For some advanced cancers, sequencing the tumor genome should be one of the first steps patients and physicians take. But a new study finds that many patients never receive genomic testing and so never get the chance to know if they might have benefitted from newer, more targeted therapies.
The study, published on Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, examined how many patients diagnosed with one of five different metastatic cancers received genetic sequencing for the cancers. For most cancers in the study, roughly half of patients in the cohort received genetic sequencing. Patients with low income, Medicare or Medicaid coverage, and Black or Hispanic race or ethnicity were also less likely to receive sequencing.
Cancer medicine and research have made enormous progress over the last few decades. The overall five-year survival rate has pushed up to 70% as of 2026, and the five-year survival rate for metastatic cancer has doubled since the 1960s. That’s in large part thanks to advances in medicines and technologies that can help treat cancer, like targeted therapies that work by exploiting key cancer mutations.
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.
As the conflict in Iran has escalated, a crucial resource is under fire: the desalination technology that supplies water across much of the region.
In early March, Iran’s foreign minister accused the US of attacking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting the water supply to nearly 30 villages. (The US denied responsibility.) In the weeks since, both Bahrain and Kuwait have reported damage to desalination plants and blamed Iran, though Iran also denied responsibility.
In late March, President Donald Trump threatened the destruction of “possibly all desalinization plants” in Iran if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. Since then, he’s escalated his threats against Iran, warning of plans to attack other crucial civilian infrastructure like power plants and bridges.
Countries in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf states, rely on the technology to turn salt water into fresh water for farming, industry, and—crucially—drinking. The mounting attacks and threats to date highlight just how vital the industry is to the region—a situation made even more precarious by rising temperatures and extreme weather driven by climate change.
Right now, 83% of the Middle East is under extremely high water stress, says Liz Saccoccia, a water security associate at the World Resources Institute. Future projections suggest that’s going to increase to about 100% by 2050, she adds: “This is a continuing trend, and it’s getting worse, not better.”
Here’s a look at desalination technology in the Middle East and what wartime threats to the critical infrastructure could mean for people in the region.
A vital resource
Desalination technology has helped provide water supplies in the Middle East since the early 20th century and became widespread in the 1960s and 1970s.
There are two major categories of desalination plants. Thermal plants use heat to evaporate water, leaving salt and other impurities behind. The vapor can then be condensed into usable fresh water. The alternative is membrane-based technology like reverse osmosis, which pushes water through membranes that have tiny pores—so small that salt can’t get through.
Early desalination plants in the Middle East were the first type, burning fossil fuels to evaporate water, leaving the salt behind. This technique is incredibly energy-intensive, and over time, processes that rely on filters became the dominant choice.
Membrane technologies have made up essentially all new desalination capacity in recent years; the last major thermal plant built in the Gulf came online in 2018. Many reverse osmosis plants still rely on fossil fuels, but they’re more efficient. Since then, membrane technologies have added more than 15 million cubic meters of daily capacity—enough to supply water to millions of people.
Capacity has expanded quickly in recent years; between 2006 and 2024, countries across the Middle East collectively spent over $50 billion building and upgrading desalination facilities, and nearly that much operating them.
Today, there are nearly 5,000 desalination plants operational across the Middle East.
And looking ahead, growth is continuing. Between 2024 and 2028, daily capacity is expected to grow from about 29 million cubic meters to 41 million cubic meters.
Uneven vulnerabilities
Some countries rely on the technology more than others. Iran, for example, uses desalination for about 3% of its municipal fresh water. The country has access to groundwater and some surface water, including rivers, though these resources are being stretched thin by agriculture and extreme drought.
Other nations in the region, particularly the Gulf countries (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman), have much more limited water resources and rely heavily on desalination. Across these six nations, all but the UAE get more than half their drinking water from desalination, and for Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait the figure is more than 90%.
