October 29, 2025

Exclusive eBook: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint.

In this exclusive subscirber-only ebook you’ll learn how the emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next. by James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart May 20, 2025 Table of contents Related stories:

Technology

Building a high performance data and AI organization (2nd edition)

October 29, 2025
Four years is a lifetime when it comes to artificial intelligence. Since the first edition of this study was published in 2021, AI’s capabilities have been advancing at speed, and the advances have not slowed since generative AI’s breakthrough. For example, multimodality— the ability to process information not only as text but also as audio,…

The Download: Boosting AI’s memory, and data centers’ unhappy neighbors

October 29, 2025
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. DeepSeek may have found a new way to improve AI’s ability to remember The news: An AI model released by Chinese AI company DeepSeek uses new techniques that could significantly improve AI’s ability…

The AI Hype Index: Data centers’ neighbors are pivoting to power blackouts

October 29, 2025
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. Just about all businesses these days seem to be pivoting to AI, even when they don’t seem to know exactly why they’re investing…

DeepSeek may have found a new way to improve AI’s ability to remember

October 29, 2025
An AI model released by Chinese AI company DeepSeek uses new techniques that could significantly improve AI’s ability to “remember.” Released last week, the optical character recognition (OCR) model works by extracting text from an image and turning it into machine-readable words. This is the same technology that powers scanner apps, translation of text in…

Roundtables: Seeking Climate Solutions in Turbulent Times

October 28, 2025
Companies are pursuing climate solutions amid shifting U.S. politics and economic uncertainty. Drawing from MIT Technology Review’s 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch list, this session highlights the most promising technologies—from electric trucks to gene-edited crops—and explores the challenges companies face in advancing climate progress today. Speakers: Casey Crownhart, Senior Climate Reporter; James Temple, Senior Climate…

Finding return on AI investments across industries

October 28, 2025
The market is officially three years post ChatGPT and many of the pundit bylines have shifted to using terms like “bubble” to suggest reasons behind generative AI not realizing material returns outside a handful of technology suppliers.  In September, the MIT NANDA report made waves because the soundbite every author and influencer picked up on…

The Download: Microsoft’s stance on erotic AI, and an AI hype mystery

October 28, 2025
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 will never build a sex robot,” says Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is…

“We will never build a sex robot,” says Mustafa Suleyman

October 28, 2025
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is taking AI in a dangerous direction by building chatbots that present as human: He worries that people will be tricked into seeing life instead of lifelike behavior. In August, he published a…