The Download: gambling with humanity’s future, and the FDA under Trump
Plus: NASA is looking into air leaks onboard the ISS
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.
Tech billionaires are making a risky bet with humanity’s future
Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others may have slightly different goals, but their grand visions for the next decade and beyond are remarkably similar.
They include aligning AI with the interests of humanity; creating an artificial superintelligence that will solve all the world’s most pressing problems; merging with that superintelligence to achieve immortality (or something close to it); establishing a permanent, self-sustaining colony on Mars; and, ultimately, spreading out across the cosmos.
Three features play a central role with powering these visions, says Adam Becker, a science writer and astrophysicist: an unshakable certainty that technology can solve any problem, a belief in the necessity of perpetual growth, and a quasi-religious obsession with transcending our physical and biological limits.
In his timely new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Becker reveals how these fantastical visions conceal a darker agenda. Read the full story.
—Bryan Gardiner
This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!
Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration
Earlier this week, two new leaders of the US Food and Drug Administration published a list of priorities for the agency. Both Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad are controversial figures in the science community. They were generally highly respected academics until the covid pandemic, when their contrarian opinions on masking, vaccines, and lockdowns turned many of their colleagues off them.
Given all this, along with recent mass firings of FDA employees, lots of people were pretty anxious to see what this list might include—and what we might expect the future of food and drug regulation in the US to look like. So let’s dive into the pair’s plans for new investigations, speedy approvals, and the “unleashing” of AI.
—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 NASA is investigating leaks on the ISS
It’s postponed launching private astronauts to the station while it evaluates. (WP $)
+ Its core component has been springing small air leaks for months. (Reuters)
+ Meanwhile, this Chinese probe is en route to a near-Earth asteroid. (Wired $)
2 Undocumented migrants are using social media to warn of ICE raids
The DIY networks are anonymously reporting police presences across LA. (Wired $)
+ Platforms’ relationships with protest activism has changed drastically. (NY Mag $)
3 Google’s AI Overviews is hallucinating about the fatal Air India crash
It incorrectly stated that it involved an Airbus plane, not a Boeing 787. (Ars Technica)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Chinese engineers are sneaking suitcases of hard drives into the country
To covertly train advanced AI models. (WSJ $)
+ The US is cracking down on Huawei’s ability to produce chips. (Bloomberg $)
+ What the US-China AI race overlooks. (Rest of World)
5 The National Hurricane Center is joining forces with DeepMind
It’s the first time the center has used AI to predict nature’s worst storms. (NYT $)
+ Here’s what we know about hurricanes and climate change. (MIT Technology Review)
6 OpenAI is working on a product with toymaker Mattel
AI-powered Barbies?! (FT $)
+ Nothing is safe from the creep of AI, not even playtime. (LA Times $)
+ OpenAI has ambitions to reach billions of users. (Bloomberg $)
7 Chatbots posing as licensed therapists may be breaking the law
Digital rights organizations have filed a complaint to the FTC. (404 Media)
+ How do you teach an AI model to give therapy? (MIT Technology Review)
8 Major companies are abandoning their climate commitments
But some experts argue this may not be entirely bad. (Bloomberg $)
+ Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Vibe coding is shaking up software engineering
Even though AI-generated code is inherently unreliable. (Wired $)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)
10 TikTok really loves hotdogs 🌭
And who can blame it? (Insider $)
Quote of the day
“It kind of jams two years of work into two months.”
—Andrew Butcher, president of the Maine Connectivity Authority, tells Ars Technica why it’s so difficult to meet the Trump administration’s new plans to increase broadband access in certain states.
One more thing
The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we needIt’s a tough time to try and buy a home in America. From the beginning of the pandemic to early 2024, US home prices rose by 47%. In large swaths of the country, buying a home is no longer a possibility even for those with middle-class incomes. For many, that marks the end of an American dream built around owning a house. Over the same time, rents have gone up 26%.
The reason for the current rise in the cost of housing is clear to most economists: a lack of supply. Simply put, we don’t build enough houses and apartments, and we haven’t for years.
But the reality is that even if we ease the endless permitting delays and begin cutting red tape, we will still be faced with a distressing fact: The construction industry is not very efficient when it comes to building stuff. Read the full story.
—David Rotman
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ If you’re one of the unlucky people who has triskaidekaphobia, look away now.
+ 15-year old Nicholas is preparing to head from his home in the UK to Japan to become a professional sumo wrestler.
+ Earlier this week, London played host to 20,000 women in bald caps. But why? ($)
+ Why do dads watch TV standing up? I need to know.