“The Gulf countries are much, much more vulnerable to attacks on their desalination plants than Iran is,” says David Michel, a senior associate in the global food and water security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
There are thousands of desalination facilities across the region, so the system wouldn’t collapse if a small number were taken offline, Michel says. However, in recent years there’s been a trend toward larger, more centralized plants.
The average desalination plant is about 10 times larger than it was 15 years ago, according to data from the International Energy Agency. The largest desalination plants today can produce 1 million cubic meters of water daily, enough for hundreds of thousands of people. Taking one or more of these massive facilities offline could have a significant effect on the system, Michel says.
Escalating threats
Desalination facilities are quite linear, meaning there are multiple steps and pieces of equipment that work in sequence—and the failure of a component in that chain can take an entire facility down. Attacks on water inlets, transportation networks, and power supplies can also disrupt the system, Michel says.
During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi forces pumped oil into the gulf, contaminating the water and shutting down desalination plants in Kuwait.
The facilities are also generally located close to other targets in this conflict. Desalination is incredibly energy intensive, so about three-quarters of facilities in the region are next to power plants. Trump has repeatedly threatened power plants in Iran. In response, Iran’s military has said that if civilian targets are hit, the country will respond with strikes that are “much more devastating and widespread.” Other governments and organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union, and the Red Cross, have broadly condemned threats to infrastructure as illegal.
But war isn’t the only danger facing these plants, even if it is the most immediate. Some studies have suggested that global warming could strengthen cyclones in the region, and these extreme weather events could force shutdowns or damage equipment.
Water pollution could also cause shutdowns. Oil spills, whether accidental or intentional, as in the case of the Gulf War, can wreak havoc. And in 2009, a red algae bloom closed desalination plants in Oman and the United Arab Emirates for weeks. The algae fouled membranes and blocked the plants from being able to take water in from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Desalination facilities could become more resilient to threats in the future, and they may need to as their importance continues to grow.
There’s increasing interest in running desalination facilities at least partially on solar power, which could help reduce dependence on the oil that powers most facilities today. The Hassyan seawater desalination project in the UAE, currently under construction, would be the largest reverse osmosis plant in the world to operate solely with renewable energy.
Another way to increase resilience is for countries to build up more strategic water storage to meet demand. Qatar recently issued new policies that aim to improve management and storage of desalinated water, for example. Countries could also work together to invest in shared infrastructure and policies that help strengthen the water supply through the region.
Preparedness, resilience, and cooperation will be key for the Middle East broadly as critical infrastructure, including the water supply, is increasingly under threat.
“The longer the conflict goes on, the more likely we’ll see significant water infrastructure damage,” says Ginger Matchett, an assistant director at the Atlantic Council. “What worries me is that after this war ends, some of the lessons will show how water can be weaponized more strategically than previously imagined.”
A new study published in Nature Chemical Biology titled, “Munc13-4–STX7 inhibitors impair endosomal TLR activation and systemic inflammation,” scientists from Scripps Research have developed a new class of drug compounds, called ENDOtollins, that reduce harmful inflammation while maintaining the body’s ability to fight infections. The results offer new directions to treat autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, and rheumatoid and juvenile arthritis, which together affect more than 15 million Americans.
“A key component of our approach is to begin by understanding the biological mechanisms at play,” said Sergio Catz, PhD, professor at Scripps Research and corresponding author of the study. “By accomplishing this first, we can more easily target the pathway driving inflammation without affecting other important processes.”
Current autoimmune disease treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine, function by broadly blocking endosomes. While effective, this approach can lead to significant side effects, including gastrointestinal problems and, less commonly, vision damage, that cause patients to stop treatment.
The authors focused on two proteins, Munc13-4 and syntaxin 7, that bind together to activate Toll-like receptors (TLRs), immune sensors that activate endosomes. This mechanism plays a key role in detecting foreign DNA and RNA from viruses and bacteria. In autoimmune diseases, TLRs become overactive and trigger chronic, damaging inflammation in the absence of a threat.
