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The Download: clean energy progress, and OpenAI’s trilemma
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.
How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states—blue and red alike
—Joshua A. Basseches is the David and Jane Flowerree Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy at Tulane University.The second Trump administration is proving to be more disastrous for the climate and the clean energy economy than many had feared.
Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed most of the clean energy incentives in former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, his EPA administrator has moved to revoke the endangerment finding, the legal basis for federal oversight of greenhouse gases.
This has left many in the climate and clean energy communities wondering what do we do now? The answer, I would argue, is to return to state capitals—a policymaking venue that climate and renewable energy advocates already know well. Read the full story.
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s Heat Exchange guest opinion series, offering expert commentary on legal, political and regulatory issues related to climate change and clean energy. You can read the rest of the pieces here.
Should AI flatter us, fix us, or just inform us?
How do you want your AI to treat you?
It’s a serious question, and it’s one that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has clearly been chewing on since GPT-5’s bumpy launch at the start of the month.
He faces a trilemma. Should ChatGPT flatter us, at the risk of fueling delusions that can spiral out of hand? Or fix us, which requires us to believe AI can be a therapist despite the evidence to the contrary? Or should it inform us with cold, to-the-point responses that may leave users bored and less likely to stay engaged?
It’s safe to say the company has failed to pick a lane, and if these are indeed AI’s options, the rockiness of this latest update might be due to Altman believing ChatGPT can juggle all three. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox 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 The Trump administration is in talks to take a 10% stake in Intel
It’s the equivalent of around $10.5 billion—though the final stake could be even higher. (Bloomberg $)
+ Intel’s chip manufacturing business has struggled to find customers lately. (NYT $)
+ Meanwhile, Softbank has sunk $2 billion into the company. (The Register)
2 Texas’ measles outbreak has come to an end
Making 2025 the worst year for measles in the US for more than 30 years. (Wired $)
+ Greater numbers of US teens are getting vaccinated. (Scientific American $)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The UK has dropped its demand for Apple to create a backdoor
It would have enabled unprecedented access to protected encrypted data. (9to5 Mac)
+ British iPhone users lost their access to Apple’s data encryption services. (NYT $)
+ Apple and US lawmakers have been fighting the request for months. (Reuters)
4 SpaceX may never pay any federal income tax
Despite being the beneficiary of billions of dollars of federal contracts. (NYT $)
+ It looks like China is winning the space race to the Moon. (Ars Technica)
5 AI is supercharging CEO impersonator scams
Criminals are targeting workers with privileged access to a firm’s inner operations. (WSJ $)
+ Five ways criminals are using AI. (MIT Technology Review)
6 The underlying prompts for Grok’s AI have been exposed
And they’re exactly as juvenile as you’d expect. (404 Media)
7 China’s CATL is planning a major EV battery swapping push
It plans to serve 1 million cars each day by 2028. (FT $)
+ The country is surging ahead in terms of driverless cars, too. (Rest of World)
+ How 5-minute battery swaps could get more EVs on the road. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Consumer DNA testing can turn families’ lives upside down
You never know what you might find out. (New Yorker $)
+ How a bankruptcy judge can stop a genetic privacy disaster. (MIT Technology Review)
9 This prize-winning author used ChatGPT to write her novel
How much of it, Rie Qudan can’t say, exactly. (The Guardian)
+ AI can make you more creative—but it has limits. (MIT Technology Review)
10 How to make more convincing AI hair
Virtual Harrison Ford will be the first lucky recipient. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“We were very much impressed. At the same time, we were afraid.”
—Vandana Kharod, an 84-year old attendee of an AI for seniors class in Maryland, describes her reaction to being shown highly realistic AI-generated images to the Washington Post.
One more thing
Inside the quest to map the universe with mysterious bursts of radio energy
When our universe was less than half as old as it is today, a burst of energy that could cook a sun’s worth of popcorn shot out from somewhere amid a compact group of galaxies. Some 8 billion years later, radio waves from that burst reached Earth and were captured by a sophisticated low-frequency radio telescope in the Australian outback.
The signal, which arrived in June 2022, and lasted for under half a millisecond, is one of a growing class of mysterious radio signals called fast radio bursts. In the last 10 years, astronomers have picked up nearly 5,000 of them. This one was particularly special: nearly double the age of anything previously observed, and three and a half times more energetic.
No one knows what causes fast radio bursts. They flash in a seemingly random and unpredictable pattern from all over the sky. But despite the mystery, these radio waves are starting to prove extraordinarily useful. Read the full story.
—Anna Kramer
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.)
+ These airbrush paintings have a cool 80s vibe, with a hint of carnival menace.
+ James Cameron is having a tough time writing a new Terminator film—because of the increasingly bleak AI news cycle.
+ Summer may be drawing to a close, but these tasty recipes are a reminder of sunnier times.
+ Tune in and peace out to these Windows 95 ambient mixes.
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