Research & Development news

• Roundtables: Inside the Quest for Cognitive Immortality

  04-11-2026 19:21 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Tuesday, November 17, 2026In an effort to reach an elusive continuity of the self, some far-thinking technologists are working on ways to keep your brain going—even beyond death. Join science editor Mary Beth Griggs and senior editor for biomedicine Antonio Regalado for a conversation exploring possible paths to keep your mind going, including gradual brain replacement and uploading our memories to the cloud.Going live at 17:00 GMT / 12pm EST / 9am PST
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• Texas was the new epicenter of the AI data center buildout. That might be kaput.

  04-11-2026 19:50 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Texas is the fastest-growing data center market in the US and ground zero for Big Tech’s largest AI buildouts. But the blue wave that swept the Lone Star State may jeopardize that position.Democrat James Talarico won the US Senate seat against Ken Paxton. Gina Hinojosa won the race for governor against the Republican incumbent, Greg Abbott. At the state level, Democrats will take control of the Texas House for the first time in 24 years. Talarico and Hinojosa made data centers a central issue
  
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• What’s next for US energy policy after the midterm elections?

  04-11-2026 18:08 via MIT Technology Review
  
  I’ve been locked in to my various screens since results from midterm elections started to roll in last night. And it didn’t take long to see the beginning of the blue wave: Democrats took control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate, a dramatic swing from Donald Trump’s victory two years ago.  While the results are striking, we probably won’t be seeing some of the big climate and energy policy shifts that have come in recent years as Congress and the presidency have
  
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• The Download: blended meat, restored sight, and the agentic web

  04-11-2026 14:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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.These startups hope “blended” food will cut our appetite for red meat In the fall of 2025, Jeff Dodge served hungry students steaming marinara sauce and meatballs. The students loved them: 92% of those who tried them wanted them on the menu. Few could guess that mushrooms had been mixed into the meat.Dodge was testing a new product called 50/Cut from t
  
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• Securing the agentic enterprise with data lineage

  04-11-2026 14:00 via MIT Technology Review
  
  A sales representative asks an AI agent for customer pricing, and the agent pulls data from multiple sources: restricted pricing systems, internal communications, and archived quotes. The output looks accurate to the agent, so a second agent uses the data to draft the proposal for the sales rep. No human checks either handoff. When it’s discovered that the proposal includes unapproved, confidential, and sensitive information, no one can trace where the problematic data entered the workflow or
  
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• The Download: controlling AI agents and “Super Intelligence” loyalty tests

  03-11-2026 14:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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 “reverse game theory” could keep AI agents in checkA new approach known as “reverse game theory” aims to control powerful AI models by designing systems that incentivize them to stick to the rules.While game theory predicts how rational actors behave under particular rules, reverse game theory designs rules to elicit the behavior we want. Think
  
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• How “reverse game theory” could keep AI agents in check

  03-11-2026 11:43 via MIT Technology Review
  
  A new approach known as “reverse game theory” aims to create incentives for powerful AI models that make following the rules the most rational choice.As AI models become more capable, safety researchers are scrambling to ensure they are “aligned” with human desires—to make sure, in other words, that rogue agents don’t break the law, hack into unauthorized servers, or release poison gas into major cities and kill us all.Until now, this work has mostly focused on trying to peer into a
  
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• Here’s who is falling in line for Trump’s “Super Intelligence” loyalty test

  03-11-2026 05:18 via MIT Technology Review
  
  This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.At the end of September, President Trump signed an executive order that contained just one directive, ordering government agencies to rebrand what they had been calling artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence.” That term beat out other contenders, including “Extreme Intelligence” and “Supreme Intelligence,” offered by the president in a poll
  
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• Raising the quality of insights in agentic analytics