The team screened roughly 32,000 compounds and identified molecules that specifically block the Munc13-4–syntaxin 7 interaction without disrupting other cellular functions. Given that Munc13-4 is found mainly in immune cells, the compounds offer a targeted approach to reduce inflammation.
“Most treatments for autoimmune diseases manage symptoms; they don’t change the underlying course of the disease,” said Hugh Rosen, MD, PhD, professor at Scripps Research and co-author of the study. “What’s exciting about this approach is its potential to be disease-modifying: targeting the specific molecular machinery that drives inflammation, rather than broadly suppressing the immune system.”
Notably, the study screened compounds in an intact cellular environment which contrasts from many drug screening approaches, which extract proteins from the cell.
“By maintaining the proteins in their natural environment, we increase the likelihood that compounds we find will actually work in living cells,” said Jennifer Johnson, PhD, first author and senior staff scientist at Scripps Research.
The most potent compound, ENDO12, reduced inflammation in animal models that were also given a TLR-activating molecule. Blood levels of inflammatory markers, including immune system activators IL-6 and IFN-γ, and the enzyme myeloperoxidase, dropped significantly in animals that were treated.
ENDO12 treated animals demonstrated normal antiviral immune response when exposed to a virus. This selectivity addresses the concern that dampening inflammation with immunosuppressive drugs may leave patients vulnerable to infections.
Looking ahead, the team will test ENDOtollins in models that more closely mimic human autoimmune diseases and evaluate the compounds’ chemistry for potential clinical use.
Beyond autoimmune conditions, the researchers suggest ENDOtollins might help treat cytokine storms, the dangerous immune overreactions seen in patients with severe COVID-19 and as a side effect of CAR T cancer therapy. Both involve excessive IL-6 and runaway inflammation.
While translating these findings into treatments for patients remains a long-term goal, Catz emphasizes that the mechanistic insights are valuable in their own right. ENDOtollins can serve as precision tools to probe other cellular processes regulated by endosomes and lysosomes, including pathways implicated in neurodegeneration and immune dysfunction.
A woman lies on an exam table, holding her partner’s hand tightly with anticipation, as a technician glides an ultrasound probe across her abdomen. On the screen, shifting staticky shadows resolve into a skull, a liver, and the flicker of a beating heart. For many families, this moment brings joy and relief. For others, it’s paralyzing, as doctors detect signs that something is wrong.
A single nucleotide change can cause neurodevelopmental delays and dimorphism, failing livers, and arrhythmia-ridden hearts. For decades, medicine could only identify these conditions, usually after birth. Prenatal screening has made it easier to detect progressive diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which degenerates and damages muscles before symptoms typically appear in childhood. But treating before birth could preserve tissue prior to the onset of irreversible deterioration.
Once unthinkable, genetic diseases can now be treated before birth. Fetal genetic intervention—including early screening, in utero gene therapy, stem cell transplantation, and even embryo editing—aims not just to diagnose disease but to correct it at its earliest stages. It is a rapidly advancing frontier, defined by technological promise and profound ethical questions.
It starts with detection
Jennifer Hoskovec, vice president of medical affairs at BillionToOne, has spent more than 20 years in prenatal genetics, an era dominated by risk assessment rather than intervention.
Historically, prenatal genetic screening has fallen into two main categories. Aneuploidy testing determines the risk of Down syndrome and other trisomies, sex chromosome abnormalities, and specific microdeletions. Screening is essential for these de novo mutations, which have no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved genetic interventions. High-risk Down syndrome patients may receive a fetal echocardiogram, closer ultrasound monitoring, or tertiary care delivery with neonatal support. The standard practice is to screen, monitor, and manage.
Jennifer Hoskovec Vice President BillionToOne
The second category involves inherited recessive conditions like cystic fibrosis (CF), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), and phenylketonuria. If both parents are carriers for the same genetic mutation, then their child has a 25% chance of being affected. Testing typically requires samples from both parents. If both are carriers, chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis can detect fetal abnormalities in the first and second trimesters, respectively. However, getting each partner to follow up is a major hindrance. “When people go through a screening process and are found to be carriers, less than 50% of their partners complete the testing,” Hoskovec told Inside Precision Medicine. “Half of U.S. carriers of these genetic conditions, whether common or rare, don’t know what it means for their pregnancy. That limits their ability to get diagnostic testing because we do not have all the pieces of the puzzle.”
