The Download: America’s gun crisis, and how AI video models work
Plus: OpenAI and Microsoft have struck a new deal
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.
We can’t “make American children healthy again” without tackling the gun crisis
This week, the Trump administration released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again. It suggests American children should be eating more healthily. And they should be getting more exercise.
But there’s a glaring omission. The leading cause of death for American children and teenagers isn’t ultraprocessed food or exposure to some chemical. It’s gun violence.
This week’s news of yet more high-profile shootings at schools in the US throws this disconnect into even sharper relief. Experts believe it is time to treat gun violence in the US as what it is: a public health crisis. 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.
How do AI models generate videos?
It’s been a big year for video generation. In the last nine months OpenAI made Sora public, Google DeepMind launched Veo 3, and the video startup Runway launched Gen-4. All can produce video clips that are (almost) impossible to distinguish from actual filmed footage or CGI animation.
The downside is that creators are competing with AI slop, and social media feeds are filling up with faked news footage. Video generation also uses up a huge amount of energy, many times more than text or image generation.
With AI-generated videos everywhere, let’s take a moment to talk about the tech that makes them work. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
This article 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 more from the series here.
Meet our 2025 Innovator of the Year: Sneha Goenka
Up to a quarter of children entering intensive care have undiagnosed genetic conditions. To be treated properly, they must first get diagnoses—which means having their genomes sequenced. This process typically takes up to seven weeks. Sadly, that’s often too slow to save a critically ill child.
Hospitals may soon have a faster option, thanks to a groundbreaking system built in part by Sneha Goenka, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton—and MIT Technology Review’s 2025 Innovator of the Year. Read all about Goenka and her work in this profile.
—Helen Thomson
As well as our Innovator of the Year, Goenka is one of the biotech honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2025. Meet the rest of our biotech and materials science innovators, and the full list here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI and Microsoft have agreed a revised deal
But haven’t actually revealed any details of said deal. (Axios)
+ The news comes as OpenAI keeps pursuing its for-profit pivot. (Ars Technica)
+ The world’s largest startup is going to need more paying users soon. (WSJ $)
2 A child has died from a measles complication in Los Angeles
They had contracted the virus before they were old enough to be vaccinated. (Ars Technica)
+ Infants are best protected by community immunity. (LA Times $)
+ They’d originally recovered from measles before developing the condition. (CNN)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Ukrainian drone attacks triggered internet blackouts in Russia
The Kremlin cut internet access in a bid to thwart the mobile-guided drones. (FT $)
+ The UK is poised to mass-produce drones to aid Ukraine. (Sky News)
+ On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Demis Hasabis says AI may slash drug discovery time to under a year
Or perhaps even faster. (Bloomberg $)
+ But there’s good reason to be skeptical of that claim. (FT $)
+ An AI-driven “factory of drugs” claims to have hit a big milestone. (MIT Technology Review)
5 How chatbots alter how we think
We shouldn’t outsource our critical thinking to them. (Undark)
+ AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Fraudsters are threatening small businesses with one-star reviews
Online reviews can make or break fledgling enterprises, and scammers know it. (NYT $)
7 Why humanoid robots aren’t taking off any time soon
The industry has a major hype problem. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Chinese tech giant Ant Group showed off its own humanoid machine. (The Verge)
+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are suing Perplexity
In yet another case of alleged copyright infringement. (Reuters)
+ What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits? (MIT Technology Review)
9 Where we’re most likely to find extraterrestrial life in the next decade
Warning: Hollywood may have given us unrealistic expectations. (BBC)
10 Want to build a trillion-dollar company?
Then kiss your social life goodbye. (WSJ $)
Quote of the day
“Nooooo I’m going to have to use my brain again and write 100% of my code like a caveman from December 2024.”
—A Hacker News commenter jokes about a service outage that left Anthropic users unable to access its AI coding tools, Ars Technica reports.
One more thing
What Africa needs to do to become a major AI player
Africa is still early in the process of adopting AI technologies. But researchers say the continent is uniquely hospitable to it for several reasons, including a relatively young and increasingly well-educated population, a rapidly growing ecosystem of AI startups, and lots of potential consumers.
However, ambitious efforts to develop AI tools that answer the needs of Africans face numerous hurdles. Read our story to learn what they are, and how they could be overcome.
—Abdullahi Tsanni
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 fascinating, unexpected origins of everyone’s favorite pastime—karaoke.
+ Why the Twilight juggernaut just refuses to die.
+ If you’re among the mass of excited Hollow Knight fans, here’s a few tips to get through the early stages of the new Silksong game.
+ A sloe gin bramble pie sounds like the perfect way to welcome fall.
