Technology

The Download: kids’ thoughts on AI, and female clones of male mice

August 13, 2026
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. How kids feel about AI, in their own words —Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara, the founding editors of Anyway, an independent print magazine for tweens and teens When we set out…

What’s behind this summer’s heat, and why 2027 could be worse

August 13, 2026
This summer has been a scorcher for much of the Northern Hemisphere. June and July marked the hottest two-month stretch in Europe since record-keeping began. The contiguous US endured its hottest month on record in July. South Korea saw its highest-ever recorded temperature.   The heat isn’t over yet, but some scientists are already looking ahead…

How kids feel about AI, in their own words

August 13, 2026
When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they were…

Scientists just created female clones of male mice

August 12, 2026
Scientists have deliberately turned male mouse embryos into females for the first time. A team based in Japan used a CRISPR-based approach to remove the Y chromosome from male cells and create female clones of male mice.  “No one has done this before,” says Monika Ward, a reproductive biologist at the University of Hawaii, who…

Scaling AI agents with trustworthy data

August 12, 2026
Business and technology leaders need no convincing that the time of agentic AI is here. Organizations are rapidly adopting agents, and few executives doubt the technology’s potential to transform work. But many organizations find that realizing the desired return on investment (ROI) from AI hinges on having the right foundation, with inadequate infrastructure and data…

The Download: our 35 young innovators and the “censorship-industrial complex”

August 12, 2026
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. How we picked 35 of the world’s top young scientists and engineers On September 8, MIT Technology Review will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people…

How we picked 35 of the world’s top young scientists and engineers

August 12, 2026
Next month, on September 8, MIT Technology Review will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems.  By finding the top young innovators globally and learning what they’re focused on in their work,…

How the “censorship-industrial complex” is changing the Internet and US policy

August 11, 2026
I first heard the term “censorship-industrial complex” on April 15, 2025.  That’s when I got the tip that a small office in the U.S. State Department, which focused on monitoring and countering foreign disinformation from the likes of Russia, Iran, and China, was facing imminent shutdown—the next day.  And the reason? R/FIMI, as the office…

The Download: the next big thing in LLMs and how AI academic research is shifting

August 11, 2026
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. These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs Nine years after Google researchers introduced the transformer, this family of neural networks has become the engine inside every major large…

AI professors are negotiating the new realities of academic research

August 10, 2026
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week, I headed 30 miles south of San Francisco to a hotel in Mountain View, California, to join some of the most accomplished, and some of the most promising, AI…