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It’s pretty easy to get DeepSeek to talk dirty

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty: DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too, if…
The Download: future grids, and bad boy bots

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. Before we embark on our usual programming we’re thrilled to share that The Download won Best Technology Newsletter at this year’s Publisher Newsletter Awards! Thank you to all of you for reading, subscribing,…
Is this the electric grid of the future?

One morning in the middle of March, a slow-moving spring blizzard stalled above eastern Nebraska, pounding the state capital of Lincoln with 60-mile-per-hour winds, driving sleet, and up to eight inches of snow. Lincoln Electric System, the local electric utility, has approximately 150,000 customers. By lunchtime, nearly 10% of them were without power. Ice was…
Inside the US power struggle over coal

Coal power is on life support in the US. It used to carry the grid with cheap electricity, but now plants are closing left and right. There are a lot of potential reasons to let coal continue its journey to the grave. Carbon emissions from coal plants are a major contributor to climate change. And…
OpenAI can rehabilitate AI models that develop a “bad boy persona”

A new paper from OpenAI has shown why a little bit of bad training can make AI models go rogue—but also demonstrates that this problem is generally pretty easy to fix. Back in February, a group of researchers discovered that fine-tuning an AI model (in their case, OpenAI’s GPT-4o) by training it on code that…
Puzzle Corner

Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the July/August 2025 Puzzle Corner, brought to you by guest editor Ed Faulkner ’03. Send problems, solutions (by August 1), and comments to puzzlecorner@technologyreview.com. Editor emeritus Allan Gottlieb ’67 launched Puzzle Corner in 1966. Find back issues through 2022 at cs.nyu.edu/~gottlieb/tr and more recent back issues...
Puzzle Corner

Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the September/October 2024 Puzzle Corner, brought to you by guest editor Edward Faulkner ’03.
The Download: tackling tech-facilitated abuse, and opening up AI hardware

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 it’s so hard to stop tech-facilitated abuse After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while…
The quest to defend against tech in intimate partner violence

After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their Massachusetts home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found…
Why AI hardware needs to be open

When OpenAI acquired Io to create “the coolest piece of tech that the world will have ever seen,” it confirmed what industry experts have long been saying: Hardware is the new frontier for AI. AI will no longer just be an abstract thing in the cloud far away. It’s coming for our homes, our rooms,…