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The Download: hunting an asteroid, and unlocking the human mind
Plus: Donald Trump has announced a new rash of tariffs
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.
Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever
If you were told that the odds of something were 3.1%, it might not seem like much. But for the people charged with protecting our planet, it was huge.
On February 18, astronomers determined that a 130- to 300-foot-long asteroid had a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032. Never had an asteroid of such dangerous dimensions stood such a high chance of striking the planet. Then, just days later on February 24, experts declared that the danger had passed. Earth would be spared.
How did they do it? What was it like to track the rising danger of this asteroid, and to ultimately determine that it’d miss us?
This is the inside story of how a sprawling network of astronomers found, followed, mapped, planned for, and finally dismissed the most dangerous asteroid ever found—all under the tightest of timelines and, for just a moment, with the highest of stakes. Read the full story.
—Robin George Andrews
This article is part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting. The stories in the series take a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here.
How scientists are trying to use AI to unlock the human mind
Today’s AI landscape is defined by the ways in which neural networks are unlike human brains. A toddler learns how to communicate effectively with only a thousand calories a day and regular conversation; meanwhile, tech companies are reopening nuclear power plants, polluting marginalized communities, and pirating terabytes of books in order to train and run their LLMs.
Despite that, it’s a common view among neuroscientists that building brainlike neural networks is one of the most promising paths for the field, and that attitude has started to spread to psychology.
Last week, the prestigious journal Nature published a pair of studies showcasing the use of neural networks for predicting how humans and other animals behave in psychological experiments. However, predicting a behavior and explaining how it came about are two very different things. Read the full story.
—Grace Huckins
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first every Monday, sign up here.
Why the US and Europe could lose the race for fusion energy
—Daniel F. Brunner, Edlyn V. Levine, Fiona E. Murray, & Rory Burke
Fusion energy holds the potential to shift a geopolitical landscape that is currently configured around fossil fuels. Harnessing fusion will deliver the energy resilience, security, and abundance needed for all modern industrial and service sectors.
But these benefits will be controlled by the nation that leads in both developing the complex supply chains required and building fusion power plants at scales large enough to drive down economic costs.
Investing in supply chains and scaling up complex production processes has increasingly been a strength of China’s and a weakness of the West, resulting in the migration of many critical industries from the West to China. With fusion, we run the risk that history will repeat itself. But it does not have to go that way. Read the full story.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Donald Trump has announced a range of new tariffs
Southeast Asia has been hit particularly hard. (Reuters)
+ Some tariffs on other countries have been delayed until next month. (Vox)
+ Investors are hoping to weather the storm. (Insider $)
+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Ukraine’s fiber-optic drones are giving it the edge over Russia
The drones are impervious to electronic attacks. (WSJ $)
+ Trump is resuming sending arms to Ukraine. (CNN)
+ Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense. (MIT Technology Review)
3 OpenAI is seriously scared about spies
It’s upped its security dramatically amid fears of corporate espionage. (FT $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Amazon is asking its corporate staff to volunteer in its warehouses
It’s in desperate need of extra hands to help during its Prime Day event. (The Guardian)
5 Google’s AI-created drugs are almost ready for human trials
Isomorphic Labs has been working on drugs to tackle cancer. (Fortune $)
+ An AI-driven “factory of drugs” claims to have hit a big milestone. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Apple’s AI ambitions have suffered yet another setback
Their executive in charge of AI models has been wooed by Meta. (Bloomberg $)
+ Ruoming Pang’s pay package is likely to be in the tens of millions. (WSJ $)
7 Waymo’s robotaxis are heading to NYC
But its “road trip” announcement is no guarantee it’ll launch there. (TechCrunch)
8 Brands don’t need influencers any more
They’re doing just fine producing their own in-house social media videos. (NYT $)
9 We may age in rapid bursts, rather than a steady decline
New research could shed light on how to slow the process down. (New Scientist $)
+ Aging hits us in our 40s and 60s. But well-being doesn’t have to fall off a cliff. (MIT Technology Review)
10 This open-source software fights back against AI bots
Anubis protects sites from scrapers. (404 Media)
+ Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“I think we’ve all had enough of Elon’s political errors and political opinions.”
—Ross Gerber, an investor who was formerly an enthusiastic backer of Elon Musk, tells the Washington Post he wishes the billionaire would simply focus on Tesla.
One more thing
How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracyThe internet loves a good neologism, especially if it can capture a purported vibe shift or explain a new trend. In 2013, the columnist Adrian Wooldridge coined a word that eventually did both. Writing for the Economist, he warned of the coming “techlash,” a revolt against Silicon Valley’s rich and powerful, fueled by the public’s growing realization that these “sovereigns of cyberspace” weren’t the benevolent bright-future bringers they claimed to be.
While Wooldridge didn’t say precisely when this techlash would arrive, it’s clear today that a dramatic shift in public opinion toward Big Tech and its leaders did in fact happen—and is arguably still happening. It’s worth investigating why, and what we can do to start taking some of that power back. Read the full story.
—Bryan Gardiner
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.)
+ Struggling to solve a problem? It’s time to take a nap.
+ If any TV show has better midcentury decor than Mad Men, I’ve yet to see it.
+ Sir Antony Gormley’s arresting iron men sculptures have been a fixture on Crosby Beach in the UK for 20 years.
+ Check out this definitive Planet of the Apes timeline.
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