AI news from MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review
  1. The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January 2025 left an indelible mark on the Southern California landscape. The Eaton and Palisades fires raged for 24 days, killing 29 people and destroying 16,000 structures, with losses estimated at $60 billion. More than 55,000 acres were consumed, and the landscape itself was physically transformed.…
  2. 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. In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses Google has just released a report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In…
  3. In October, a new academic conference will debut that’s unlike any other. Agents4Science is a one-day online event that will encompass all areas of science, from physics to medicine. All of the work shared will have been researched, written, and reviewed primarily by AI, and will be presented using text-to-speech technology.  The conference is the…
  4. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our home world and expand our civilization to extraterrestrial vistas. This belief has been mainstream for…
  5. Last year, I added my DNA profile to a private genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked “Yes” to allow the police to search my genes. In 2018, police in California announced they’d caught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded capture for decades. They did it by uploading crime-scene DNA to websites like the one…
  6. 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. On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue in the fight against Russia. It’s how troops in battle zones stay connected with faraway…
  7. Google has just released a technical report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of running a standard microwave for about one second. The company also provided average estimates…
  8. I remember using a princess toothbrush when I was little. The handle was purple, teal, and sparkly. Like most of the other pieces of plastic that have ever been made, it’s probably still out there somewhere, languishing in a landfill. (I just hope it’s not in the ocean.) I’ve been thinking about that toothbrush again…
  9. Oleh Kovalskyy thinks that Starlink terminals are built as if someone assembled them with their feet. Or perhaps with their hands behind their back.  To demonstrate this last image, Kovalskyy—a large, 47-year-old Ukrainian, clad in sweatpants and with tattoos stretching from his wrists up to his neck—leans over to wiggle his fingers in the air…