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 new biologists treating LLMs like aliens How large is a large language model? We now coexist with machines so vast and so complicated that nobody quite understands what they are, how…
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. “Dr. Google” had its issues. Can ChatGPT Health do better? For the past two decades, there’s been a clear first step for anyone who starts experiencing new medical symptoms: Look them up online.…
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. Yann LeCun’s new venture is a contrarian bet against large language models Yann LeCun is a Turing Award recipient and a top AI researcher, but he has long been a contrarian figure in…
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. All anyone wants to talk about at Davos is AI and Donald Trump —Mat Honan, MIT Technology Review’s editor in chief At Davos this year Trump is dominating all the side conversations. There…
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 man who made India digital isn’t done yet Nandan Nilekani can’t stop trying to push India into the future. He started nearly 30 years ago, masterminding an ongoing experiment in technological state…
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. What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate Just before Christmas the Trump administration dramatically escalated its war on digital rights by banning five people from entering the…
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. AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced. Depending who you ask, AI-powered coding is either giving software developers an unprecedented productivity boost or churning out masses of poorly designed code…
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 man hunting the spies in your smartphone In April 2025, Ronald Deibert left all electronic devices at home in Toronto and boarded a plane. When he landed in Illinois, he bought…
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 next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint The popularity of commercial nuclear reactors has surged in recent years as worries about climate change and energy independence drowned out concerns about…
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. Sodium-ion batteries are making their way into cars—and the grid For decades, lithium-ion batteries have powered our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But lithium’s limited supply and volatile price have led the industry…