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 State of AI: How war will be changed forever —Helen Warrell & James O’Donnell It is July 2027, and China is on the brink of invading Taiwan. Autonomous drones with AI targeting capabilities are primed to overpower the island’s air defenses as a series of crippling AI-generated cyberattacks cut off energy supplies and key communications. In the meantime, a vast disinformation campaign enacted by an AI-powered pro-Chinese meme farm spreads across global social media, deadening the outcry at Beijing’s act of aggression.Scenarios such as this have brought dystopian horror to the debate about the use of AI in warfare. Military commanders hope for a digitally enhanced force that is faster and more accurate than human-directed combat. 
But there are fears that as AI assumes an increasingly central role, these same commanders will lose control of a conflict that escalates too quickly and lacks ethical or legal oversight. Read the full story. This is the third edition of The State of AI, our subscriber-only collaboration between the Financial Times & MIT Technology Review examining the ways in which AI is reshaping global power.Every Monday, writers from both publications will debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. While subscribers to The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter, get access to an extended excerpt, subscribers to the MIT Technology Review are able to read the whole thing. Sign up here to receive future editions every Monday.
Job titles of the future: AI embryologist Embryologists are the scientists behind the scenes of in vitro fertilization who oversee the development and selection of embryos, prepare them for transfer, and maintain the lab environment. They’ve been a critical part of IVF for decades, but their job has gotten a whole lot busier in recent years as demand for the fertility treatment skyrockets and clinics struggle to keep up.Klaus Wiemer, a veteran embryologist and IVF lab director, believes artificial intelligence might help by predicting embryo health in real time and unlocking new avenues for productivity in the lab. Read the full story. —Amanda Smith The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Big Tech’s job cuts are a warning signThey’re a canary down the mine for other industries. (WP $)+ Americans appear to feel increasingly unsettled by AI. (WSJ $)+ Global fund managers worry companies are overinvesting in the technology. (FT $)

2 Iran is attempting to stimulate rain to end its deadly droughtBut critics warn that cloud seeding is a challenging process. (New Scientist $)+ Parts of western Iran are now experiencing flooding. (Reuters)+ Why it’s so hard to bust the weather control conspiracy theory. (MIT Technology Review) 3 Air taxi startups may produce new aircraft for war zonesThe US Army has announced its intentions to acquire most of its weapons from startups, not major contractors. (The Information $)+ US firm Joby Aviation is launching flying taxis in Dubai. (NBC News)+ This giant microwave may change the future of war. (MIT Technology Review)4 Weight-loss drug make Eli Lilly is likely to cross a trillion-dollar valuationAs it prepares to launch a pill alternative to its injections. (WSJ $)+ Arch rival Novo Nordisk A/S is undercutting the company to compete. (Bloomberg $)+ We’re learning more about what weight-loss drugs do to the body. (MIT Technology Review) 5 What’s going on with the US TikTok ban?Even the lawmakers in charge don’t seem to know. (The Verge) 6 It’s getting harder to grow cocoaMass tree felling and lower rainfall in the Congo Basin is to blame. (FT $)+ Industrial agriculture activists are everywhere at COP30. (The Guardian)+ Africa fights rising hunger by looking to foods of the past. (MIT Technology Review) 7 Russia is cracking down on its critical military bloggersArmchair critics are facing jail time if they refuse to apologize. (Economist $) 8 Why the auto industry is so obsessed with humanoid robotsIt’s not just Tesla—plenty of others want to get in on the act. (The Atlantic $)+ China’s EV giants are betting big on humanoid robots. (MIT Technology Review) 9 Indian startups are challenging ChatGPT’s AI dominanceThey support a far wider range of languages than the large AI firms’ models. (Rest of World)+ OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias. (MIT Technology Review) 10 These tiny sensors track butterflies on their journey to Mexico 🦋Scientists hope it’ll shed some light on their mysterious life cycles. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I think no company is going to be immune, including us.”  —Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, warns the BBC about the precarious nature of the AI bubble. One more thing How a 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics—Jon KeeganAs a child of an electronic engineer, I spent a lot of time in our local Radio Shack as a kid. While my dad was locating capacitors and resistors, I was in the toy section. It was there, in 1984, that I discovered the best toy of my childhood: the Armatron robotic arm.Described as a “robot-like arm to aid young masterminds in scientific and laboratory experiments,” it was a legit robotic arm. And the bold look and function of Armatron made quite an impression on many young kids who would one day have a career in robotics. Read the full story.
We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + The US Library of Congress has attained some handwritten drafts of iconic songs from The Wizard of Oz.+ This interesting dashboard tracks the world’s top 500 musical artists in the world right now—some of the listings may surprise you (or just make you feel really old.)+ Cult author Chris Kraus shares what’s floating her boat right now.+ The first images of the forthcoming Legend of Zelda film are here!

Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Every Monday, writers from both publications debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power. In this conversation, Helen Warrell, FT investigations reporter and former defense and security editor, and James O’Donnell, MIT Technology Review’s senior AI reporter, consider the ethical quandaries and financial incentives around AI’s use by the military. Helen Warrell, FT investigations reporter  It is July 2027, and China is on the brink of invading Taiwan. Autonomous drones with AI targeting capabilities are primed to overpower the island’s air defenses as a series of crippling AI-generated cyberattacks cut off energy supplies and key communications. In the meantime, a vast disinformation campaign enacted by an AI-powered pro-Chinese meme farm spreads across global social media, deadening the outcry at Beijing’s act of aggression.
Scenarios such as this have brought dystopian horror to the debate about the use of AI in warfare. Military commanders hope for a digitally enhanced force that is faster and more accurate than human-directed combat. But there are fears that as AI assumes an increasingly central role, these same commanders will lose control of a conflict that escalates too quickly and lacks ethical or legal oversight. Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, spent his final years warning about the coming catastrophe of AI-driven warfare. Grasping and mitigating these risks is the military priority—some would say the “Oppenheimer moment”—of our age. One emerging consensus in the West is that decisions around the deployment of nuclear weapons should not be outsourced to AI. UN secretary-general António Guterres has gone further, calling for an outright ban on fully autonomous lethal weapons systems. It is essential that regulation keep pace with evolving technology. But in the sci-fi-fueled excitement, it is easy to lose track of what is actually possible. As researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center point out, AI optimists often underestimate the challenges of fielding fully autonomous weapon systems. It is entirely possible that the capabilities of AI in combat are being overhyped.
Anthony King, Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter and a key proponent of this argument, suggests that rather than replacing humans, AI will be used to improve military insight. Even if the character of war is changing and remote technology is refining weapon systems, he insists, “the complete automation of war itself is simply an illusion.” Of the three current military use cases of AI, none involves full autonomy. It is being developed for planning and logistics, cyber warfare (in sabotage, espionage, hacking, and information operations; and—most controversially—for weapons targeting, an application already in use on the battlefields of Ukraine and Gaza. Kyiv’s troops use AI software to direct drones able to evade Russian jammers as they close in on sensitive sites. The Israel Defense Forces have developed an AI-assisted decision support system known as Lavender, which has helped identify around 37,000 potential human targets within Gaza.  FT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | ADOBE STOCK There is clearly a danger that the Lavender database replicates the biases of the data it is trained on. But military personnel carry biases too. One Israeli intelligence officer who used Lavender claimed to have more faith in the fairness of a “statistical mechanism” than that of a grieving soldier. Tech optimists designing AI weapons even deny that specific new controls are needed to control their capabilities. Keith Dear, a former UK military officer who now runs the strategic forecasting company Cassi AI, says existing laws are more than sufficient: “You make sure there’s nothing in the training data that might cause the system to go rogue … when you are confident you deploy it—and you, the human commander, are responsible for anything they might do that goes wrong.” It is an intriguing thought that some of the fear and shock about use of AI in war may come from those who are unfamiliar with brutal but realistic military norms. What do you think, James? Is some opposition to AI in warfare less about the use of autonomous systems and really an argument against war itself?  James O’Donnell replies: Hi Helen,  One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s been a drastic shift in attitudes of AI companies regarding military applications of their products. In the beginning of 2024, OpenAI unambiguously forbade the use of its tools for warfare, but by the end of the year, it had signed an agreement with Anduril to help it take down drones on the battlefield. 

This step—not a fully autonomous weapon, to be sure, but very much a battlefield application of AI—marked a drastic change in how much tech companies could publicly link themselves with defense.  What happened along the way? For one thing, it’s the hype. We’re told AI will not just bring superintelligence and scientific discovery but also make warfare sharper, more accurate and calculated, less prone to human fallibility. I spoke with US Marines, for example, who tested a type of AI while patrolling the South Pacific that was advertised to analyze foreign intelligence faster than a human could.  Ask AIWhy it matters to you?BETAHere’s why this story might matter to you, according to AI. This is a beta feature and AI hallucinates—it might get weirdTell me why it matters Secondly, money talks. OpenAI and others need to start recouping some of the unimaginable amounts of cash they’re spending on training and running these models. And few have deeper pockets than the Pentagon. And Europe’s defense heads seem keen to splash the cash too. Meanwhile, the amount of venture capital funding for defense tech this year has already doubled the total for all of 2024, as VCs hope to cash in on militaries’ newfound willingness to buy from startups.  I do think the opposition to AI warfare falls into a few camps, one of which simply rejects the idea that more precise targeting (if it’s actually more precise at all) will mean fewer casualties rather than just more war. Consider the first era of drone warfare in Afghanistan. As drone strikes became cheaper to implement, can we really say it reduced carnage? Instead, did it merely enable more destruction per dollar? But the second camp of criticism (and now I’m finally getting to your question) comes from people who are well versed in the realities of war but have very specific complaints about the technology’s fundamental limitations. Missy Cummings, for example, is a former fighter pilot for the US Navy who is now a professor of engineering and computer science at George Mason University. She has been outspoken in her belief that large language models, specifically, are prone to make huge mistakes in military settings. The typical response to this complaint is that AI’s outputs are human-checked. But if an AI model relies on thousands of inputs for its conclusion, can that conclusion really be checked by one person? Tech companies are making extraordinarily big promises about what AI can do in these high-stakes applications, all while pressure to implement them is sky high. For me, this means it’s time for more skepticism, not less.  Helen responds:
Hi James,  We should definitely continue to question the safety of AI warfare systems and the oversight to which they’re subjected—and hold political leaders to account in this area. I am suggesting that we also apply some skepticism to what you rightly describe as the “extraordinarily big promises” made by some companies about what AI might be able to achieve on the battlefield. 
There will be both opportunities and hazards in what the military is being offered by a relatively nascent (though booming) defense tech scene. The danger is that in the speed and secrecy of an arms race in AI weapons, these emerging capabilities may not receive the scrutiny and debate they desperately need. Further reading:

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. What is the chance your plane will be hit by space debris? The risk of flights being hit by space junk is still small, but it’s growing. About three pieces of old space equipment—used rockets and defunct satellites—fall into Earth’s atmosphere every day, according to estimates by the European Space Agency. By the mid-2030s, there may be dozens thanks to the rise of megaconstellations in orbit. So far, space debris hasn’t injured anybody—in the air or on the ground. But multiple close calls have been reported in recent years.But some estimates have the risk of a single human death or injury caused by a space debris strike on the ground at around 10% per year by 2035. That would mean a better than even chance that someone on Earth would be hit by space junk about every decade. Find out more.
—Tereza Pultarova This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains: our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read the rest of the series here.
Chatbots are surprisingly effective at debunking conspiracy theories —Thomas Costello, Gordon Pennycook & David Rand Many people believe that you can’t talk conspiracists out of their beliefs.  But that’s not necessarily true. Our research shows that many conspiracy believers do respond to evidence and arguments—information that is now easy to deliver in the form of a tailored conversation with an AI chatbot. This is good news, given the outsize role that unfounded conspiracy theories play in today’s political landscape. So while there are widespread and legitimate concerns that generative AI is a potent tool for spreading disinformation, our work shows that it can also be part of the solution. Read the full story. This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s series “The New Conspiracy Age,” on how the present boom in conspiracy theories is reshaping science and technology. Check out the rest of the series here. 

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 China is quietly expanding its remote nuclear test siteIn the wake of Donald Trump announcing America’s intentions to revive similar tests. (WP $)+ A White House memo has accused Alibaba of supporting Chinese operations. (FT $) 2 Jeff Bezos is becoming co-CEO of a new AI startupProject Prometheus will focus on AI for building computers, aerospace and vehicles. (NYT $) 3 AI-powered toys are holding inappropriate conversations with children Including how to find dangerous objects including pills and knives. (The Register)+ Chatbots are unreliable and unpredictable, whether embedded in toys or not. (Futurism)+ AI toys are all the rage in China—and now they’re appearing on shelves in the US too. (MIT Technology Review)4 Big Tech is warming to the idea of data centers in spaceThey come with a lot less red tape than their Earth-bound counterparts. (WSJ $)+ There are a huge number of data centers mired in the planning stage. (WSJ $)+ Should we be moving data centers to space? (MIT Technology Review)5 The mafia is recruiting via TikTokSome bosses are even using the platform to control gangs from behind bars. (Economist $) 6 How to resist AI in your workplaceLike most things in life, there’s power in numbers. (Vox) 7 How China’s EV fleet could become a giant battery networkIf economic troubles don’t get in the way, that is. (Rest of World)+ EV sales are on the rise in South America. (Reuters)+ China’s energy dominance in three charts. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Inside the unstoppable rise of the domestic internetControl-hungry nations are following China’s lead in building closed platforms. (NY Mag $)+ Can we repair the internet? (MIT Technology Review)
9 Search traffic? What search traffic?These media startups have found a way to thrive without Google. (Insider $)+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review) 10 Paul McCartney has released a silent track to protest AI’s creep into musicThat’ll show them! (The Guardian)+ AI is coming for music, too. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day “All the parental controls in the world will not protect your kids from themselves.” —Samantha Broxton, a parenting coach and consultant, tells the Washington Post why educating children around the risks of using technology is the best way to help them protect themselves. One more thing
Inside the controversial tree farms powering Apple’s carbon neutral goalApple (and its peers) are planting vast forests of eucalyptus trees in Brazil to try to offset their climate emissions, striking some of the largest-ever deals for carbon credits in the process. The tech behemoth is betting that planting millions of eucalyptus trees in Brazil will be the path to a greener future. Some ecologists and local residents are far less sure.The big question is: Can Latin America’s eucalyptus be a scalable climate solution? Read the full story. —Gregory Barber

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. In mid-October, a mysterious object cracked the windshield of a packed Boeing 737 cruising at 36,000 feet above Utah, forcing the pilots into an emergency landing. The internet was suddenly buzzing with the prospect that the plane had been hit by a piece of space debris. We still don’t know exactly what hit the plane—likely a remnant of a weather balloon—but it turns out the speculation online wasn’t that far-fetched. That’s because while the risk of flights being hit by space junk is still small, it is, in fact, growing.  About three pieces of old space equipment—used rockets and defunct satellites—fall into Earth’s atmosphere every day, according to estimates by the European Space Agency. By the mid-2030s, there may be dozens. The increase is linked to the growth in the number of satellites in orbit. Currently, around 12,900 active satellites circle the planet. In a decade, there may be 100,000 of them, according to analyst estimates.
To minimize the risk of orbital collisions, operators guide old satellites to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. But the physics of that reentry process are not well understood, and we don’t know how much material burns up and how much reaches the ground. “The number of such landfall events is increasing,” says Richard Ocaya, a professor of physics at the University of Free State in South Africa and a coauthor of a recent paper on space debris risk. “We expect it may be increasing exponentially in the next few years.”
So far, space debris hasn’t injured anybody—in the air or on the ground. But multiple close calls have been reported in recent years. In March last year, an 0.7-kilogram chunk of metal pierced the roof of a house in Florida. The object was later confirmed to be a remnant of a battery pallet tossed out from the International Space Station. When the strike occurred, the homeowner’s 19-year-old son was resting in a next-door room. And in February this year, a 1.5-meter-long fragment of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket crashed down near a warehouse outside Poland’s fifth-largest city, Poznan. Another piece was found in a nearby forest. A month later, a 2.5-kilogram piece of a Starlink satellite dropped on a farm in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Other incidents have been reported in Australia and Africa. And many more may be going completely unnoticed.  “If you were to find a bunch of burnt electronics in a forest somewhere, your first thought is not that it came from a spaceship,” says James Beck, the director of the UK-based space engineering research firm Belstead Research. He warns that we don’t fully understand the risk of space debris strikes and that it might be much higher than satellite operators want us to believe.  For example, SpaceX, the owner of the currently largest mega-constellation, Starlink, claims that its satellites are “designed for demise” and completely burn up when they spiral from orbit and fall through the atmosphere. But Beck, who has performed multiple wind tunnel tests using satellite mock-ups to mimic atmospheric forces, says the results of such experiments raise doubts. Some satellite components are made of durable materials such as titanium and special alloy composites that don’t melt even at the extremely high temperatures that arise during a hypersonic atmospheric descent.  “We have done some work for some small-satellite manufacturers and basically, their major problem is that the tanks get down,” Beck says. “For larger satellites, around 800 kilos, we would expect maybe two or three objects to land.”  It can be challenging to quantify how much of a danger space debris poses. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) told MIT Technology Review that “the rapid growth in satellite deployments presents a novel challenge” for aviation safety, one that “cannot be quantified with the same precision as more established hazards.”  But the Federal Aviation Administration has calculated some preliminary numbers on the risk to flights: In a 2023 analysis, the agency estimated that by 2035, the risk that one plane per year will experience a disastrous space debris strike will be around 7 in 10,000. Such a collision would either destroy the aircraft immediately or lead to a rapid loss of air pressure, threatening the lives of all on board.

The casualty risk to humans on the ground will be much higher. Aaron Boley, an associate professor in astronomy and a space debris researcher at the University of British Columbia, Canada, says that if megaconstellation satellites “don’t demise entirely,” the risk of a single human death or injury caused by a space debris strike on the ground could reach around 10% per year by 2035. That would mean a better than even chance that someone on Earth would be hit by space junk about every decade. In its report, the FAA put the chances even higher with similar assumptions, estimating that “one person on the planet would be expected to be injured or killed every two years.” Experts are starting to think about how they might incorporate space debris into their air safety processes. The German space situational awareness company Okapi Orbits, for example, in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center and the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), is exploring ways to adapt air traffic control systems so that pilots and air traffic controllers can receive timely and accurate alerts about space debris threats. But predicting the path of space debris is challenging too. In recent years, advances in AI have helped improve predictions of space objects’ trajectories in the vacuum of space, potentially reducing the risk of orbital collisions. But so far, these algorithms can’t properly account for the effects of the gradually thickening atmosphere that space junk encounters during reentry. Radar and telescope observations can help, but the exact location of the impact becomes clear with only very short notice. “Even with high-fidelity models, there’s so many variables at play that having a very accurate reentry location is difficult,” says Njord Eggen, a data analyst at Okapi Orbits. Space debris goes around the planet every hour and a half when in low Earth orbit, he notes, “so even if you have uncertainties on the order of 10 minutes, that’s going to have drastic consequences when it comes to the location where it could impact.” For aviation companies, the problem is not just a potential strike, as catastrophic as that would be. To avoid accidents, authorities are likely to temporarily close the airspace in at-risk regions, which creates delays and costs money. Boley and his colleagues published a paper earlier this year estimating that busy aerospace regions such as northern Europe or the northeastern United States already have about a 26% yearly chance of experiencing at least one disruption due to the reentry of a major space debris item. By the time all planned constellations are fully deployed, aerospace closures due to space debris hazards may become nearly as common as those due to bad weather. Because current reentry predictions are unreliable, many of these closures may end up being unnecessary. For example, when a 21-metric-ton Chinese Long March mega-rocket was falling to Earth in 2022, predictions suggested its debris could scatter across Spain and parts of France. In the end, the rocket crashed into the Pacific Ocean. But the 30-minute closure of south European airspace delayed and diverted hundreds of flights.  In the meantime, international regulators are urging satellite operators and launch providers to deorbit large satellites and rocket bodies in a controlled way, when possible, by carefully guiding them into remote parts of the ocean using residual fuel. 
The European Space Agency estimates that only about half the rocket bodies reentering the atmosphere do so in a controlled way.  Moreover, around 2,300 old and no-longer-controllable rocket bodies still linger in orbit, slowly spiraling toward Earth with no mechanisms for operators to safely guide them into the ocean. “There’s enough material up there that even if we change our practices, we will still have all those rocket bodies eventually reenter,” Boley says. “Although the probability of space debris hitting an aircraft is small, the probability that the debris will spread and fall over busy airspace is not small. That’s actually quite likely.”

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’s new LLM exposes the secrets of how AI really works The news: ChatGPT maker OpenAI has built an experimental large language model that is far easier to understand than typical models. Why it matters: It’s a big deal, because today’s LLMs are black boxes: Nobody fully understands how they do what they do. Building a model that is more transparent sheds light on how LLMs work in general, helping researchers figure out why models hallucinate, why they go off the rails, and just how far we should trust them with critical tasks. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Google DeepMind is using Gemini to train agents inside Goat Simulator 3 Google DeepMind has built a new video-game-playing agent called SIMA 2 that can navigate and solve problems in 3D virtual worlds. The company claims it’s a big step toward more general-purpose agents and better real-world robots.    The company first demoed SIMA (which stands for “scalable instructable multiworld agent”) last year. But this new version has been built on top of Gemini, the firm’s flagship large language model, which gives the agent a huge boost in capability. Read the full story. —Will Douglas Heaven These technologies could help put a stop to animal testing Earlier this week, the UK’s science minister announced an ambitious plan: to phase out animal testing. Testing potential skin irritants on animals will be stopped by the end of next year. By 2027, researchers are “expected to end” tests of the strength of Botox on mice. And drug tests in dogs and nonhuman primates will be reduced by 2030.It’s good news for activists and scientists who don’t want to test on animals. And it’s timely too: In recent decades, we’ve seen dramatic advances in technologies that offer new ways to model the human body and test the effects of potential therapies, without experimenting on animals. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Chinese hackers used Anthropic’s AI to conduct an espionage campaign   It automated a number of attacks on corporations and governments in September. (WSJ $)+ The AI was able to handle the majority of the hacking workload itself. (NYT $)+ Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)2 Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its New Glenn rocketIt managed to deploy two NASA satellites into space without a hitch. (CNN)+ The New Glenn is the company’s largest reusable rocket. (FT $)+ The launch had been delayed twice before. (WP $)3 Brace yourself for flu seasonIt started five weeks earlier than usual in the UK, and the US is next. (Ars Technica)+ Here’s why we don’t have a cold vaccine. Yet. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Google is hosting a Border Protection facial recognition app    The app alerts officials whether to contact ICE about identified immigrants. (404 Media)+ Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline. (MIT Technology Review) 5 OpenAI is trialling group chats in ChatGPTIt’d essentially make AI a participant in a conversation of up to 20 people. (Engadget)
6 A TikTok stunt sparked debate over how charitable America’s churches really areContent creator Nikalie Monroe asked churches for help feeding her baby. Very few stepped up. (WP $) 7 Indian startups are attempting to tackle air pollutionBut their solutions are far beyond the means of the average Indian household. (NYT $)+ OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias. (MIT Technology Review)
8 An AI tool could help reduce wasted efforts to transplant organsIt predicts how likely the would-be recipient is to die during the brief transplantation window. (The Guardian)+ Putin says organ transplants could grant immortality. Not quite. (MIT Technology Review) 9 3D-printing isn’t making prosthetics more affordableIt turns out that plastic prostheses are often really uncomfortable. (IEEE Spectrum)+ These prosthetics break the mold with third thumbs, spikes, and superhero skins. (MIT Technology Review) 10 What happens when relationships with AI fall apartCan you really file for divorce from an LLM? (Wired $)+ It’s surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day “It’s a funky time.”
