The Download: reasons to be optimistic about AI’s energy use, and Caiwei Chen’s three things
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Inside the effort to tally AI’s energy appetite
After working on it for months, my colleague Casey Crownhart and I finally saw our story...
The Download: US climate studies are being shut down, and building cities from lava
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies
The Trump administration has terminated National Science Foundation grants for more than 100 research projects related...
Fueling seamless AI at scale
From large language models (LLMs) to reasoning agents, today’s AI tools bring unprecedented computational demands. Trillion-parameter...
The Download: sycophantic LLMs, and the AI Hype Index
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us
Back in April, OpenAIannounced it was rolling back an update to its GPT-4o model that made...
The Download: the next anti-drone weapon, and powering AI’s growth
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
What will power AI’s growth?
It’s been a little over a week since we published Power Hungry, a package that takes...
This giant microwave may change the future of war
Imagine: China deploys hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones in the air, on the sea, and...
The AI Hype Index: College students are hooked on ChatGPT
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype...
The Download: the story of OpenAI, and making magnesium
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
OpenAI: The power and the pride
In April, Paul Graham, the founder of the tech startup accelerator Y Combinator, sent a tweet...
This startup wants to make more climate-friendly metal in the US
A California-based company called Magrathea just turned on a new electrolyzer that can make magnesium metal...
A new sodium metal fuel cell could help clean up transportation
A new type of fuel cell that runs on sodium metal could one day help clean...
Building customer-centric convenience
In the U.S., two-thirds of the country’s 150,000 convenience stores are run by independent operators. Mom-and-pop...
The Download: nuclear-powered AI, and a short history of creativity
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
The Download: meet Cathy Tie, and Anthropic’s new AI models
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein”
Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to...
The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit...
Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time
Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making...
The Download: the desert data center boom, and how to measure Earth’s elevations
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Three takeaways about AI’s energy use and climate impacts
This week, we published Power Hungry, a package all about AI and energy. At the center...
A new atomic clock in space could help us measure elevations on Earth
In 2003, engineers from Germany and Switzerland began building a bridge across the Rhine River simultaneously...
Roundtables: A New Look at AI’s Energy Use
Recorded on May 21, 2025 Big Tech’s appetite for energy is growing rapidly as adoption of...
The Download: Google’s AI mission, and America’s reliance on natural gas
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
By putting AI into everything, Google wants to make it invisible
If you want to know where AI is headed, this year’s Google I/O has you covered....
The Download: introducing the AI energy package
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI?
In the AI arms race, all the major players say they want to go nuclear. Over...
Four reasons to be optimistic about AI’s energy usage
The day after his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump announced Stargate, a $500 billion initiative...
Everything you need to know about estimating AI’s energy and emissions burden
When we set out to write a story on the best available estimates for AI’s energy...
The data center boom in the desert
In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of...
AI’s energy impact is still small—but how we handle it is huge
With seemingly no limit to the demand for artificial intelligence, everyone in the energy, AI, and...
AI could keep us dependent on natural gas for decades to come
The thousands of sprawling acres in rural northeast Louisiana had gone unwanted for nearly two decades....
How AI is introducing errors into courtrooms
It’s been quite a couple weeks for stories about AI in the courtroom. You might have...
AI can do a better job of persuading people than we do
Millions of people argue with each other online every day, but remarkably few of them change...
The Download: chaos at OpenAI, and the spa heated by bitcoin mining
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Can crowdsourced fact-checking curb misinformation on social media?
In a 2019 speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg famously declared that he didn’t want Facebook...
Inside the story that enraged OpenAI
In 2019, Karen Hao, a senior reporter with MIT Technology Review, pitched me on writing a...
The Download: the first personalized gene-editing drug, and Montana’s Right to Try experiment
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Access to experimental medical treatments is expanding across the US
A couple of weeks ago I was in Washington, DC, for a gathering of scientists, policymakers,...
This baby boy was treated with the first personalized gene-editing drug
Doctors say they constructed a bespoke gene-editing treatment in less than seven months and used it...
The Download: Montana’s experimental treatments, and Google DeepMind’s new AI agent
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
How US research cuts are threatening crucial climate data
Over the last few months, and especially the last few weeks, there’s been an explosion of...
Google DeepMind’s new AI agent uses large language models to crack real-world problems
Google DeepMind has once again used large language models to discover new solutions to long-standing problems...
The first US hub for experimental medical treatments is coming
A bill that allows medical clinics to sell unproven treatments has been passed in Montana. Under...
The Download: taking the temperature of snow, and the future of privacy
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
Why climate researchers are taking the temperature of mountain snow
On a crisp morning in early April, Dan McEvoy and Bjoern Bingham cut clean lines down...
The Download: CRISPR in court, and the police’s ban-skirting AI
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going...
