December 19, 2025

The Download: China’s dying EV batteries, and why AI doomers are doubling down

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 figured out how to sell EVs. Now it has to bury their batteries. In the past decade, China has seen an EV boom, thanks in part to government support. Buying an electric…

TopTechTrends

The great AI hype correction of 2025

December 15, 2025
Some disillusionment was inevitable. When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an entire industry—and several world economies. Millions of people started talking to their computers, and their computers started talking back. We were enchanted, and we expected more. We got it. Technology companies scrambled to…

Generative AI hype distracts us from AI’s more important breakthroughs

December 15, 2025
On April 28, 2022, at a highly anticipated concert in Spokane, Washington, the musician Paul McCartney astonished his audience with a groundbreaking application of AI: He began to perform with a lifelike depiction of his long-deceased musical partner, John Lennon.  Using recent advances in audio and video processing, engineers had taken the pair’s final performance…

How iRobot lost its way home

December 15, 2025
iRobot survived three decades of competition, but couldn’t survive European regulators killing its Amazon buyout. Now it’s being taken over by its own supplier in bankruptcy court.

Grok got crucial facts wrong about Bondi Beach shooting

December 14, 2025
Grok, the chatbot built by Elon Musk’s xAI and popularized on his social media platform X, appears to have repeatedly spread misinformation about today’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia.