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. Why this battery company is pivoting to AI Qichao Hu doesn’t mince words about the state of the battery industry. “Almost every Western battery company has ei...
I live in a dense city with plentiful public transportation options and limited parking, so I don’t own a car. I’m often utterly clueless about the current price of gasoline. But as the conflict in Iran has escalated, fossil-fuel prices have been on a roller-coaster, and I’ve started paying atten...
The best snow-forecasting app for skiers and snowboarders isn’t from any of the federally funded weather services. Nor from any of the big-name brands. It’s an independent app startup that leverages government data, its own AI models, and decades of alpine-life experience to offer better snow (an...
Listen to the session or watch below Whether it’s the race to find life on Mars, the campaign to outsmart killer asteroids, or the quest to make the moon a permanent home to astronauts, scientists’ efforts in space can tell us more about where humanity is headed. This subscriber-only discussion e...
Qichao Hu doesn’t mince words about how he sees the state of the battery industry. “Almost every Western battery company has either died or is going to die. It’s kind of the reality,” he says. Hu is the CEO of SES AI, a Massachusetts-based battery company. It once had aims of making huge amounts of…
Axiom Math, a startup based in Palo Alto, California, has released a free new AI tool for mathematicians, designed to discover mathematical patterns that could unlock solutions to long-standing problems. The tool, called Axplorer, is a redesign of an existing one called PatternBoost that François...
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 scientist rewarmed and studied pieces of his friend’s cryopreserved brain L. Stephen Coles’s brain sits in a vat at a storage facility in Arizona. It has...
Imagine telling a digital agent, “Use my points and book a family trip to Italy. Keep it within budget, pick hotels we’ve liked before, and handle the details.” Instead of returning a list of links, the agent assembles an itinerary and executes the purchase. That shift, from assistance to executi...
AI is at war. Anthropic and the Pentagon feuded over how to weaponize Anthropic’s AI model Claude; then OpenAI swept the Pentagon off its feet with an “opportunistic and sloppy” deal. Users quit ChatGPT in droves. People marched through London in the biggest protest against AI to date. If you’re ...
We’re starting to give AI agents real autonomy, but are we prepared for what could happen next? This subscriber-only eBook explores this and angles from experts, such as “If we continue on the current path … we are basically playing Russian roulette with humanity.” by Grace Huckins June 12, 2025 ...
L. Stephen Coles’s brain sits cushioned in a vat at a storage facility in Arizona. It has been held there at a temperature of around −146 degrees °C for over a decade, largely undisturbed. That is, apart from the time, a little over a year ago, when scientists slowly lifted the brain to take photos…
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. The hardest question to answer about AI-fueled delusions What actually happens when people spiral into delusion with AI? To find out, Stanford researchers ana...
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I was originally going to write this week’s newsletter about AI and Iran, particularly the news we broke last Tuesday that the Pentagon is making plans for AI ...
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. The Bay Area’s animal welfare movement wants to recruit AI In early February, animal welfare advocates and AI researchers arrived in stocking feet at Mox, a s...
In early February, animal welfare advocates and AI researchers gathered in stocking feet at Mox, a scrappy, shoes-free coworking space in San Francisco. Yellow and red canopies billowed overhead, Persian rugs blanketed the floor, and mosaic lamps glowed beside potted plants. In the common area, ...
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 is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher OpenAI has a new grand challenge: building an AI researcher—a fully automated agent-b...
OpenAI is refocusing its research efforts and throwing its resources into a new grand challenge. The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully automated agent-based system that will be able to go off and tackle large, complex problems by itself. O...
This week I want to look at where we are with psychedelics, the mind-altering substances that have somehow made the leap from counterculture to major focus of clinical research. Compounds like psilocybin—which is found in magic mushrooms—are being explored for all sorts of health applications, in...
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. A $5 million prize awaits proof that quantum computers can solve health care problems In a laboratory on the outskirts of Oxford, a quantum computer built fro...
I’m standing in front of a quantum computer built out of atoms and light at the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre on the outskirts of Oxford. On a laboratory table, a complex matrix of mirrors and lenses surrounds a Rubik’s Cube–size cell where 100 cesium atoms are suspended in grid formatio...