The Download: How fertility tech is changing families

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI is adding mental health guardrails to ChatGPT
It’s set to give less direct advice, and encourage users to take breaks from lengthy chats. (NBC)
+ What happens when doctors fail to spot AI’s mistakes? (The Verge)
+ OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US wants to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
And it hopes to do that before Russia and China, who are planning to do exactly the same. (Politico)
+ NASA’s latest mission to the moon just failed. (Engadget)
+ Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon. (MIT Technology Review)

3 How to live forever (or at least get rich trying) 👴🤑
Love them or hate them, the people behind the explosion in longevity research are a fascinating bunch. (New Yorker $)
+ Longevity clinics around the world are selling unproven treatments. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Welcome to Silicon Valley’s ‘hard tech’ era
Goodbye, consumer software. Hello, massive military contracts. (NYT $)
+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)

5 There’s a big problem with the Gulf’s trillion-dollar AI dream
Building data centers in a region that already has water scarcity issues seems…unwise. (Rest of Water)
+ There’s a data center boom in the US desert too. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Google has promised to scale back its energy usage during certain times to reduce stress on the grid. (Quartz $)

6 Tesla’s board awarded about $30 billion of shares to Elon Musk
“Retaining Elon is more important than ever before,” they wrote in a letter to shareholders yesterday. (FT $)
+ Tech CEOs pay packets are reaching stratospheric new records. (WSJ $)

7 What happens if you respond to those scam job texts?
You get exploited, obviously—but you’d be surprised just how weird it can get along the way. (Slate)

8 Why there’s so much uproar over Vogue’s AI-generated ad
It’s the latest flashpoint in the war over when AI should (and shouldn’t) be used. (TechCrunch)

9 Earth’s core seems to be up and leaking out of Earth’s surface 🌋
It’s a finding that’s forcing geoscientists to rethink some long-held assumptions. (Quanta $)
+ How a volcanic eruption turned a human brain into glass. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Could lasers help us see inside people’s heads?
It seems possible, but big hurdles remain to this new method being adopted in clinical settings. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

 “Hate it! Don’t want anything to do with it.”

—Weezy Simes, a 27-year-old florist, sums up her feelings about AI to Business Insider.

+ We’re starting to give AI agents real autonomy. But are they really ready for it? 

+ What even is AI? Everyone thinks they know, but no one can agree. Here’s why that’s a problem.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The US is losing its scientific supremacy
Money and talent are starting to leave as a hostile White House ramps up its attacks. (The Atlantic $)
+ The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Global markets are swooning again 
New tariffs, weak jobs data, and Trump’s decision to fire a top economic official are not going down well. (Reuters $)

3 Big Tech is turning into Big Infrastructure
Capital expenditure on AI contributed more to US economic growth in the last two quarters than all consumer spending, which is kind of wild. (WSJ $)
+ But are they likely to get a return on their huge investments? (FT $)

4 OpenAI pulled a feature that let you see strangers’ conversations with ChatGPT 
They’d opted in to sharing them—but may well have not realized that’d mean their chats would be indexed on Google Search. (TechCrunch) 

5 Tesla has to pay $243 million over the role Autopilot played in a fatal crash
The plaintiffs successfully argued that the company’s promises about its tech can lull drivers into a false sense of security. (NBC)

6 Tech workers in China are desperate to learn AI skills
And they’re assuaging their anxiety with online courses, though they say they vary in quality. (Rest of World) 
+ Chinese universities want students to use more AI, not less. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Russia is escalating its crackdown on online freedoms 
There are growing fears that it’s planning to ban WhatsApp and Telegram. (NYT $)

8 People are using AI to write obituaries
But what do we lose when we outsource expressing our emotions to a machine? (WP $)
+ Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Just seeing a sick person triggers your immune response
This is a pretty cool finding —and the study was conducted in virtual reality too. (Nature)

This week we welcomed a record-breaking baby to the world. Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, who arrived over the weekend, developed from an embryo that was frozen in storage for 30 and a half years. You could call him the world’s oldest baby.

His parents, Lindsey and Tim Pierce, were themselves only young children when that embryo was created, all the way back in 1994. Linda Archerd, who donated the embryo, described the experience as “surreal.”

Stories like this also highlight how reproductive technologies are shaping families. But while baby Thaddeus is a record-breaker, plenty of other babies have been born from embryos that have been frozen for significant spells of time. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

If you’re interested in reading more about fertility tech, why not check out:

+ Earlier this month, researchers announced babies had been born from a trial of three-person IVF. The long-awaited results suggest that the approach can reduce the risk of mitochondrial disease—but not everyone is convinced.

+ Frozen embryos are filling storage banks around the world. It’s a struggle to know what to do with them.

+ Read about how a mobile lab is bringing IVF to rural communities in South Africa.

+ Why family-friendly policies and gender equality might be more helpful than IVF technology when it comes to averting the looming fertility crisis.

+ The first babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot have been born. Meet the startups trying to engineer a desktop fertility machine.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Donald Trump has announced new tariffs across the world
They will affect virtually every nation—some more favorably than others. (CNN)
+ The new rates range widely from 10% to 41%. (NYT $)
+ The African country Lesotho had declared a tariff-induced state of emergency. (WSJ $)

2 Palantir has signed a $10 billion deal with the US Army
It’s the latest in a string of lucrative agreements with federal agencies. (WP $)
 
3 Tech giants are raking in cash
But we still don’t know how useful a lot of the AI they’re currently building will prove to be. (FT $)
+ It’s a boon for investors, but not necessarily for employees. (WSJ $)
+ It’s unclear whose approach will result in sustainable profits. (Semafor)

4 Neuralink is planning its first trial in the UK
To join the current five patients using its brain implant. (Reuters)
+ This patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)