Research
AI for science needs reasoning, not just data
Every few decades, someone announces that science has reached its end. In 1903, the revered physicist Albert Michelson wrote that the “facts of physical science have all been disc…
ByteDance Seed Introduces SeedRealtime: a Native Audio-Visual Full-Duplex LLM That Watches, Listens and Speaks in One Model
ByteDance’s Seed team has introduced SeedRealtime, a native audio-visual full-duplex LLM. The model fuses audio, video and text in a single unified architecture. It interacts in r…
NVIDIA Releases NemotronLabs VoiceChat 11B: An Open Full-Duplex Speech-to-Speech Model with ~450 ms Turn-Taking and Live Tool Calling
NVIDIA releases NemotronLabs VoiceChat 11B, an open full-duplex speech-to-speech model with 448 ms latency and live tool calling. The post NVIDIA Releases NemotronLabs VoiceChat 1…
Top LLM Observability and Evaluation Platforms in 2026: Langfuse, LangSmith, Braintrust, Arize, and More Compared
A verified 2026 comparison of LLM observability platforms covering tracing depth, evaluation capability, production monitoring, and pricing. The post Top LLM Observability and Eva…
The Download: a censorship conspiracy theory and the first virus created by 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. How ideas of a vast censorship network mo…
How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy
This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project. One morning in April 2025, employees of a small office in the US St…
The Download: Google’s AI shake-up and Meta’s rogue model
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. Google’s AI empire is being reshaped. Her…
Puzzle Corner
Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the September/October 2026 Puzzle Corner, brought to you by Michael S. Branicky, ScD ’95, of the Puzzle Corner Puzzle Crew (aka PC…
The Download: NASA’s new telescope and Chinese tech import curbs
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. NASA’s new dark energy space telescope ca…
NASA’s new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids
At the end of August, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its quest is to help us better understand how the universe …
The Download: US robot restrictions, and ICE’s DNA grab
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. Trump’s AI protectionism has come for rob…
Trump’s AI protectionism has come for robotics
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Humanoid robots usually elicit more cring…
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 rea…
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. …
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 …
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 star…
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—…
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…
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 I…
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 co…
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 t…
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…
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 unp…
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…