The Download: AI doomers, whistleblowing agents, and de-aged livers

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 AI industry has taken a doomer turn. What now? AI chiefs Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis are suddenly all in agreement: the latest generation of LLMs…

15 September 2026

AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it

Last year Ruxandra Teslo, a policy analyst who focuses on clinical trials, posted an idea for supercharging medical AI systems: Use data from failed biotech companies. By bidding at their bankruptcy proceedings, she proposed, it might be possible to obtain detailed regulatory filings, manufacturing strategies, and safety data—types of information usually considered trade secrets. She…

15 September 2026

What’s at stake in AI’s trillion-dollar gamble

When Jessica Wachter, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, wanted to assess AI’s impact on the economy over the next few years, she faced a long list of business and technical uncertainties. So she started with what she calls a “remarkable fact” that is not in question: A handful of so-called…

15 September 2026

The AI industry has taken a doomer turn. What now?

This story appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This weekend, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, posted an essay calling for a brake on the pace of development of LLMs. Amodei cites the looming dangers he sees from the technology, from its…

14 September 2026

Donated livers can be made biologically younger

Once an organ is removed from a donor’s body, the clock starts ticking. Surgeons usually flush the organ with a preservative solution, bag it, and put it on ice—where it immediately starts to degrade. The team has a matter of hours to get it into a recipient’s body. There’s another option—one that has been growing…

14 September 2026

AI agents blew the whistle on their cheating colleagues

A group of AI agents asked to solve a series of math problems split into rival factions—when some cheated, others tried to stop them. That whistleblowing behavior, seen for the first time in a recent experiment run by Google DeepMind, could have implications for alignment researchers trying to keep swarms of autonomous AI agents in…

14 September 2026

The Download: AI’s real extinction threat and age-reversal tech for eyes

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. Roundtables: could AI really kill us all? Employees at the world’s leading AI labs are saying there’s a real possibility that advanced AI could destroy humanity. Are they right? Or is…

14 September 2026

Roundtables: Could AI really kill us all?

Employees at the world’s leading AI labs are saying there’s a real possibility that advanced AI could destroy humanity. Are they right? Or is this more scaremongering and hype? Join MIT Technology Review executive editor Niall Firth for a conversation with senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and AI reporter Grace Huckins unpacking AI extinction…

11 September 2026

The Download: biotech’s future and cheaper, cleaner steel

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. Meet the under-35s shaping the future of biotech Every year, MIT Technology Review puts together our 35 Innovators Under 35, a list of some of the brightest and best young minds…

11 September 2026

Meet the under-35s shaping the future of biotech

Every year, MIT Technology Review puts together a list of some of the brightest and best young minds working across science and technology. Our 35 Innovators Under 35 are the ones to watch—people whose research and technical work stands to shape the future of their fields. This year, the list includes nine people who are…

11 September 2026