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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: reward hacking explained, and suspected Iranian cyberattacks

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. Here’s why AI agents lie and cheat to reach their goals When two OpenAI models hacked into Hugging Face last month, they weren’t trying to make money...

Charlotte Jee 2 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Here’s why AI agents lie and cheat to reach their goals

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. When two OpenAI models hacked into the website Hugging Face in July, they weren’t trying to make money or commit sabotage...

Grace Huckins 2 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: Montana’s new experimental drug rules

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. Montana’s plan to become an experimental medical hub just pushed forward  As of this week in Montana, biotech companies whose drugs have been through...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Montana’s new “right to try” law can’t come soon enough for some

Kris DeVault is desperate. His son, Brody, was born in March 2023. It wasn’t long before he started to show signs of developmental delay, says DeVault. As time went on, Brody started missing key milestones in speech, movement, and coordination, he says. When Brody was around two and a half years old...

Jessica Hamzelou 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Montana’s plan to become an experimental medical hub just pushed forward

As of this week in Montana, any biotech company with an experimental drug has a clear path to selling it to consumers. Companies whose drugs have been through preliminary testing—sometimes in as few as 10 healthy people—can pay $12,500 to apply to a newly established review board for approval. Once...

Jessica Hamzelou 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: tricking LLMs, and reviving geothermal plants

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. A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack  It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack

It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning, a top AI conference, this month. The claim has huge implications for the saf...

Will Douglas Heaven 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

How an overlooked geothermal plant got a second chance

In June 2024, a small company called Zanskar purchased a geothermal power plant in New Mexico that was failing fast. The water coming from the underground reservoir was getting colder by the day, making the plant uneconomical to run. Now, two years later, that plant is running at full capacity again...

Casey Crownhart 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: a chip talent battle, and deflating AI hype

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. Samsung’s chip workers are jumping ship to rival SK Hynix   Lee, an engineer at Samsung’s semiconductor division, used to work late. But lately, he’s...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The AI Hype Index: Unsexy AI

It feels bad enough when an open letter signed by leading economists warns that AI might steal your job. The fact it may soon be better than you at making dinner? Insult to injury. But that’s exactly what the company 1X promised when it showed off a pair of new, impressively dexterous (and, to some,...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: OpenAI’s predictable hack, and an AI stock sell-off

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. OpenAI called the Hugging Face attack unprecedented. But we’ve been here before.  —Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor Reading OpenAI’s account...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Samsung’s chip workers are jumping ship to rival SK Hynix 

Lee, an engineer at Samsung’s semiconductor division, clocks out when his shift ends. He used to work longer hours, going the extra mile to excel at his projects. But lately, he’s been coming straight home to work on his job application for the chipmaker’s South Korean rival SK Hynix, sharing tips w...

Michelle Kim 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

OpenAI called the Hugging Face attack unprecedented. But we’ve been here before. 

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Reading OpenAI’s account last week of how some of its models broke their containment and hacked into the computer systems of Hugging Face, another AI company...

Will Douglas Heaven 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

How lasers could help provide fuel for nuclear reactors

Outside the small town of Paducah, Kentucky, a wealth of uranium is locked away in thousands of storage cylinders filled with waste material from a now-closed nuclear enrichment facility. Lasers could help get it out. A company called Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) is looking to reprocess this old ma...

Casey Crownhart 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: lasers for nuclear fuel, and organ preservation advances

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 lasers could help provide fuel for nuclear reactors  Nuclear power provides about 9% of global electricity today, and that fraction could tic...

Charlotte Jee 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The path to artificial superintelligence

Imagine a healthcare system made up of multiple AI agents: one that manages symptom assessment, another scheduling, a third insurance, and a fourth pharmacy. Each is an expert in its domain. But they all have their own distinct knowledge and objectives. Today they can exchange data, but they are not...

MIT Technology Review Insights 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Closing the data loop in AI-driven drug discovery

Drug discovery is a high-cost, high-risk endeavor that is under growing pressure from a market increasingly defined by first-mover advantage. Since the 1950s, the cost of developing new pharmaceuticals has roughly doubled every nine years—a phenomenon known as Eroom’s Law. Today, bringing a new drug...

MIT Technology Review Insights 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Building the enterprise environment for agentic AI

For the enterprise, the promise of agentic AI is much more than just a better chatbot. It is software agents that execute business tasks end-to-end across people, business workflows, data, and systems. The platform best-suited to run agents is built with proper CPU capacity, resilient data access, p...

Keegan Sheedy, Lucas Melo 3 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The quest to keep organs alive outside the body

This week, I covered a fascinating effort to preserve organs outside the body. There’s a huge shortage of donor organs, and one of the main reasons is time—they survive only a matter of hours outside the body, even when they’re kept on ice. Doctors dream of organ banks—stores of human organs that ca...

Jessica Hamzelou 4 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: an organ transplant breakthrough, and homegrown Chinese chips

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. Supercooled kidneys have been transplanted into pigs in a “landmark achievement”  When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as...

Charlotte Jee 4 weeks ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

Supercooled kidneys have been transplanted into pigs in a “landmark achievement”

When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has been carefully removed from a donor’s body, it starts to deteriorate. Surgeons have a matter of hours to get it into a recipient. Leave it too long and the organ will become unusable. In most cases, organs will be kept&#823...

Jessica Hamzelou 1 month ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: energy transmission and US threats against Chinese AI

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 power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags  During a heat wave on July 3, New York State’s grid imported enough electricity fr...

Charlotte Jee 1 month ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

How AI helps scientists design the next generation of medicines

Designing and developing a new medicine is an expensive, failure-prone scientific challenge. A new drug can take many years to develop, at the cost of a significant investment. And even then, most possible candidates never reach the patient. For biologic medicines, therapies made from engineered pro...

MIT Technology Review Insights 1 month ago

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MIT Technology Review · Science

The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags

On July 3, as a heat wave swept the region, New York State’s grid imported 52 gigawatt-hours of electricity from Canada—enough to meet about 9% of its total electricity demand that day. Some of that power shuttled in on a 339-mile power line stretching from Quebec to Queens called the Champlain Huds...

Casey Crownhart 1 month ago

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