Hoskovec’s team developed a workaround: a single-gene noninvasive prenatal test that analyzes fetal cell-free DNA (cfDNA) circulating in maternal blood. Around nine weeks into pregnancy, fragments of fetal DNA shed from the placenta can be sequenced and quantified. If a mother is a carrier for a condition like CF or sickle cell disease, the test looks for a second variant that is not present in her DNA and forms evidence of paternal contribution.
“For example, if a mother has [the] sickle cell trait, we first sequence the full beta-globin gene in the cfDNA, which contains a mixture of maternal and fetal DNA,” Hoskovec said. “We look for a second variant not present in the mother that would indicate paternal contribution.”
Despite not replacing CVS or amniocentesis, Hoskovec said the result is highly sensitive, identifying 95% of affected pregnancies in the conditions it covers. Crucially, it does not require partner testing. “This is a stepping stone,” Hoskovec explained. “This earlier detection will likely accelerate the field by increasing the number of eligible patients for clinical studies and registries, improving equitable access across ethnic groups, and advancing precision medicine in prenatal care.”
Avoiding germline editing
David H. Stitelman, MDr Associate Professor Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital and Yale School of Medicine
As screening opens the door, fetal surgeons and gene therapy researchers are taking their first steps through it. A pediatric surgeon at the Yale School of Medicine, David H. Stitelman, MD, believes prenatal treatment has benefits. The fetus is small, so it can receive higher doses based on weight. As its immune system is still developing and more tolerant, stem cells are growing quickly and organs are still being formed, so problems can be fixed before they become permanent. Because the placenta exchanges oxygen, lung conditions like congenital diaphragmatic hernia can be treated during fetal life. But once a newborn takes a first breath, defective lungs can spell immediate crisis.
Fetal therapy is not new. Specialized centers have performed open fetal surgery for spina bifida and diaphragmatic hernia lung growth, and blood transfusions for fetal anemia dating back to the 1960s. What is new is the molecular toolkit. Stitelman’s lab is investigating gene editing methods that use the cell’s repair machinery to fix one- to three-base-pair DNA errors. Another team, led by pediatric and fetal surgeon Tippi MacKenzie, MD, at the University of California, San Francisco, is using viruses to replace genes for lysosomal storage diseases and fetal stem cells for alpha thalassemia.
Some diseases require only modest correction. In hemophilia, one percent normal clotting factor expression improves outcomes greatly. Increasing the expression of functional CFTR protein to 15% of wild-type levels may cure CF or at least make it manageable. Even a small number of liver cells corrected in hereditary tyrosinemia can boost growth and repopulate the organ. However, some situations, such as congenital cancer syndromes, may require nearly 100% correction. At present, Stitelman’s team achieves single-digit percentage editing in models of CF and beta thalassemia. “We’re in the optimization phase,” Stitelman told Inside Precision Medicine. “We are testing different nanoparticles and generations of editing strategies to incrementally reach therapeutic levels.”
Stitelman draws a clear ethical boundary: this is somatic editing, not germline editing. The aim is to treat the fetus as a patient, not to create heritable genetic changes. Instead of editing embryos in vitro, systemic therapeutic agents are delivered to avoid reproductive cell damage.
Unintended germline modification remains a concern. Editing a target gene could inadvertently disrupt developmental genes and affect future generations. But, Stitelman argues, medicine always carries risk. “In 1950, children with leukemia all died,” said Stitelman. “Today, some forms have a 98% long-term survival rate with chemotherapy. We know chemotherapy can cause germline mutations, yet we accept that risk because it saves lives. With gene editing, the issue is not zero risk but understanding and quantifying the risk. Ideally, there would be no measurable off-target effects. In the places we have examined, we have not seen off-target effects.”
