October 8, 2025

The Download: carbon removal factories’ funding cuts, and AI toys

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 Trump administration may cut funding for two major direct-air capture plants The US Department of Energy appears poised to terminate funding for a pair of large carbon-sucking factories that were originally set…

August 2025

MIT is worth fighting for

August 26, 2025
As I write in late July, we’re contending with a major tax increase on the annual returns from MIT’s endowment as well as other investments and assets. This new tax burden will strain the resources we use to support research, innovation, and student scholarships and financial aid—the heart and soul of the Institute.  And the…

Infinite Threads

August 26, 2025
Textiles account for 5% of landfill space—and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community…

Fix damaged art in hours with AI

August 26, 2025
Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have identified areas needing repair and then mixed the exact shades needed to fill in one area at a time. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade. Now an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering…

Anthropic settles AI book-training lawsuit with authors

August 26, 2025
Anthropic has settled a class action lawsuit with a group of fiction and non-fiction authors, as announced in a filing on Tuesday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Anthropic had won a partial victory in a lower court ruling, and was in the process of appealing that ruling. No details of the settlement were […]

Designing better products with AI and sustainability 

August 26, 2025
On a mission to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing components, Siemens turned its attention to the design of a robot gripper. Making up just 2% of the robot, the impact of this hand-like device may seem inconsequential. But, reducing its weight by 90% and the number of constituent parts by 84% can save up to 3…