February 6, 2025

What a return to supersonic flight could mean for climate change

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. As I’ve admitted in this newsletter before, I love few things more than getting on an airplane. I know, it’s a bold statement from a climate reporter because of all the associated…

Technology

What’s next for robots

January 23, 2025
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Jan Liphardt teaches bioengineering at Stanford, but to many strangers in Los Altos, California, he is a peculiar man they see walking a four-legged robotic dog down…

OpenAI launches Operator—an agent that can use a computer for you

January 23, 2025
After weeks of buzz, OpenAI has released Operator, its first AI agent. Operator is a web app that can carry out simple online tasks in a browser, such as booking concert tickets or filling an online grocery order. The app is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent—CUA (“coo-ah”), for short—built on top of…

The Download: US WHO exit risks, and underground hydrogen

January 23, 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. This is what might happen if the US withdraws from the WHO On January 20, his first day in office, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from…

This is what might happen if the US withdraws from the WHO

January 23, 2025
On January 20, his first day in office, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization. “Ooh, that’s a big one,” he said as he was handed the document. The US is the biggest donor to the WHO, and the loss of this income is likely…

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

January 23, 2025
It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits…

Implementing responsible AI in the generative age

January 22, 2025
Many organizations have experimented with AI, but they haven’t always gotten the full value from their investments. A host of issues standing in the way center on the accuracy, fairness, and security of AI systems. In response, organizations are actively exploring the principles of responsible AI: the idea that AI systems must be fair, transparent, and…

The Download: OpenAI’s lobbying, and making ammonia below the Earth’s surface

January 22, 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. OpenAI has upped its lobbying efforts nearly sevenfold OpenAI spent $1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure…

OpenAI ups its lobbying efforts nearly seven-fold

January 22, 2025
OpenAI spent $1.76 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday–a significant jump from 2023 when the company disclosed just $260,000 spent on Capitol Hill. The company also disclosed a new in-house lobbyist, Meghan Dorn, who worked for five…

There can be no winners in a US-China AI arms race

January 21, 2025
The United States and China are entangled in what many have dubbed an “AI arms race.”  In the early days of this standoff, US policymakers drove an agenda centered on “winning” the race, mostly from an economic perspective. In recent months, leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic got involved in pushing the narrative of “beating China” in…

A new company plans to use Earth as a chemical reactor

January 21, 2025
Forget massive steel tanks—some scientists want to make chemicals with the help of rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface. New research shows that ammonia, a chemical crucial for fertilizer, can be produced from rocks at temperatures and pressures that are common in the subsurface. The research was published today in Joule, and MIT Technology Review can…