Every few centuries, changes in how information moves reshape how societies govern themselves. The printing press spread vernacular literacy, helping give rise to the Reformation and, eventually, representative government. The telegraph made it possible to administer vast nations like the US, accele...
Cybersecurity was already under strain before AI entered the stack. Now, as AI expands the attack surface and adds new complexity, the limits of legacy approaches are becoming harder to ignore. This session from MIT Technology Review’s EmTech AI conference explores why security must be rethought wit...
Companies are taking control of their own data to tailor AI for their needs. The challenge lies in balancing ownership with the safe, trusted flow of high‑quality data needed to power reliable insights. This conversation from MIT Technology Review’s EmTech AI conference examines how AI factories unl...
A new US phone network for Christians aims to block porn and gender-related content
A new US-wide cell phone network marketed to Christians is set to launch next week. It blocks porn, which experts in network security say marks the first time a US cell plan has used network-level blocking for such content that can’t be turned off even by adult account owners. It’s also rolling out ...
President Sally Kornbluth spoke in front of a packed crowd about growing challenges to the U.S. research ecosystem as funding for America’s top research universities becomes increasingly strained
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future
After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterpris...
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In February, I picked up a flyer at an anti-AI march in London. I can’t say for sure whether or not its writers meant to riff on South Park’s underpants gnomes. B...
The “EnergAIzer” method generates reliable results in seconds, enabling data center operators to efficiently allocate resources and reduce wasted energy.
On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek’s previous models, V4 is o...
For years, experts have warned that deepfakes—AI-generated videos, images, or audio recordings of people doing or saying things they haven’t actually done in real life—could be deployed in malicious ways. These dangers are now here. Improvements in deepfake technology, and the widespread availabili...
Making AI operational in constrained public sector environments
The AI boom has hit across industries, and public sector organizations are facing pressure to accelerate adoption. At the same time, government institutions face distinct constraints around security, governance, and operations that set them apart from their business counterparts. For this reason, pu...
Why having “humans in the loop” in an AI war is an illusion
The availability of artificial intelligence for use in warfare is at the center of a legal battle between Anthropic and the Pentagon. This debate has become urgent, with AI playing a bigger role than ever before in the current conflict with Iran. AI is no longer just helping humans analyze intellige...
Researchers are developing hardware and algorithms to improve collaboration between divers and autonomous underwater vehicles engaged in maritime missions.
Coming soon: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now
Each year we compile our 10 Breakthrough Technologies list, featuring our educated predictions for which technologies will have the biggest impact on how we live and work. This year, however, we had a dilemma. While our final picks encompass all our core coverage areas (energy, AI, and biotech, plus...
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In an industry that doesn’t stand still, Stanford’s AI Index, an annual roundup of key results and trends, is a chance to take a breath. (It’s a marathon, not a s...
Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts.
If you’re following AI news, you’re probably getting whiplash. AI is a gold rush. AI is a bubble. AI is taking your job. AI can’t even read a clock. The 2026 AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, AI’s annual report card, comes out today and cuts th...
As the NC Ethics of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow, Michal Masny is advancing dialogue, teaching, and research into the social and ethical dimensions of new computing technologies.
Mustafa Suleyman: AI development won’t hit a wall anytime soon—here’s why
We evolved for a linear world. If you walk for an hour, you cover a certain distance. Walk for two hours and you cover double that distance. This intuition served us well on the savannah. But it catastrophically fails when confronting AI and the core exponential trends at its heart. From the time I ...
The one piece of data that could actually shed light on your job and AI
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Within Silicon Valley’s orbit, an AI-fueled jobs apocalypse is spoken about as a given. The mood is so grim that a societal impacts researcher at Anthropic, respo...