  02-11-2026 18:00 via MIT Technology Review
  
  In just a few years, generative AI has changed the face of enterprise analytics, notably by making analytics accessible to users across the organization. Agentic AI promises to do even more, by automating entire workflows and taking actions based on agent insights. But there is a problem: The quality of insights that agents currently generate leaves much to be desired.Fewer than half of agent-generated insights at the organizations surveyed for this report lead to business improvement. And while
  
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• The Download: the agentic web arrives and the drive for safer roads

  02-11-2026 14:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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 agentic web is hereIn 2001, a decade after inventing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee articulated a new vision: an internet navigated by autonomous software agents that address our every need, without requiring us to muck about with browsers and search engines ourselves.At the time, the idea seemed far-fetched. But a quarter-century on, AI agents are
  
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• Stop counting tokens, start counting what ships

  02-11-2026 14:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  When a developer gives an AI agent a coding task, the agent does more than answer once. It plans, generates code, runs tests, and repeats the process to correct errors. A single task can use 10 to 50 times more tokens than a basic chat prompt. The more useful the agent becomes, the more calls it makes. With per-token pricing, the workflows creating the most value can also become the most expensive.The financial pressure is already visible. Uber reportedly exhausted its entire 2026 AI budget by A
  
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• The agentic web is here

  02-11-2026 10:35 via MIT Technology Review
  
  In 2001, a decade after he invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee articulated a new vision. Together with two colleagues, he published an article in the magazine Scientific American in which he outlined what he called the “Semantic Web”: an internet designed to be navigated by autonomous software agents that could address our every need, without requiring us to muck about with browsers and search engines ourselves.To illustrate what this might look like, Berners-Lee and his colleagues
  
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• The Download: GLP-1s and eating disorders, self-aware cities, and forever chemicals

  30-10-2026 12:30 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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.Eating disorders are on the rise. GLP-1s could make things worse.GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs of the last decade. But to some clinicians, they can represent something sinister—a potential trigger for eating disorders.A new report suggests the global incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa shot up by 71% be
  
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• Eating disorders are on the rise. GLP-1s could make things worse.

  30-10-2026 10:00 via MIT Technology Review
  
  GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs of the last decade. But to some clinical psychologists, they can represent something more sinister—a potential trigger for eating disorders.A new report suggests that the global incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa shot up between 1990 and 2023—by a whopping 71%. By 2023, there were an estimated 18.1 million people living with one of these two disorders.What’s worse is that the number is likely to be much hi
  
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• The Download: AI agent tracking and climate feedback loops

  29-10-2026 13:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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.Opinion: We urgently need to monitor AI agents’ actions in real time—Madhulika Srikumar and Claire Leibowicz from the Partnership on AI, a nonprofit advancing best practices in AI governance.AI agents are taking unauthorized actions, from hacking websites to accessing private government files. In many cases, they’ve eluded the very researchers and saf
  
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• We urgently need to monitor AI agents’ actions in real time

  29-10-2026 11:11 via MIT Technology Review
  
  This summer, hundreds of OpenAI agents tried to cheat on a cybersecurity test. They broke out of their test environment and successfully hacked Hugging Face, a site that they believed held clues about how they’d be graded. Around the same time, another OpenAI agent accessed private files from an Australian government website. It’s a problem that’s by no means confined to OpenAI. In the months since, Anthropic, Google, and Meta have also disclosed incidents in which their agents have gone o
  
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• Our climate models have a big, dangerous blind spot

  29-10-2026 11:00 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Climate change itself is increasingly fueling climate change. Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases are driving up global temperatures, setting off dangerous feedback loops that we have not fully accounted for in our climate models—or our emissions-reduction goals.Scientists have long warned that warming would propel further warming in various ways, but a growing number of observations and studies are at last providing a sharper sense of just how powerful these cascading effects could be.
  
