How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook—and why everyone’s going to follow it
When the Chinese firm DeepSeek dropped a large language model called R1 last week, it sent shock waves through the US tech industry. Not only did R1 match the best of the homegrown competition, it was built for a fraction of the cost—and given away for free. The US stock market lost $1 trillion, President…
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AI’s energy obsession gets a reality check
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Just a week in, the AI sector has already seen its first battle of wits under the new Trump administration. The clash stems from two key pieces of news: the announcement of…
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How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions
The AI community is abuzz over DeepSeek R1, a new open-source reasoning model. The model was developed by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which claims that R1 matches or even surpasses OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1 on multiple key benchmarks but operates at a fraction of the cost. “This could be a truly equalizing breakthrough that is…
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What’s next for robots
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Jan Liphardt teaches bioengineering at Stanford, but to many strangers in Los Altos, California, he is a peculiar man they see walking a four-legged robotic dog down…
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OpenAI launches Operator—an agent that can use a computer for you
After weeks of buzz, OpenAI has released Operator, its first AI agent. Operator is a web app that can carry out simple online tasks in a browser, such as booking concert tickets or filling an online grocery order. The app is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent—CUA (“coo-ah”), for short—built on top of…
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Implementing responsible AI in the generative age
Many organizations have experimented with AI, but they haven’t always gotten the full value from their investments. A host of issues standing in the way center on the accuracy, fairness, and security of AI systems. In response, organizations are actively exploring the principles of responsible AI: the idea that AI systems must be fair, transparent, and…
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Generate Value From GenAI With ‘Small t’ Transformations
Neil Webb Less than two years ago, generative AI made headlines with its amazing new capabilities: It could engage in conversations; interpret massive amounts of text, audio, or imagery; and even create new documents and artwork. After the fastest technology adoption in history — with over 100 million users in the first two months —…
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OpenAI ups its lobbying efforts nearly seven-fold
OpenAI spent $1.76 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday–a significant jump from 2023 when the company disclosed just $260,000 spent on Capitol Hill. The company also disclosed a new in-house lobbyist, Meghan Dorn, who worked for five…
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Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Peering into the body to find and diagnose cancer is all about spotting patterns. Radiologists use x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging to illuminate tumors, and pathologists examine tissue from kidneys, livers,…
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The second wave of AI coding is here
Ask people building generative AI what generative AI is good for right now—what they’re really fired up about—and many will tell you: coding. “That’s something that’s been very exciting for developers,” Jared Kaplan, chief scientist at Anthropic, told MIT Technology Review this month: “It’s really understanding what’s wrong with code, debugging it.” Copilot, a tool…
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