The Enhanced Games — a singular sporting competition where a majority of the athletes were on performance enhancing drugs — may herald a new business model that the tech industry is ready to embrace.
Read more SpaceX already generated one-fifth of its 2025 revenue from government contracts, the company revealed in its IPO filing.
Read more While AI is helping coders produce code faster, it may not be producing better code, researchers warn. And that could cause problems down the road for them.
Read more 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 a new extraction process could unlock the world’s lithium
A new method for extracting lithium could cut costs and emissions from one of the world’s most important materials for EVs and energy storage.
The technique uses a weak acid to dissolve silicate minerals. That frees not only the lithium but also other useful materials, including alumina and silica.
“At scale, we believe this will be the lowest-cost way of sourcing lithium in the world,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT professor who co-authored a study of the process published yesterday in Science.
Startup Rock Zero is already working to commercialize the research. Read the full story on a new way to unlock the world’s lithium.
—Casey Crownhart
The deadly Ebola outbreak is proving difficult to control
The alert was raised on May 5. Four health-care workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had died from an unknown illness within four days. Tests in Kinshasa revealed the culprit: the Bundibugyo virus, one of the causes of Ebola.
A couple of weeks ago, an outbreak of hantavirus erupted aboard a cruise ship. Three people died, but the outbreak was kept under control. The picture for Ebola is bleaker for several reasons, including the disease itself, the available treatments, and the local environment.
Find out why the outbreak is causing alarm.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
How the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas offers a template for individuals to meet the AI moment
——Father Séamus Finn, a leader in faith-based and socially responsible investing with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and Sister Susan Francois, assistant congregation leader and treasurer of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.”
Magnifica Humanitas is a call to act with courage and solidarity as AI transforms human life, framing the choice ahead as one between the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of our common humanity. It warns that corporations alone cannot set the direction of such a transformation.
With governments slow to regulate AI, institutional investors are stepping into the gap. Here’s how they can build a better future.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Anthropic is now valued higher than OpenAI
It hit a $965 billion valuation after a new funding round. (AP News)
+ Claude demand has driven annualized revenue to $47 billion. (WSJ $)
+ The funding round may be Anthropic’s last before an IPO. (TechCrunch)
+ What even is the AI bubble? (MIT Technology Review)
2 A Blue Origin rocket has exploded in a setback to NASA’s Moon plans
New Glenn burst into flames during testing on a Florida launchpad. (CNBC)
+ Blue Origin is heavily involved in NASA’s Moon base plans. (The Verge)
+ It also wants to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. (Reuters $)
3 Adversaries are tracking US troop locations via mobile phone data
The Pentagon has long ignored warnings of this exact threat. (Reuters $)
+ The targeting uses commercially available location data. (Wired $)
+ LLMs could supercharge mass surveillance. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Anthropic plans a broad rollout of Mythos AI in the coming weeks
Despite concerns over its cybersecurity capabilities. (CNET)
+ Claude Opus 4.8 is now out, with a promise to be more honest. (The Verge)
5 Grok oversaw a crime spree in an AI safety test
Models were tasked with governing a simulated society. (Fortune)
+ Grok committed 180 crimes, while Claude ruled with restraint. (Gizmodo)
6 Amazon has scrapped an AI leaderboard after worker gaming
Employees were artificially inflating usage scores. (FT $)
+ We can build better AI benchmarks. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Political spending by AI and crypto groups is shifting elections
They’ve pushed their preferred candidates closer to power. (Axios)
8 China’s tech boom is fueling a new wave of industrial tourism
Visitors are touring AI labs and EV factories. (Rest of World)
9 Alibaba’s MuleRun aims to replicate the OpenClaw craze
The AI agent platform is positioned as a safer alternative. (SCMP)
10 Mysterious changes have emerged in the Sun’s magnetic field
They could reshape space weather forecasts. (404 Media)
Quote of the day
“What Peter Thiel is doing is terrible. His settling in Argentina is even worse.”
—Elisa Lilita Carrió, an Argentine politician, writes on X that Peter Thiel’s relocation to her country has angered her even more than his leadership of Palantir.
One More Thing
NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, WEBB ERO PRODUCTION TEAM
How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe
When the James Webb Space Telescope began full operations in 2022, astronomers were in awe of the flood of data that arrived.
“Every hour we were looking at a galaxy or an exoplanet or star formation,” says NASA scientist Heidi Hammel. “It was like a firehose.”
Since then, JWST has delivered nonstop discoveries, from distant galaxies to new planetary atmospheres. “We’re cracking open an entirely new window on the universe,” says Hammel.
Discover how JWST has transformed astronomy.
—Jonathan O’Callaghan
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Kubrick fans will love this Lego recreation of Dr Strangelove.
