Will fusion power get cheap? Don’t count on it.

The Download: introducing the Nature issue

The Download: introducing the Nature issue Plus: Trump signaled he’s open to reversing the Anthropic ban. 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. Introducing: the Nature issue When we talk about “nature,” we usually mean something untouched by humans. But little of that world exists today. From microplastics in rainforest wildlife to artificial light in the Arctic Ocean, human influence now reaches every corner of Earth. In this context, what even is nature? And should we employ technology to try to make the world more “natural”? In our new Nature issue, MIT Technology Review grapples with these questions. We investigate birds that can’t sing, wolves that aren’t wolves, and grass that isn’t grass. We look for the meaning of life under Arctic ice,…

Los Angeles is finally going underground

Los Angeles is finally going underground The long-under-construction subway arrives in a famous part of town. Los Angeles deserves its reputation as the quintessential car city—the rhythms of its 2,200 square miles are dictated by wide boulevards and concrete arcs of freeways. But it once had a world-class rail transit system, and for the last three decades, the city has been rebuilding a network of trolleys and subways. In May, a new four-mile segment with three new subway stations will open along Wilshire Boulevard, a key east-west corridor that connects downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean. What today can be an hours-long drive through a busy, museum-packed stretch of the city will be, if all goes well, a 25-minute train ride. The existence of subway stops in this part of town—known as Miracle Mile—is a technological triumph over geography and…

There is no nature anymore

There is no nature anymore No part of the globe is free of human fingerprints. Should we deploy technology to change it back? When people talk about “nature,” they’re generally talking about things that aren’t made by human beings. Rocks. Reefs. Red wolves. But while there is plenty of God’s creation to go around, it is hard to think of anything on Earth that human hands haven’t affected. In the Brazilian rainforest, scientists have found microplastics in the bellies of animals ranging from red howler monkeys to manatees. In remotest Yakutia, where much of the earth remains untrodden by human feet, the carbon in the sky above melts the permafrost below. In the Arctic Ocean, artificial light from ship traffic—on the rise as the polar ice cap melts away—now disrupts the nightly journey of zooplankton to the ocean surface, one…

One town’s scheme to get rid of its geese

One town’s scheme to get rid of its geese Public officials in one California burgh spent nearly $400,000 on tech to flush out waterfowl. “Pull over!” I order my brother one sunny February afternoon. Our target is in sight: a gaggle of Canada geese, pecking at grass near the dog park. As I approach, tiptoeing over their grayish-white poop, I notice that one bird wears a white cuff around its slender black neck. It’s a GPS tracker—part of a new tech-centered campaign to drive the geese out of my hometown of Foster City, California. About 300 geese live in this sleepy Bay Area suburb, equal to nearly 1% of our human population—and some say this town isn’t big enough for the both of us. Goose poop notoriously blanketed our middle school’s lawn, and the birds have hassled residents for generations.…

3 things Michelle Kim is into right now

3 things Michelle Kim is into right now MIT Technology Review’s editorial fellow shares what she’s been thinking about lately. Isegye Idol If you thought K-pop was weird, virtual idols—humans who perform as anime-style digital characters via motion capture—will blow your mind. My favorite is a girl group called Isegye Idol, created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber (a streamer who likewise performs as a digital persona). Isegye Idol’s six members are anonymous, which seems to let them deploy a rare breed of honesty and humor. They play games (League of Legends, Go, Minecraft), chitchat, and perform kitschy music that’s somewhere between anime soundtrack and video-game score. It’s very DIY—and very intimate. And the group’s wild popularity speaks to the mood of Gen Z South Koreans, famously lonely and culturally adrift—struggling to find work, giving up on dating, trying to find…

AI needs a strong data fabric to deliver business value

Sponsored AI needs a strong data fabric to deliver business value A modern data fabric makes it possible to turn existing enterprise knowledge into a trusted foundation for AI. In partnership withSAP Artificial intelligence is moving quickly in the enterprise, from experimentation to everyday use. Organizations are deploying copilots, agents, and predictive systems across finance, supply chains, human resources, and customer operations. By the end of 2025, half of companies used AI in at least three business functions, according to a recent survey. But as AI becomes embedded in core workflows, business leaders are discovering that the biggest obstacle is not model performance or computing power but the quality and the context of the data on which those systems rely. AI essentially introduces a new requirement: Systems must not only access data — they must understand the business context behind…

The Download: introducing the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now

The Download: introducing the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now Plus: An unauthorized group has reportedly accessed Anthropic’s Mythos. 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. Introducing: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now What actually matters in AI right now? It’s getting harder to tell amid the constant launches, hype, and warnings. To cut through the noise, MIT Technology Review’s reporters and editors have distilled years of analysis into a new essential guide: the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now. The list builds on our annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies, but takes a wider view of the ideas, topics, and research shaping AI, spotlighting the trends and breakthroughs shaping the world. We’ll be unpacking one item from the…