—Aileen Lee, founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, tells TechCrunch the AI boom has torn up the traditional investment rulebook. One more thing Restoring an ancient lake from the rubble of an unfinished airport in Mexico CityWeeks after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018, he controversially canceled ambitious plans to build an airport on the deserted site of the former Lake Texcoco—despite the fact it was already around a third complete.Instead, he tasked Iñaki Echeverria, a Mexican architect and landscape designer, with turning it into a vast urban park, an artificial wetland that aims to transform the future of the entire Valley region.But as López Obrador’s presidential team nears its end, the plans for Lake Texcoco’s rebirth could yet vanish. Read the full story.
—Matthew Ponsford We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Maybe Gen Z is onto something when it comes to vibe dating.+ Trust AC/DC to give the fans what they want, performing Jailbreak for the first time since 1991.+ Nieves González, the artist behind Lily Allen’s new album cover, has an eye for detail.+ Here’s what AI determines is a catchy tune.

Earlier this week, the UK’s science minister announced an ambitious plan: to phase out animal testing. Testing potential skin irritants on animals will be stopped by the end of next year, according to a strategy released on Tuesday. By 2027, researchers are “expected to end” tests of the strength of Botox on mice. And drug tests in dogs and nonhuman primates will be reduced by 2030.  Animal welfare groups have been campaigning for commitments like these for decades. But a lack of alternatives has made it difficult to put a stop to animal testing. Advances in medical science and biotechnology are changing that.
Animals have been used in scientific research for thousands of years. Animal experimentation has led to many important discoveries about how the brains and bodies of animals work. And because regulators require drugs to be first tested in research animals, it has played an important role in the creation of medicines and devices for both humans and other animals. Today, countries like the UK and the US regulate animal research and require scientists to hold multiple licenses and adhere to rules on animal housing and care. Still, millions of animals are used annually in research. Plenty of scientists don’t want to take part in animal testing. And some question whether animal research is justifiable—especially considering that around 95% of treatments that look promising in animals don’t make it to market.
In recent decades, we’ve seen dramatic advances in technologies that offer new ways to model the human body and test the effects of potential therapies, without experimenting on humans or other animals. Take “organs on chips,” for example. Researchers have been creating miniature versions of human organs inside tiny plastic cases. These systems are designed to contain the same mix of cells you’d find in a full-grown organ and receive a supply of nutrients that keeps them alive. Today, multiple teams have created models of livers, intestines, hearts, kidneys and even the brain. And they are already being used in research. Heart chips have been sent into space to observe how they respond to low gravity. The FDA used lung chips to assess covid-19 vaccines. Gut chips are being used to study the effects of radiation. Some researchers are even working to connect multiple chips to create a “body on a chip”—although this has been in the works for over a decade and no one has quite managed it yet. In the same vein, others have been working on creating model versions of organs—and even embryos—in the lab. By growing groups of cells into tiny 3D structures, scientists can study how organs develop and work, and even test drugs on them. They can even be personalized—if you take cells from someone, you should be able to model that person’s specific organs. Some researchers have even been able to create organoids of developing fetuses. The UK government strategy mentions the promise of artificial intelligence, too. Many scientists have been quick to adopt AI as a tool to help them make sense of vast databases, and to find connections between genes, proteins and disease, for example. Others are using AI to design all-new drugs. Those new drugs could potentially be tested on virtual humans. Not flesh-and-blood people, but digital reconstructions that live in a computer. Biomedical engineers have already created digital twins of organs. In ongoing trials, digital hearts are being used to guide surgeons on how—and where—to operate on real hearts. When I spoke to Natalia Trayanova, the biomedical engineering professor behind this trial, she told me that her model could recommend regions of heart tissue to be burned off as part of treatment for atrial fibrillation. Her tool would normally suggest two or three regions but occasionally would recommend many more. “They just have to trust us,” she told me.

It is unlikely that we’ll completely phase out animal testing by 2030. The UK government acknowledges that animal testing is still required by lots of regulators, including the FDA, the European Medicines Agency, and the World Health Organization. And while alternatives to animal testing have come a long way, none of them perfectly capture how a living body will respond to a treatment. At least not yet. Given all the progress that has been made in recent years, it’s not too hard to imagine a future without animal testing. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.