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The Download: creating “spare” human bodies, and ditching US AI models

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. Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine Many challenges in medicine stem, in large part, from a common root cause: a severe shortage of ethically-sourced human bodies. There might be a way…
How to… delete your 23andMe data

This story was originally published in October 2024. In March 2025, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy and announced its plans to “facilitate a sale process to maximize the value of its business.” MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done. Things aren’t looking good for 23andMe. The consumer DNA testing company recently parted ways with…
Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine

Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? Why do so few drugs that enter clinical trials receive regulatory approval? And why is the waiting list for organ transplantation so long? These challenges stem in large part from a common root cause: a severe…
Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models

A few weeks ago, when I was at the digital rights conference RightsCon in Taiwan, I watched in real time as civil society organizations from around the world, including the US, grappled with the loss of one of the biggest funders of global digital rights work: the United States government. As I wrote in my…
The Download: the dangers of AI agents, and ChatGPT’s effects on our wellbeing

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. Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake —Margaret Mitchell, Avijit Ghosh, Sasha Luccioni, Giada Pistilli all work for Hugging Face, an open source AI company. AI agents…
Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

AI agents have set the tech industry abuzz. Unlike chatbots, these groundbreaking new systems operate outside of a chat window, navigating multiple applications to execute complex tasks, like scheduling meetings or shopping online, in response to simple user commands. As agents are developed to become more capable, a crucial question emerges: How much control are…
OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being

OpenAI says over 400 million people use ChatGPT every week. But how does interacting with it affect us? Does it make us more or less lonely? These are some of the questions OpenAI set out to investigate, in partnership with the MIT Media Lab, in a pair of new studies. They found that only a…
The Download: saving the “doomsday glacier,” and Europe’s hopes for its rockets

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. Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier” The Thwaites glacier is a fortress larger than Florida, a wall of ice that reaches nearly 4,000 feet above the bedrock of West Antarctica,…
Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier”

The Thwaites glacier is a fortress larger than Florida, a wall of ice that reaches nearly 4,000 feet above the bedrock of West Antarctica, guarding the low-lying ice sheet behind it. But a strong, warm ocean current is weakening its foundations and accelerating its slide into the Amundsen Sea. Scientists fear that the waters could…
Autopsies can reveal intimate health details. Should they be kept private?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been following news of the deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, pianist Betsy Arakawa. It was heartbreaking to hear how Arakawa appeared to have died from a rare infection days before her husband, who had advanced Alzheimer’s disease and may have struggled to understand what had…