Early life may have breathed oxygen earlier than believed

Early life may have breathed oxygen earlier than believed A new study suggests that aerobic respiration began hundreds of millions of years before oxygen became abundant in Earth’s atmosphere. Around 2.3 billion years ago, a pivotal period known as the Great Oxidation Event set the evolutionary course for oxygen-breathing life on Earth. But MIT geobiologists and colleagues have found evidence that some early forms of life evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before that. By mapping enzyme sequences from several thousand modern organisms onto an evolutionary tree of life, the researchers traced the origins of an enzyme that enables organisms to use oxygen to the Mesoarchean period, 3.2 to 2.8 billion years ago. The team’s results may help explain a longstanding puzzle in Earth’s history: Given that the first oxygen-producing microbes likely emerged before the…

Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough

Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93 If you’ve been to an eye doctor and had an image taken of the inside of your eye, chances are good it was done with optical coherence tomography (OCT)—a technology invented by clinician-scientist David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93, and now used in 40 million procedures per year. OCT is a noninvasive technique used to produce detailed images of complicated biological tissues such as the retina and the plaques that can build up in coronary arteries. It maps the time-of-flight of light waves reflected from tissue and paints a high-resolution picture of internal structures. “It uses infrared light that’s barely visible compared to the bright flash of fundus photography [another common method of eye imaging] and provides a lot more information—three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional information—at higher resolution,”…

AI at MIT

AI at MIT In almost every lab at the Institute, researchers are delving into AI. And the tools they’re developing and deploying have already turbocharged existing methods and opened new pathways to discovery. At MIT, AI has become so pervasive that you can almost find your way into it without meaning to. Take Sili Deng, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Deng says she still doesn’t know whether she’d have gone all in on artificial intelligence had it not been for the covid pandemic. She had joined the faculty in 2019 and was in the process of setting up her lab to study combustion kinetics, emissions reduction, and flame synthesis of energy materials when covid hit, putting a halt to all lab renovations. Because she needed to start from scratch, she challenged herself and her postdocs to try machine learning…

Recent books from the MIT community

Recent books from the MIT community May/June 2026 Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity Edited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning and former executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future MIT PRESS, 2026, $24.95 The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and Live By Alan Lightman, professor of the practice of the humanities, and Martin Rees PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 2025, $28 Spheres of Injustice: The Ethical Promise of Minority Presence By Bruno Perreau, professor of French studies and language MIT PRESS, 2025, $34 The Analytics Edge in Healthcare By Dimitris Bertsimas, SM ’87, PhD ’88, professor of management and operations research and associate dean of online education and AI; Agni Orfanoudaki, PhD ’21; and Holly Wiberg DYNAMIC IDEAS, 2025, $110 The Art of Monetary…

Get ready for hotter, muggier, stormier summers

Get ready for hotter, muggier, stormier summers MIT researchers have found that an atmospheric condition called an inversion determines how oppressive heat waves get and how long they last—and the phenomenon is getting more common in parts of the United States. A long stretch of humid heat followed by a powerful thunderstorm is a familiar weather pattern in the tropics, but it’s also becoming more common in midlatitude regions such as the US Midwest. A recent study by two MIT scientists identifies a key atmospheric condition that determines how hot, humid, and stormy such a region can get: inversions, in which a layer of warm air settles over cooler air. Inversions were already known to act as an atmospheric blanket that traps pollutants at ground level. Now Funing Li, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences…

Analog computing from waste heat

Analog computing from waste heat Harnessing heat generated by a device itself, microscopic silicon structures could lead to more energy-efficient thermal sensing and signal processing. Heat generated by electronic devices is usually a problem, but a team led by Giuseppe Romano, a research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, has found a way to use it for data processing that doesn’t rely on electricity. In this analog computing method, input data is encoded not as binary 1s and 0s but as a set of temperatures based on the waste heat already present in a device. The flow and distribution of that heat through tiny silicon structures, designed by a physics-based optimization algorithm they developed, forms the basis of the calculation. Then the output is represented by the power collected at the other end. The researchers used these structures to…

Building agent-first governance and security

Sponsored Building agent-first governance and security To create value with AI agents, organizations must institute robust controls. In association withthe Deloitte Microsoft Technology Practice As AI agents increasingly work alongside humans across organizations, companies could be inadvertently opening a new attack surface. Insecure agents can be manipulated to access sensitive systems and proprietary data, increasing enterprise risk. In some modern enterprises, non-human identities (NHI) are outpacing human identities, and that trend will explode with agentic AI. Solid governance and a fortified security foundation are therefore critical. According to the Deloitte AI Institute 2026 State of AI report, nearly 74% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years. Yet only one in five (21%) reports having a mature model for governance of autonomous agents. Executives are most concerned with data privacy and security (73%); legal, intellectual property, and regulatory…