One pregnancy, two patients
In a landmark trial in 2011 known as the Management of Myelomeningocele Study, investigators found that fetal surgery for severe spina bifida (myelomeningocele) achieved better results than postnatal repair. Surgically closing the spinal defect in utero improved motor function and reduced the need for shunting to relieve hydrocephalus. The benefit was so clear that the trial was stopped early and influenced how doctors treat structural birth defects.
Aijun Wang, PhD Professor University of California, Davis
At the University of California, Davis, biomedical engineer Aijun Wang, PhD, is working closely with fetal surgery pioneer Diana L. Farmer, MD, to evolve fetal intervention from heroic surgery to cellular and molecular therapy. Wang and Farmer launched the Cellular Therapy for In Utero Repair of Myelomeningocele (CuRe) trial, combining fetal surgery with stem cell transplantation. The goal is to not only close the spinal defect but also restore neural tissue and improve long-term function.
The lens that Wang has used to focus his research is fetal and maternal safety. “The fetus is the patient, but treatment inevitably carries some risk to the mother,” Wang told Inside Precision Medicine. “Open fetal surgery, in particular, poses significant maternal risk. Genetic treatments introduce additional uncertainties because the long-term effects of DNA modification are not fully understood. Safety must remain the highest priority.”
Genetic medicine delivery is a critical challenge for all life stages, but the stakes are particularly high for a developing fetus. In fetal development, targeting stem cell populations is especially important because these cells are highly active, proliferating, and migrating. If edited successfully at the right developmental window, their progeny will carry the correction. The problem would be if the edit was not just unsuccessful but detrimental.
Wang’s lab focuses on delivery systems, particularly lipid nanoparticles carrying mRNA-encoding gene-editing enzymes. For genetic manipulation and high-throughput screening, Wang’s lab utilizes mouse models. Fetal sheep are used for scaling and dosing, while human organoids are used for human-specific editing and functional outcomes.
“In our clinical work, we have engaged with the FDA and conducted extensive preclinical studies,” said Wang. “Using multiple complementary models is essential. Combining small animal models, large animal translational models, and human organoid systems provides a comprehensive framework for product development, from early screening to human-focused therapeutic design.”
Although the field is highly exciting and progressing rapidly, Wang warns against premature application, which could be dangerous. Safety, developmental biology, ethical considerations, and multidisciplinary collaboration are all essential. “Despite the excitement in the field, we must proceed cautiously,” said Wang. “There is strong potential for correcting specific mutations, especially point mutations, using precise gene editing approaches such as base editing. However, safety evaluation must precede rapid clinical application.”
Effective progress requires a village of physicians, surgeons, researchers, engineers, and ethicists working together. Scientific progress requires caution, responsibility, and thorough evaluation before clinical use.
The earlier, the better
If fetal intervention treats a diagnosed fetus, embryo editing operates even earlier—at the blastocyst stage in in vitro fertilization (IVF). Norbert Gleicher, MD, a fertility specialist known for treating some of the oldest and most difficult IVF patients in the United States, approaches genetic technologies with caution. Due to biological mosaicism, sampling limitations, and his belief that many abnormal embryos self-correct or develop normally, Gleicher opposes preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy.
Norbert Gleicher, MD Founder & Medical Director Center for Human Reproduction
But when it comes to single-gene diseases, he sees a different calculus. Couples with recessive mutations may have one-in-four embryos affected, and in dominant or X-linked diseases, half may carry the mutation. For patients who produce few embryos—especially older women—discarding affected embryos can mean losing precious chances at pregnancy. “If you can cure an embryo rather than discard it,” Gleicher told Inside Precision Medicine, “that makes a lot of sense.”
