Earlier this week, Life Biosciences, a biotech company focused on reversing age-related diseases, announced that it had dosed its first volunteer. A person with glaucoma has had an experimental treatment injected straight into their eyeball. The idea is to try to treat the disease—which can cause...
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 soccer’s data renaissance Imagine tuning in to the opening kickoff of a World Cup match and seeing a player intentionally kick the ball out of bounds. Y...
Google DeepMind is funding research into the potential dangers of situations where millions of different AI agents interact with each other online. According to Rohin Shah, who directs the company’s AGI safety and alignment research, the mass-market arrival of agents that can carry out tasks with...
It’s a tale of two nuclear industries. In China, large reactors are coming together at a stunning pace. The country has nearly doubled its nuclear fleet since 2016, reaching nearly 60 gigawatts of total power capacity. The new facilities are nearly all gigawatt-scale pressurized-water reactors. M...
Imagine tuning in to the opening kickoff of a World Cup match and seeing a player intentionally send the ball all the way down the pitch and right out of bounds on the opponent’s end. Casual fans might scratch their heads. Where’s the logic in surrendering possession seconds into a game? If you w...
In 2018, after nearly two decades working in Big Pharma, chemist Tim Cernak was ready to put his skills to a new use. For Merck, he’d developed precision therapies for cancer, HIV, and diabetes that could target disease while minimizing harm to healthy cells. But as a lifelong nature lover, he w...
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 “steroid olympics” were a circus—and a window into our culture —Amit Katwala A couple of weeks ago, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in...
Testosterone. Methenolone. Nandrolone. Human growth hormone and EPO. Meldonium, modafinil, and mixed amphetamine salts. Clomiphene, anastrozole, levothyroxine, and liothyronine. Patches and capsules, creams and pills. A whole galaxy of steroids, metabolic modulators, and synthetic hormones coursi...
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. David Sinclair plans to test whole-body rejuvenation drugs in the XPrize competition The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has predicted that, one d...
As adoption of AI agents looks set to surge by as much as 300% in the next two years, leadership teams are carefully considering the implications of a hybrid human-AI workforce. Unlike existing enterprise-level automation that relies on manual input, AI agents are capable of autonomously coordin...
The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has been predicting that one day, you’ll go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make you 10 years younger. Now MIT Technology Review has learned that he has plans to launch human tests of an oral “reprogramming” drug as part of a $101 mi...
At SXSW London last week I gave a talk called “Five things you need to know about AI,” in which I shared what I think are the biggest themes in AI right now. I pulled a few things from our first AI10 list, an annual guide to the most important trends in this buzzy world,…
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 year’s World Cup ball may not fly as far Much is new about this month’s FIFA World Cup tournament. It hosts more teams than ever before. It’s the first…
Much is new about this month’s upcoming FIFA World Cup tournament, which will be held in the US, Canada, and Mexico. It hosts more teams than ever before. It’s the first to occur in three different host countries. And, like predecessor cups for over half a century, it will employ a soccer ball wi...
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 Meta hack shows there’s more to AI security than Mythos On Monday, reports emerged that attackers had used Meta’s AI customer support agent to steal Instag...
On June 5, 404 Media reported that attackers had been using Meta’s AI customer support agent to steal Instagram accounts. Their approach was simple: They asked the agent to link the accounts to email addresses that they controlled, and the agent complied. One attacker broke into the dormant Obama...
This week I’ve been at SXSW London. There’s been music, film, and a lot—and I mean a lot—of talk about AI. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the last 30 years studying how people interact with digital tec...
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 courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts th...
Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts through stacks of documents written by people without a lawyer. Many of them can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and others have cases too weak or too small to interest one. She reads each one carefully, m...
Would you take a payment to ramp down your electricity use? Would it change anything if you were doing so to help power a local data center? Google just signed a new deal to help pay for a virtual power plant (VPP) in the largest power grid in the US. The agreement is with Voltus,…