This tool could show how consciousness works

This tool could show how consciousness works Transcranial focused ultrasound is a noninvasive way to stimulate the brain and see how it functions. How does the physical matter in our brains translate into thoughts, sensations, and emotions? It’s hard to explore that question without neurosurgery. But in a recent paper, MIT philosopher Matthias Michel, Lincoln Lab researcher Daniel Freeman, and colleagues outline a strategy for doing so with an emerging tool called transcranial focused ultrasound. This noninvasive technology reaches deeper into the brain, with greater resolution, than techniques such as EEG and MRI. It works by sending acoustic waves through the skull to focus on an area of a few millimeters, allowing specific brain structures to be stimulated so the effects can be studied. The researchers lay out an experimental approach that would use the tool to help test two…

A natural protein may protect the GI tract from infection

A natural protein may protect the GI tract from infection Intelectin-2 could be useful in treating inflammatory bowel disease and antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Embedded in the body’s mucosal surfaces, proteins called lectins bind to sugars found on cell surfaces. A team led by MIT chemistry professor Laura Kiessling has found that one such protein, intelectin-2, both helps fortify the mucosal barrier and offers broad-spectrum protection against harmful bacteria found in the GI tract. Intelectin-2 binds to a sugar molecule called galactose that is found on bacterial membranes, the team found, trapping the bacteria and hindering their growth; the trapped microbes eventually disintegrate, suggesting that the protein is able to kill them by disrupting their cell membranes. It also helps strengthen the intestine’s protective lining by binding to the galactose in the mucins that make up mucus. “What’s remarkable is that intelectin-2…

The new word in home construction could be “plastics”

The new word in home construction could be “plastics” MIT engineers are using recycled polymers to 3D-print construction-grade floor trusses. Single-use plastics are a persistent source of environmental pollution, and the need to house a growing global population puts increasing pressure on resources such as timber. MIT engineers have an idea that could make a dent in both problems at once. In a recent study, a team led by mechanical engineering professor David Hardt, SM ’74, PhD ’79, and lecturer and research scientist AJ Perez ’13, MEng ’14, PhD ’23, laid out a plan for using recycled plastic to 3D-print construction-grade beams, trusses, and other structures that could one day offer lighter, more sustainable alternatives to traditional wood-based framing. Although some companies are working on using large-scale additive manufacturing to create walls, they’re mainly using concrete or clay, whose production…

Roundtables: Unveiling The 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now

Roundtables: Unveiling The 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now Watch subscriber-only discussion unveiling a new list capturing 10 key technologies in AI that you need to know about in 2026. Available only for MIT Alumni and subscribers. Listen to the session or watch below Subscribers saw a special edition of Roundtables simulcast live from EmTech AI, MIT Technology Review’s signature conference for AI leadership. Subscribers got an exclusive first look at a new list capturing 10 key technologies, emerging trends, bold ideas, and powerful movements in AI that you need to know about in 2026. Speakers: Grace Huckins, AI reporter, hosted this session as Amy Nordrum and Niall Firth, executive editors, unveiled the list onstage. Recorded on April 21, 2026 Related Stories: Keep Reading Most Popular OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher An exclusive…

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past To understand what the future holds for Earth’s northernmost waters, scientists are burrowing deep below the seabed. In the past, even with an icebreaker and during peak melt season, getting to the North Pole wasn’t a sure bet. It took favorable winds to crack the frozen ocean surface, and ships had to fight through ice that had grown many meters thick over several winters. In the summer of 2025, though, Jochen Knies from the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, and his team met little resistance on their way to 90 degrees North with the research vessel Kronprins Haakon. The geologist “didn’t hear the usual grinding of ice” against the hull that he remembered from 1996, when he first reached the pole by ship. Instead, thin floes and large stretches of open water…

The Download: turning down human noise, and LA’s stunning subway upgrade

The Download: turning down human noise, and LA’s stunning subway upgrade Plus: Apple’s Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO. 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 noise we make is hurting animals. Can we learn to shut up? As human society has expanded, animals have started struggling to hear one another. For many birds, the noise has grown so loud that they’ve begun to sing with faster trills. Now, their mating calls aren’t as effective. The growing hubbub can also increase bird-on-bird conflict, and entire species that can’t handle urban clamor simply leave town for good. But there are technological solutions to the noises hurting animals—and they could help humans, too. —Clive Thompson Los Angeles is finally going underground In May,…

Chinese tech workers are starting to train their AI doubles—and pushing back

Chinese tech workers are starting to train their AI doubles—and pushing back A viral GitHub project that claims to clone coworkers into a reusable AI skill is forcing Chinese tech workers to confront deeper fears. Tech workers in China are being instructed by their bosses to train AI agents to replace them—and it’s prompting a wave of soul-searching among otherwise enthusiastic early adopters. Earlier this month a GitHub project called Colleague Skill, which claimed workers could use it to “distill” their colleagues’ skills and personality traits and replicate them with an AI agent, went viral on Chinese social media. Though the project was created as a spoof, it struck a nerve among tech workers, a number of whom told MIT Technology Review that their bosses are encouraging them to document their workflows in order to automate specific tasks and processes…

Colossal Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real?