For single-gene diseases, Gleicher believes genetic editing with CRISPR or other platforms is the most straightforward intervention. He points to the 2025 work at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on Baby KJ as a recent milestone. Even partial correction, which Gleicher believes is likely the case with Baby KJ—though no liver biopsies have been extracted—can transform prognosis. Gleicher said, “Correcting some cells was enough to clinically cure the baby, at least for the time being, from symptoms of a disease that historically kills affected children within a few years. However, we do not know whether the treated baby, who likely still has many affected cells, might become symptomatic again later in life.”
To Gleicher, success in a newborn is all the more reason to apply genetic intervention to fetal stages. “If this can be successful in a full human being, imagine how much easier it would be at the blastocyst stage, or even earlier at the cleavage stage, when the embryo consists of only six to eight cells,” said Gleicher. “If [CRISPR] is applied at that point, correcting those six to eight cells would mean that all their daughter cells would also be corrected. The result would be a normal baby at birth. That is the much stronger argument in this case.”
Just because something is possible, it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be done, and Gleicher establishes a clear ethical boundary. Editing to prevent a devastating single-gene disease is one thing. Editing for traits—eye color, intelligence, polygenic risk scores—is another. Polygenic predictions explain only a fraction of trait variance, and embryo implantation itself is uncertain. To him, offering polygenic selection in IVF is not only scientifically dubious but also ethically troubling. “It is surprising that professionals, particularly in genetics, would suggest such an approach,” said Gleicher. “It is worse than snake oil, because while snake oil may occasionally work by accident, this carries a real risk of causing serious harm.”
A pretty penny
What ultimately restricts fetal genetic intervention is timing. Early screening increases experimental trial eligibility, and early treatment may preserve organ development before irreversible damage. In conditions like CF and SMA, where postnatal gene therapies are expensive and delivered after injury, fetal intervention could change outcomes. Frontline screening can identify high-risk pregnancies at 11 weeks without family history or ethnicity, expanding trial access.
Yet, fetal genetic interventions require specialized teams, advanced delivery systems, counseling, and long-term follow-up. Without careful planning and reimbursement policies, only a few top-tier centers could progress, widening the gap. Ethical scrutiny remains inseparable from progress. Innovation must balance maternal risk, fetal benefit, and future consequences with safety, appropriate use, and clear limits. As prenatal care shifts from prediction to prevention, restraint and evidence will determine its future.
Jonathan D. Grinstein, PhD, North American editor for Inside Precision Medicine, investigates the most recent research and developments in a wide range of human healthcare topics and emerging trends, such as next-generation diagnostics, cell and gene therapy, and AI/ML for drug discovery. He is also the host of the Behind the Breakthroughs podcast, featuring people shaping the future of medicine. Jonathan earned his PhD in biomedical science from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in neural science from New York University.
Unlike static, rules-based systems, AI agents can learn, adapt, and optimize processes dynamically. As they interact with data, systems, people, and other agents in real time, AI agents can execute entire workflows autonomously.
But unlocking their potential requires redesigning processes around agents rather than bolting them onto fragmented legacy workflows using traditional optimization methods. Companies must become agent first.
In an agent-first enterprise, AI systems operate processes while humans set goals, define policy constraints, and handle exceptions.
“You need to shift the operating model to humans as governors and agents as operators,” says Scott Rodgers, global chief architect and U.S. CTO of the Deloitte Microsoft Technology Practice.
The agent-first imperative
With technology budgets for AI expected to increase more than 70% over the next two years, AI agents, powered by generative AI, are poised to fundamentally transform organizations and achieve results beyond traditional automation. These initiatives have the potential to produce significant performance gains, while shifting humans toward higher value work.
AI is advancing so quickly that static approaches to task automation will likely only produce incremental gains. Because legacy processes aren’t built for autonomous systems, AI agents require machine-readable process definitions, explicit policy constraints, and structured data flows, according to Rodgers.
Further complicating matters, many organizations don’t understand the full economic drivers of their business, such as cost to serve and per-transaction costs. As a result, they have trouble prioritizing agents that can create the most value and instead focus on flashy pilots. To achieve structural change, executives should think differently.