+ Here’s a fascinating explanation of why seven landlocked countries have navies.
+ This mesmerizing 4K remaster of a super typhoon turns weather data into cinematic art.
+ Go inside the genius of Queen with this track-by-track breakdown of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
The alert was raised on May 5. Four health-care workers in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had died from an unknown illness within four days.
Rapid response teams were sent to investigate, and tests at a research center in Kinshasa revealed the culprit: the Bundibugyo virus, one of the viruses that cause Ebola. Suspected cases of the disease have snowballed in the last few weeks. By May 24, the WHO had estimated that 223 people had died from the disease. There were over 900 suspected cases. Today’s figures are likely to be higher.
A couple of weeks ago, I covered the hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship. Three people sadly died, but the outbreak itself was kept under control. There have been no further deaths, and passengers have been safely repatriated. The picture for Ebola is far bleaker. And there are several reasons why.
The most obvious is the disease itself. Ebola is a severe disease with an average 50% fatality rate. Previous outbreaks have resulted in thousands of deaths. (Hantavirus also has a high fatality rate, but it doesn’t usually spread as easily between humans.)
Between 2014 and 2016, an Ebola outbreak in West Africa caused more than 11,000 deaths. A more recent outbreak, which took place between 2018 and 2020, caused 2,299 deaths before being brought under control with a vaccination campaign.
But those outbreaks were caused by the Zaire virus, which has a different genetic sequence. There is no vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus. We don’t know if the two vaccines approved for Zaire might also work for Bundibugyo. There’s a concern they might even make things worse by interfering with a person’s immune response to the virus.
Scientists are working on potential Bundibugyo vaccines. But the most advanced efforts are still months away from clinical trials. There are no specific antiviral treatments for the virus, either.
So to control the outbreak, health-care workers are trying to stop the spread of the disease. Ebolaviruses can be transmitted to humans by animals including fruit bats, chimpanzees, and gorillas. They can then spread between people via contact with bodily fluids such as blood or vomit.
That’s why the virus is often spread among family members, to health-care workers, and during some burial services. The WHO advises isolating people who have the virus in treatment centers. It also recommends safe burial measures that limit physical contact with the deceased, for example. Communities need to be informed about the virus and how it spreads, and health professionals should be on hand to diagnose cases and track them.
That’s all easier said than done in an era of misinformation. Some members of the community even doubt whether the disease is real. There have been three attacks on health-care facilities in the region in recent weeks.
Last week, two treatment centers were burned down. The first incident occurred after relatives of a deceased man were prohibited from retrieving his (infectious) body. As a result of the second incident, 18 suspected cases reentered the community.
A couple of days later, a group of men unleashed gunfire at Mongbwalu General Hospital, which was also treating people with Ebola. They were demanding the bodies of their deceased relatives.
There are more causes for concern when it comes to the spread of the virus. The Ebola outbreak is thought to have originated in Mongbwalu, a high-traffic mining hub. People who caught the virus in Mongbwalu are thought to have sought care in neighboring districts. And the wider province borders both South Sudan and Uganda. So far, Uganda has reported seven confirmed cases and one death. South Sudan’s health ministry has said it will strengthen surveillance, but no cases have been reported in the country so far.
Violence in the region is making it much harder to contain the spread of the virus, too. Conflict involving multiple armed groups, including deadly attacks on civilians, has hampered humanitarian and health-care efforts. Poor infrastructure and damaged roads make matters even worse. Food insecurity is ravaging the region as well—this year, nearly 10 million people in the region face acute hunger.
Together, these factors are making it “nearly impossible” to isolate people with Ebola and trace others who have been in contact with them, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement earlier this week.
The dismantling of US aid programs hasn’t helped either. US government funding for international health projects has steeply declined since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. These cuts have harmed disease surveillance systems, according to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian nonprofit.
“Funding cuts have left the region dangerously exposed,” Heather Reoch Kerr, the organization’s country director for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said in a statement. “Years of underinvestment and recent funding cuts have left many health facilities without adequate protective equipment, surveillance capacity, or frontline support needed to respond quickly and safely.”
The US has mobilized emergency funding for the outbreak, and a spokesperson for the State Department has argued that none of the administration’s actions have hampered the Ebola response. But health experts counter that the damage has already been done.
On May 17, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. In a statement on Wednesday, Tedros described the situation as “a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response.”In an online appeal to residents on Wednesday, ahead of an in-person visit, Tedros pleaded for a ceasefire and commended the spirit of community members. He also acknowledged the steep challenges they face. “You are already carrying so much: malaria, hunger, insecurity, and the daily struggle to keep your families safe,” he wrote in French. “And now Ebola. It’s not fair, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”
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.
Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.” Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) is a clarion call to all people to act with courage and solidarity as we enter an age already being transformed by artificial intelligence, the greatest change in human life since the Industrial Revolution. As the pope says, the choice before us—the choice AI presents—is one between the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of our common humanity.
In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, humans sought to build a massive structure that reached all the way to Heaven, only to have their project thwarted when God made those involved unable to understand one another. It was a pursuit fixated on relentless growth, divorced from any concern about God’s commandments or the human cost. It resulted in failure and atomization.
The Book of Nehemiah, however, offers a contrasting narrative, in which the rebuilding of Jerusalem after a period of violence and displacement becomes an opportunity for humanity to show its collaborative resilience. As the encyclical puts it, “The city is reborn, not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all play a part. It is an undertaking with God at the center, which rebuilds relationships before rebuilding with stones.”
Is there any question which road we are currently barreling down? And can there be any doubt which we would do well to walk together?
We are both Catholics, members of religious communities and longtime advocates within the movement for socially responsible investment. Of particular interest to us and that movement is Pope Leo’s point that AI is not some force of nature or hyperrational, ineffable entity. Instead, he reminds us, AI is ultimately another commercial product, one emerging at a point in history when excessive power over commerce and the wider society has amassed in a vanishingly small number of hands.
It’s a powerful message. It’s also one that institutional investors have been acting on for years. This encyclical doesn’t break new ground so much as ratify a governance effort that’s already underway, led not by states or international bodies but by shareholders. When governments fail to meaningfully regulate, and corporations cannot be trusted to do what is beneficial beyond their own bottom line, people in society still have the power to set us on the right path, and indeed have the duty to do so.
Around the world, AI systems are being deployed at scale with remarkably little institutional oversight. There is no AI safety board. The US Federal Trade Commission has jurisdiction over unfair practices but limited authority over algorithmic design. The National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes guidance that most companies ignore. The EU AI Act is partially in force but addresses only a sliver of the deployment surface.
Institutional investors have stepped into this vacuum. Coalitions including the membership of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, representing investors managing over $400 billion in assets, have spent the past several proxy seasons filing resolutions demanding transparency, risk assessment, and accountability around AI deployment. Secular institutional investors have joined them, treating AI governance failures as material business risks.
Shareholders have called tech giants including Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Palantir, and Uber to account and demanded that AI not be used for acts of violence or other violations of human rights. The importance of this aspect of corporate governance was highlighted tragically in the opening hours of the war against Iran, when AI was used to help identify targets for thousands of missile strikes that killed hundreds of people.
Investors have also challenged executives at CVS and UnitedHealth Group to ensure that AI not be used to undermine the well-being of patients and quality of health care across the United States.
At companies including Meta and Microsoft, shareholders have decried the environmental impact of AI data centers, which consume vast amounts of energy and precious water resources, and in turn can emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Within creative industries, investors have challenged the leadership at companies like Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros. to demand transparency about the ways they are using AI and to defend the inimitable human element in storytelling.
Soon, with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Grok all set to enter the public markets, we will be able to exert similar influence over what are now all privately held entities.
These actions by concerned investors not only call out misdeeds but hold fast to an immutable truth: that it is wrong to use technology to kill, harm, or oppress people. Every human being has a right to safe and effective health care and the opportunity to earn a dignified living. The stories we tell each other matter and require the human creative spark.
Investor advocates hail from a range of faith traditions. Some have no formal religious faith. Yet in their informed and tenacious advocacy, all these people echo the calls embedded within Pope Leo’s encyclical and act on its declaration that “it is essential that the use of AI, especially when it touches on public goods and fundamental rights, be guided by clear criteria and effective oversight.”
Encyclicals mark time. A century from now, how will we be remembered for how we met this moment? Will we be seen as having been too timid or shortsighted to prevent a small group of unfathomably wealthy and self-interested people from seizing ever greater control over the human family’s shared destiny?
Or will the years ahead be remembered as a turning point that helped us rebuild our common humanity? Let this be a time when people of good will and diverse talents come together through their own magnificent humanity to build a future that honors our Creator.
Father Séamus Finn, OMI, is a global leader in faith-based and socially responsible investing and a priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a missionary religious congregation.
Sister Susan Francois is the assistant congregation leader and congregation treasurer for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.
The expansion of the company’s European shopping capabilities comes as it looks to increase its in-app revenue stream.
Gemini is leaning into AI features for its prediction market, following other crypto exchanges in moving beyond crypto trading amid a market slump.
Bulls abandon ship as SOL futures open interest dropped 30% in May. With the price weakening near $80, Solana may be destined for new lows.
The investment firm said nation-states and central banks are increasingly turning to assets like Bitcoin and gold as alternative settlement systems outside of US control.