
Google’s new AI will help researchers understand how our genes work
When scientists first sequenced the human genome in 2003, they revealed the full set of DNA instructions that make a person. But we still didn’t know what all those 3 billion genetic letters actually do. Now Google’s DeepMind division says it’s made a leap in trying to understand the code with AlphaGenome, an AI model…
MIT Technology Review
The Download: Introducing the Power issue
This is today’s edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Power issue Energy is power. Those who can produce it, especially lots of it, get to exert authority in all sorts of ways. The world is increasingly powered by both tangible…
MIT Technology Review
The Bank Secrecy Act is failing everyone. It’s time to rethink financial surveillance.
The US is on the brink of enacting rules for digital assets, with growing bipartisan momentum to modernize our financial system. But amid all the talk about innovation and global competitiveness, one issue has been glaringly absent: financial privacy. As we build the digital infrastructure of the 21st century, we need to talk about not…
MIT Technology Review
The AI Hype Index: AI-powered toys are coming
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. AI agents might be the toast of the AI industry, but they’re still not that reliable. That’s why Yoshua Bengio, one of the…
MIT Technology Review
3 things Rhiannon Williams is into right now
The last good Instagram account It’s a truth universally acknowledged that social media is a Bad Vibe. Thankfully, there is still one Instagram account worth following that’s just as incisive, funny, and scathing today as when it was founded back in 2016: Every Outfit (@everyoutfitonsatc). Originally conceived as an homage to Sex and the City’s…
MIT Technology Review
Job titles of the future: Pandemic oracle
Officially, Conor Browne is a biorisk consultant. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he has advanced degrees in security studies and medical and business ethics, along with United Nations certifications in counterterrorism and conflict resolution. He’s worked on teams with NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Programme and with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, analyzing…
MIT Technology Review
The Debrief: Power and energy
It may sound bluntly obvious, but energy is power. Those who can produce it, especially lots of it, get to exert authority in all sorts of ways. It brings revenue and enables manufacturing, data processing, transportation, and military might. Energy resources are arguably a nation’s most important asset. Look at Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or…
MIT Technology Review
Puzzle Corner Archives
July/August 25Guest edited by Edward Faulkner ’03 May/June 25Guest edited by Frank Rubin ’62 March/April 25Guest edited by Michael S. Branicky ’03 January/February 25Guest edited by Dan Katz ’03 November/December 24Guest edited by Edward Faulkner ’03 September/October 24Guest edited by Mark Douma ’63 and Frank Rubin ’62 July/August 24Puzzle Corner Editor Emeritus Allan Gottlieb ’67…
MIT Technology ReviewFrom MIT to low Earth orbit
Not everyone can point to the specific moment that set them on their life’s course. But for me, there’s no question: It happened in 1982, when I was a junior at MIT, in the Infinite Corridor. In those pre-internet days, it was where we got the scoop about everything that was happening on campus. One…
MIT Technology Review
Travels with Rambax
KAOLACK, Senegal – The MIT students have just finished dinner and are crumpling soda cans into trash bins when they get the summons: “Grab your drums, grab your drums, grab your drums …” It is time for the tanibeer, a nighttime drum and dance party, in Kaolack, a town amid salt plains and peanut farms…
MIT Technology Review
What if computer history were a romantic comedy?
The computer first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1955 in a romantic comedy—William Marchant’s The Desk Set. The play centers on four women who conduct research on behalf of the fictional International Broadcasting Company. Early in the first act, a young engineer named Richard Sumner arrives in the offices of the research department without…
MIT Technology Review
An intelligent, practical path to reindustrialization
This past spring, we launched a brand-new manufacturing initiative—building on ideas that are as old as MIT. Since William Barton Rogers created a school to help accelerate America’s industrialization, manufacturing has been an essential part of our mission—a particularly MIT brand of manufacturing, informed and improved by scientific principles and advanced by the kind of…
MIT Technology Review
Art rhymes
As an MIT visiting scholar, rap legend Lupe Fiasco decided to go fishing for ideas on campus. In an approach he calls “ghotiing” (pronounced “fishing”), he composed nine raps inspired by works in MIT’s public art collection, writing and recording them on site. On May 2, he and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble debuted six…
MIT Technology Review
An epic year for women’s sports
It was a banner year for the Engineers in 2024–’25, with four MIT women’s teams all clinching NCAA Division III national titles for the first time. After winning their fourth straight NCAA East Regional Championship, the cross country team claimed their first national title in November with All-American performances from Christina Crow ’25 (pictured), Rujuta…
MIT Technology Review
More news from the labs of MIT
Hundred-year storm tides could strike every decade in Bangladesh Tropical cyclones can generate devastating storm tides—seawater heightened by the tides that causes catastrophic floods in coastal regions. An MIT study finds that as the planet warms, the recurrence of destructive storm tides will increase tenfold for one of the world’s hardest-hit regions. New electronic “skin”…
MIT Technology Review
Cancer-targeting nanoparticles are moving closer to human trials
Over the past decade, Institute Professor Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, and her students have used a technique known as layer-by-layer assembly to create a variety of polymer-coated nanoparticles that can be loaded with cancer-fighting drugs. The particles, which could prevent many side effects of chemotherapy by targeting tumors directly, have proved effective in mouse…
MIT Technology Review
Immune molecules may affect mood
Two new studies from MIT and Harvard Medical School add to a growing body of evidence that infection-fighting molecules called cytokines also influence the brain, leading to behavioral changes during illness. By mapping the locations in the brain of receptors for different forms of IL-17, the researchers found that the cytokine acts on the somatosensory…
MIT Technology Review
Crop signals
Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients, but usually these signals must be detected microscopically. Now Christopher Voigt, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, and colleagues have triggered bacterial cells to produce signals that can be read from as far as 90 meters away. Their…
MIT Technology Review