Companies must instead orchestrate outcomes faster than competitors. “The real risk isn’t that AI won’t work—it’s that competitors will redesign their operating models while you’re still piloting agents and copilots,” says Rodgers. “Nonlinear gains come when companies create agent-centric workflows with human governance and adaptive orchestration.”
Routine and repetitive tasks are increasingly handled automatically, freeing employees to focus on higher value, creative, and strategic work. This shift improves operational efficiency, fosters stronger collaboration, and generates faster decision-making—helping organizations modernize the workplace without sacrificing enterprise security.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.
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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 one piece of data that could actually shed light on your job and AI
Within Silicon Valley’s orbit, an AI-fueled jobs apocalypse is spoken about as a given. Now even economists who have downplayed the threat are coming around to the idea.
Alex Imas, based at the University of Chicago, is one of them. He believes that any plan to address AI’s impact will depend on collecting one vital piece of data: price elasticity.
This article is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
Four things we’d need to put data centers in space
In January, Elon Musk’s SpaceX applied to launch up to 1 million data centers into Earth’s orbit. The goal? To fully unleash the potential of AI—without triggering an environmental crisis on Earth.
This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Trump has again proposed major cuts to US science and tech spending He wants to slash nearly every science-focused agency. (Ars Technica) + If Trump gets his way, the US could face a costly brain drain. (NYT $) + Top research talent is already fleeing the country. (Guardian) + Basic science deserves our boldest investment. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Sam Altman lobbied against AI regulations he publicly welcomed A bombshell report reveals many OpenAI insiders don’t trust him. (The New Yorker $) + Some have called him a sociopath. (Futurism) + OpenAI’s CFO fears it won’t be IPO-ready this year.(The Information $) + A war over AI regulation is brewing in the US. (MIT Technology Review)
3 NASA’s Artemis II has broken humanity’s all-time distance record The astronauts have flown farther than any humans before them. (BBC) + Their mission includes MIT-developed technology. (Axios)
4 Chinese tech firms are selling intel “exposing” US forces It comes from combining AI with open-source data.. (WP $) + AI is turning the Iran conflict into theater. (MIT Technology Review)
5 War is pushing countries to ditch hyperscalers Driven by Iran naming tech giants as military targets. (Rest of World) + No one wants a data center in their backyard. (MIT Technology Review)
6 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have united against China’s AI copying They’re sharing information on “adversarial distillation” (Bloomberg $)
7 Anduril and Impulse Space are working on Trump’s “Golden Dome” They’re developing space-based missile tracking for the project. (Gizmodo)
8 OpenAI has urged California to probe Elon Musk’s “anti-competitive behavior.” It accuses Musk of trying to “take control of the future of AGI.” (Reuters $) + And claims he coordinated attacks with Mark Zuckerberg. (CNBC) + A former Tesla president has revealed how he survived working for Musk. (WP $)
9 DeepSeek’s new AI model will run on Huawei chips It’s expected to launch in the next few weeks. (The Information $)
10 Memes have nuked our culture Internet “brain rot” has escaped our phones to take over everything. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I must say, it was actually quite nice.”
—Astronaut Victor Glover tells President Donald Trump what it was like when Artemis II was out of communication with the rest of humanity, The New York Times reports.
One More Thing
PABLO ALBARENGA
Inside the controversial tree farms powering Apple’s carbon-neutral goal
In 2020, Apple set a goal to become net zero by the end of the decade. To hit that target, the company is offsetting its emissions by planting millions of eucalyptus trees in Brazil.
Apple is betting that the strategy will lead to a greener future. But critics warn that the industrial tree farms will do more harm than good.
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Japan’s automated bike garage is a cyclist’s dream come true. + This deep dive into bird behavior reveals the secrets of their dining habits. (Big thanks to reader Terry Gordon for the find!) + The first photo from the Artemis astronauts vividly captures the glow of our atmosphere. + There’s a new contender for the world’s most gorgeous website: RobertDeNiro.com.