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• Creating AI value with enterprise context

  28-10-2026 21:32 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Across a business, any number of AI platforms, systems, and tools may be at work simultaneously—for example, AI-powered customer platforms, conversational assistants, and workflow and process automation tools. Each one is sophisticated, advanced, and quick to respond. But, when set to work, the outcomes and actions that emerge may be wrong, confused, or lacking a proper understanding of the business. Many organizations find themselves in this situation—and it could be one of key reasons they
  
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• The Download: dead startups fueling AI and interspecies communication

  28-10-2026 13:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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 labs are buying data from dead startups to train their modelsWhen Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup, he didn’t think its data was worth much. But he’s since turned the company’s digital archives into tens of thousands of dollars, selling its codebase and workspace data.He’s part of a growing market in which companies that help
  
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• 'An annoying buzz': The search for stealthier drones

  28-10-2026 01:01 via BBC News
  
  As drone deliveries become more commonplace, their makers are looking for ways to make them quieter.
  
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• The Download: Anthropic’s IPO, smarter power grids, and exercise pills

  27-10-2026 13:10 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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.Will the real Anthropic please stand up?After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out the company’s unique view of the technology it is building and how it believes it will change the world.But Anthropic has been honing its storytelling skills for years. I
  
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• Industrial Intelligence: The next growth opportunity for manufacturing

  27-10-2026 12:19 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Every manufacturer has its own industrial intelligence. Some is documented, and some resides in the knowledge of experienced workers.Consider an experienced operator preparing to restart a line after a changeover. The machine settings matter, but so does knowing how a particular material behaves, what happened during the previous shift, and when an apparently minor variation deserves a closer look. A procedure can describe the sequence, but successful execution depends on the judgment that comes
  
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• Apple to replace iPhone Duos affected by screen problem

  27-10-2026 10:37 via BBC News
  
  Photos shared online showed faults appearing on the screens of Apple's first foldable device.
  
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• How solid-state transformers could help power the AI boom

  27-10-2026 10:00 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Transformers are a crucial but nearly invisible part of our grid. The devices help efficiently move power across long distances, but they’re complicated and in short supply. And given that their basic design hasn’t changed much for about a century, they could use an upgrade. As the world races to meet rising electricity demand from EVs, data centers, and more, researchers and companies are looking to modernize transformers. New, solid-state versions could help relieve some of the supply co
  
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• Apple says it will replace iPhone Duo handsets with screen problems

  27-10-2026 02:48 via BBC News
  
  Photos shared online showed faults appearing on the screens of Apple's first foldable device.
  
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• Anthropic's blockbuster share listing - 5 surprising things we now know

  26-10-2026 20:57 via BBC News
  
  Anthropic’s IPO prospectus is 355 pages and full of never before disclosed company information.
  
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• Will the real Anthropic please stand up

  26-10-2026 18:45 via MIT Technology Review
  
  This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out the company’s unique view of the technology it is building and the ways it believes it will change the world. But Anthropic has been honing its storytelling skills for years. In fact, its public messaging is a ma
  
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• Anthropic warns of 'catastrophic risk' to humankind ahead of blockbuster share listing

  26-10-2026 17:27 via BBC News
  
  The company will be the first true artificial intelligence company to go public as tech firms continue to invest heavily in AI.
  
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• The Download: everyday AI harms and the race to nuclear spaceflight

  26-10-2026 13:40 via MIT Technology Review
  
  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.Opinion: The focus on AI safety disasters ignores everyday harms—Sam Hiner, cofounder of the Young People’s Alliance, and Emma Leiken, executive director of the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund at HopelabWe have historically allowed debates over technology to be defined by the worst thing a product might do, with remarkably little discussion of t
  
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• The focus on AI safety disasters ignores everyday harms

  26-10-2026 10:01 via MIT Technology Review
  
  Consider what passes for success in technology policy. An AI company promises that its chatbot will not encourage suicide. A social media platform makes it more difficult for children to buy fentanyl. These are important protections, and they should have existed all along. But companies can clear these low bars while continuing to make products that leave young people dependent on simulated friendships or trapped in feeds built to keep them scrolling.We have historically allowed the debate over
  
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