Colossal Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real? The red wolf has long been a contentious species. The debate over its preservation got even messier last year, when Colossal said it had cloned the animal. If you want to capture something wolflike, it’s best to embark before dawn. So on a morning this January, with the eastern horizon still pink-hued, I drove with two young scientists into a blanket of fog. Forty miles to the west, the industrial sprawl of Houston spawned a golden glow. Tanner Broussard’s old Toyota Tacoma bumped over the levee-top roads as killdeer, flushed from their rest, flew across the beams of his headlights. Broussard peered into the darkness, looking for traps. “I have one over here,” he said, slowing slightly. A master’s student at McNeese State University, he was quiet and contemplative,…

The Download: murderous ‘mirror’ bacteria, and Chinese workers fighting AI doubles

The Download: murderous ‘mirror’ bacteria, and Chinese workers fighting AI doubles Plus: the White House and Anthropic are working toward a compromise. 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. No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all In February 2019, a group of scientists proposed a high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting idea that the National Science Foundation should fund: making “mirror” bacteria. These lab-created microbes would be organized like ordinary bacteria, but their proteins and sugars would be mirror images of those found in nature. Researchers believed they could reveal new insights into building cells, designing drugs, and even the origins of life. But now, many of them have reversed course. They’ve become convinced that mirror organisms could trigger a catastrophic…

How robots learn: A brief, contemporary history

How robots learn: A brief, contemporary history The latest boom in robotics represents a revolution in the way machines have learned to interact with the world. Roboticists used to dream big but build small. They’d hope to match or exceed the extraordinary complexity of the human body, and then they’d spend their career refining robotic arms for auto plants. Aim for C-3P0; end up with the Roomba. The real ambition for many of these researchers was the robot of science fiction—one that could move through the world, adapt to different environments, and interact safely and helpfully with people. For the socially minded, such a machine could help those with mobility issues, ease loneliness, or do work too dangerous for humans. For the more financially inclined, it would mean a bottomless source of wage-free labor. Either way, a long history of…

The case for fixing everything

The case for fixing everything A new book by Stewart Brand, an architect of modern tech culture, asks: How do we prioritize maintenance? And why? But it doesn’t quite have the answers. The handsome new book Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One, by the tech industry legend Stewart Brand, promises to be the first in a series offering “a comprehensive overview of the civilizational importance of maintenance.” One of Brand’s several biographers described him as a mainstay of both counterculture and cyberculture, and with Maintenance, Brand wants us to understand that the upkeep and repair of tools and systems has profound impact on daily life. As he puts it, “Taking responsibility for maintaining something—whether a motorcycle, a monument, or our planet—can be a radical act.” Radical how? This volume doesn’t say. In an outline for the overall work, Brand says his…

The Download: bad news for inner Neanderthals, and AI warfare’s human illusion

The Download: bad news for inner Neanderthals, and AI warfare’s human illusion Plus: Despite blacklisting Anthropic, the White House wants its new model. 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 problem with thinking you’re part Neanderthal There’s a theory that many of us have an “inner Neanderthal.” The idea is that Homo sapiens and a cousin species once bred, leaving some people today with a trace of Neanderthal DNA. This DNA is arguably the 21st century’s most celebrated discovery in human evolution. But in 2024, a pair of French geneticists called into question the theory's very foundations. They proposed that what scientists interpret as interbreeding could instead be explained by population structure—the way genes concentrate in smaller, isolated groups. Find out what…

Pie Day 2026

Pie Day 2026 Admissions Blogger Ellie Feng ’28 reimagines MIT as the Massachusetts Institute of Tasteology—and offers a behind-the-scenes look at what went into the making of 30 celebratory pies. Ellie’s Pi Day post: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/pi-day-2026-food-institute/ How Ellie orchestrated the baking of 30 pies: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/behind-the-scenes-of-thirty-pies/ Keep Reading Most Popular OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher An exclusive conversation with OpenAI’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, about his firm's new grand challenge and the future of AI. How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world Exclusive: Niantic's AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of urban landmarks crowdsourced from players. Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts. According to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index, AI is…