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.
“We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot” over hack fallout, says OpenAI’s chief research officer
Two months after OpenAI’s agents hacked into the computers of AI company Hugging Face, the company is still dealing with the fallout. Last week brought news of another hack, this time into Australia’s national health-care system, which the government says OpenAI did not report for 84 days.
But OpenAI insists it is not on the back foot. “I do kind of reject the premise that OpenAI is a company with visible impacts in the world and therefore OpenAI is not training safe and aligned models,” says Mark Chen, the company’s chief research officer.
In many ways, the buck stops with Chen. I sat down with him to talk about the fallout from the hacks, what his company is doing about it, and why he thinks things are not as bad as they seem.
Here’s what he told me about making models safer—and why the world is better off with OpenAI in it.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Our Roundables on the deadly failures of the virtual border wall is now available on demand
On Monday, MIT Technology Review hosted an exclusive Roundtables conversation about our investigation into the deadly failures of the US’s “virtual wall” of border surveillance towers.
Editor-in-chief Mat Honan, senior AI reporter James O’Donnell, and senior reporter for features and investigations Eileen Guo discussed what the investigation reveals about border surveillance technology and the people who have died in the borderlands.
The full event is now available to watch on demand. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for exclusive access to the discussion and all our other Roundtables.
Read the full “Dying on Camera” investigation here.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: smart glasses are already causing havoc in India
When Shubnam saw an Instagram video of a Delhi protest they had attended, they realized a content creator wearing Meta smart glasses had recorded them surreptitiously. The mocking reel drew millions of views, along with transphobic abuse and AI-generated memes.
Experts warn that many others will experience similar ordeals as smart glasses go mainstream. The risks are particularly acute in India, where covert recording and the circulation of images without consent are already pervasive.
The bigger issue is that the smart glasses aren’t just being used to turn ordinary people into targets of viral “pranks.” They’re also becoming a tool of police surveillance.
This is our latest story to become an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Trump and tech executives have agreed to “self-regulate” AITheir accord calls for controls, audits, and board oversight. (AP News)+ Trump called it “morally binding,” but it isn’t legally enforceable. (NBC News)+ Elon Musk compared it to “grading each other’s homework.” (AFP)+ Trump also doubled down on data centers despite GOP opposition. (NYT $)+ And ordered the US government to call AI “Super Intelligence.”(Verge)+ While singling out his intelligence chief for the AI czar role. (Axios)+ The US is divided over AI regulation. (MIT Technology Review)
2 China’s vaunted Kimi models told researchers how to make bioweaponsTestersbypassed the models’ safety guardrails using a jailbreak. (BBC)+ China’s AI agents can lie and scheme like their US rivals. (Reuters $)+ Trump has ruled out any joint AI venture with China. (BBC)+ AI is making bioweapons easier to design. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Dutch police have arrested an alleged leader of the FBI hackersThe FBI is warning other members to turn themselves in. (NBC News)+ Here’s what to know about the hackers and the breach. (NYT $)
4 America’s renewables boom is heading towards a Trump-era cliffThe industry says permitting delays could lead to a collapse by 2028. (Axios)+ Batteries just broke another record in the US. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Meta calls its AI data centers an “experiment” to cut its taxesThe strategy saved the company nearly $4 billion last year. (NYT $)+ Lawmakers want tech giants to reveal their secret data-center deals. (WSJ $)
6 OpenAI has launched Dots, its AI assistants to take on Meta’s MuseThe always-on agents can continuously perform tasks for users. (BBC)+ Protesters at OpenAI’s DevDay build a sculpture of an AI Titanic. (Ars Technica)+ Is a secure AI assistant possible? (MIT Technology Review)
7 The Navy has awarded Boeing $20 billion to build a futuristic fighter jetThe aircraft will feature advanced sensors, range, and weapons. (Reuters $)
8 Technology to replace animal testing is ready—but scientists aren’tOrgan chips can increasingly model human biology without animals. (IEEE)
9 Tech workers have taught ChatGPT to drive a Toyota CorollaThey used frontier LLMs with no prior training data to control the car. (404 Media)
10 Trump’s government chatbot has a very weird Minecraft Easter eggAsk it to play Minecraft and it rewrites the game’s End Poem. (Gizmodo)
Quote of the day
“The word super is the best word of all.”
—Donald Trump explains why federal agencies must now call AI “Super Intelligence,” The Verge reports.
One more thing
CHRIS LAKE
You have no choice in reading this article—maybe
How do humans make decisions? The question has been on Uri Maoz’s mind since he read an article in his early twenties suggesting that… maybe they didn’t.Had he even had a choice about whether to read that article in the first place? How would he ever know if he was truly responsible for making any decisions? “After that, there was no turning back,” says Maoz, now a professor of computational neuroscience at Chapman University.Today, Maoz is a central figure in efforts to understand how desires and beliefs turn into actions. He’s also uncovered new wrinkles in the debate. Here’s what he’s discovered.
—Sarah Scoles
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.)
+ Thumbelina the squirrel is going on a diet after getting a little too round.+ Ever wondered where #, @, &, and § came from? This video has the answers.+ Swedish producer Synthet has taken a fascinating look at the most sampled sounds in music.+ Explore Europe on foot with Strado, which scores the most walkable neighborhoods across 50 cities on the continent.