July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

Technology

This artist collaborates with AI and robots

February 17, 2025
Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on artistic creation. But Sougwen Chung, a nonbinary Canadian-Chinese artist, instead sees AI as an opportunity for artists to embrace uncertainty and challenge people to think about technology and creativity in unexpected ways.  Chung’s exhibitions are driven by technology; they’re also live and kinetic, with the…

Adventures in the genetic time machine

February 17, 2025
Eske Willerslev was on a tour of Montreal’s Redpath Museum, a Victorian-era natural history collection of 700,000 objects, many displayed in wood and glass cabinets. The collection—“very, very eclectic,” a curator explained—reflects the taste in souvenirs of 19th-century travelers and geology buffs. A visitor can see a leg bone from an extinct Steller’s sea cow,…

AI Alexa and AI Siri face bugs and delays

February 14, 2025

Amazon and Apple are struggling to put generative AI technology in their digital assistants – Alexa and Siri, respectively – according to a pair of reports that came out on Friday. Amazon hoped to release its new Alexa during an event in New York on February 26. Now Amazon plans to delay the release of […]

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The Download: China’s EV to humanoid robot pivot, and voice clone censorship

February 14, 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. China’s electric vehicle giants are betting big on humanoid robots As the electric-vehicle war in China calms down, leaving a few established players to dominate the field, Chinese EV giants are expanding into…

My sex doll is mad at me: A short story

February 14, 2025
The near future. It’s not a kiss, but it’s not not a kiss. Her lips—full, soft, pliable—yield under mine, warm from the electric heating rod embedded in her throat. They taste of a faint chemical, like aspartame in Diet Pepsi. Her thermoplastic elastomer skin is sensitive to fabric dyes, so she wears white Agent Provocateur…

A woman made her AI voice clone say “arse.” Then she got banned.

February 14, 2025
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been speaking to people who have lost their voices. Both Joyce Esser, who lives in the UK, and Jules Rodriguez, who…

China’s electric vehicle giants are betting big on humanoid robots

February 14, 2025
At the 2025 CCTV New Year Gala last month, a televised spectacle watched by over a billion viewers in China, 16 humanoid robots took the stage. Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature element of northeastern China’s Yangko dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers. But the robots…

UK drops ‘safety’ from its AI body, now called AI Security Institute, inks MOU with Anthropic

February 14, 2025

The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it’s pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the […]

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The Download: AI-restored voices, and bot relationships

February 13, 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. Motor neuron diseases took their voices. AI is bringing them back. Jules Rodriguez lost his voice in October of last year. His speech had been deteriorating since a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis…