Eligible users in more than 110 markets can register for tokenized SpaceX equity ahead of the company’s highly anticipated public listing.
After a very profitable decade on Microsoft’s board, Reid Hoffman is stepping down to focus on his AI drug discovery startup Manus.
Read more A massive viral conversation sharing VC horror stories has taken place this week on X. Some are weird. Some are infuriating.
Read more IBM and two of its subsidiary companies were allegedly breached during the mid-2010s — a lawsuit filed by a former cybersecurity executive accuses IBM of not disclosing and actively covering it up.
Read more Applications for Startup Battlefield 200 officially close on June 8, 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t wait any longer. Secure your shot at competing on the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 this October at San Francisco’s Moscone West.
Read more In a statement, a Google representative described the deal as a result of unexpected demand for its recently launched AI products.
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.
The Meta hack shows there’s more to AI security than Mythos
On Monday, reports emerged that attackers had used Meta’s AI customer support agent to steal Instagram accounts. Their approach was simple: they asked the agent to link the accounts to email addresses they controlled, and it complied.
Since Anthropic announced that its Mythos model was too good at hacking for a general release, cybersecurity concerns have focused on the risk of superpowered AI systems overwhelming computer infrastructure. But the Instagram hack shows that far simpler exploits can still cause damage.
As companies offload more work to AI, these comparatively unsophisticated attacks are becoming harder to ignore. Read the full story to understand why.
—Grace Huckins
Are AI chatbots making us lose control of our brains?
Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, fears that digital technologies are weakening our cognitive abilities.
Her research suggests attention spans have fallen sharply over time, leading to higher stress and lower performance. She now believes AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude may accelerate this shift. “You’re deferring your cognitive work to AI,” she said. “And it’s not good for us.”
Mark argues this could weaken critical thinking and emotional intelligence. Luckily, she thinks we can course-correct by changing our relationship with these technologies.
Find out how AI could reshape attention and thinking.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Anthropic has called for a global slowdown in AI development
It flagged the risk of models “self-improving.” (WSJ $)
+ And wants a coordinated plan to stop them. (Reuters $)
+ Skeptics note that the timing is awfully convenient. (The Register)
2 In a first, scientists have precisely edited human embryo genes
They relied on a newer gene-editing technique. (NYT $)
+ Genetically-modified babies could be on their way. (Guardian)
+ Companies have big plans for the technology. (MIT Technology Review)
3 US officials have discussed taking financial stakes in the AI firms
They’ve held talks about the government acquiring shares. (Reuters $)
+ Sam Altman pitched the idea to the White House last year. (WSJ $)
4 Bot web traffic has overtaken human web traffic
Cloudflare said 57.4% of traffic now comes from bots. (NBC News)
+ Its CEO expected the milestone at the end of 2027. (CNET)
5 The White House plans to bring AI doctors into American medicine
It wants chatbots to diagnose illness and prescribe medicine. (WSJ $)
+ But we don’t even know if healthcare AI actually helps patients. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Meta quietly added facial recognition code for smart glasses to its app
The exploratory feature would identify people via biometric data. (Wired $)
+ Smart glasses are also entering warfare. (MIT Technology Review)
7 South Korea’s labour minister wants tech firms to share AI profits
Kim Young wants staff and suppliers to get a share. (Reuters $)
+ He helped avert a huge strike over AI profit-sharing at Samsung. (NYT $)
8 Canada’s highly-anticipated AI strategy has launched
It promises over $2 billion in funding and aims to create 250,000 jobs. (BBC)
+ AI could strengthen democracy. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Investment in agricultural tech is booming
That’s good news at a time when we’re facing unprecedented levels of food market volatility. (The Economist $)
10 Bumblebees can use tools to solve problems, new research shows
Not just busy—they’re clever too! (Guardian)
Quote of the day
“Welp, that happened faster than I predicted.”
—Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, one of the largest internet hosting services, reacts on X to reports that bots have overtaken humans in driving web traffic.
One More Thing
CHRISTOPHER PAYNE
Inside the machine that saved Moore’s Law
In a Connecticut clean room, the Dutch company ASML is developing the world’s most advanced machine for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, a crucial process for manufacturing microchips.
The system has become vital to Moore’s Law—the observation that the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years as components shrink, driving gains in performance and efficiency. “Without this machine, it’s gone,” says Wayne Lam, a director of research at CCS Insight. “You can’t really make any leading-edge processors without EUV.”
Discover how ASML’s EUV technology saved Moore’s Law.
—Clive Thompson
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.)
+ Tech bosses love Tolkien. Here’s what the writer might think of them.
+ Rare footage captures an underwater volcano erupting beneath the Pacific Ocean.
+ Watch a tiny rescued cub grow into adulthood in this heartwarming tiger compilation.
+ This medieval version of “Take On Me” is like stepping into a tavern of synth-pop bards.
This week I’ve been at SXSW London. There’s been music, film, and a lot—and I mean a lot—of talk about AI. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the last 30 years studying how people interact with digital technologies.
Early in her career, the biggest concerns were the potential impacts of internet and email use on our brains. We may laugh those concerns off today, but it’s true that as the technologies became more ubiquitous and ingrained in our daily lives, our attention spans began to shrink.
Mark is worried that things are only getting worse. The title of our session was “Have we lost control of our brains?” Unfortunately, Mark told me, the answer is yes.
Around two decades ago, Mark started wondering about how our use of devices might affect our attention spans. She set up what she calls “living laboratories,” using sensors and trackers to monitor adult volunteers’ attention, mood, and behavior when they were using devices.
In 2003, she found that the average user had an attention span of around two and a half minutes. That’s how long people could spend focused on one thing before moving on to something else. “That surprised me at the time,” she told me during our session on Wednesday. “I thought: Wow, this is really short.”
But when she repeated the experiment in 2012, she found that attention spans had shrunk—all the way down to around 75 seconds on average, she said. In research she conducted between 2014 and 2020, attention spans shrank further still—to a mere 47 seconds, on average. Yikes.
And it’s not good for us. Mark told me that she’s found switching our attention so frequently is stressful. “We would have people wear heart rate monitors, and … we would see direct correlation between switching attention fast and stress going up,” she told me.
All this distraction makes it harder for us to get stuff done, too. “It just takes longer to do any single task if you’re switching your attention,” she told me. “It’s not great for performance. It’s not great for our emotional well-being.”
And that’s for adults. What about the effects of digital technologies on children? A few months ago, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and Google’s YouTube were ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to a 20-year-old woman who had accused the companies of creating products that led her to develop a childhood addiction.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Meta settled another lawsuit, this one brought by a rural school district in Kentucky. The district had also accused the company of designing addictive products that were harmful to students and had sought more than $60 million to cover the costs of their mental-health needs. Around 1,200 other school districts are taking similar legal action against social media companies.
But social media isn’t all bad, all the time. It can provide opportunities for some people, including those from marginalized groups, to form connections that might otherwise be difficult. A 2024 survey of LGBTQ+ teenagers found that while some described social media as a place of rejection and fear, others described it as a place where they felt a sense of belonging, where they could develop friendships and cultivate their identity.
In truth, we can’t definitively say what effects using social media is having on children across the board, says Mark. “There have been lots and lots of studies, and the evidence is to date inconclusive,” she told me. (Despite what you might read in best-selling books on the subject.)
Mark is hopeful that large, long-term studies might finally start shedding a bit more light on this question. An effort of this nature is underway in Australia, which enacted a social media ban for under-16s at the end of last year.
Given this uncertainty over a 20-year-old technology, I wondered if Mark had any thoughts on the potential impacts of AI—an obviously much newer offering that within the space of a couple of years appears to have become deeply integrated into our digital lives.
She told me she’s worried.
When we put in effort to do something—such as evaluating or summarizing content—we’re doing what’s known as “depth of processing,” she told me. “When you’re actively engaged with information, you’re processing it on a very deep level,” she said. “Then you’re more likely to learn it, to understand it, [and] to retain it.”
That’s not happening when most people use AI bots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. When we ask these tools to write, summarize, or evaluate for us, we’re no longer doing that depth of processing. “You’re deferring your cognitive work to AI,” she said. “And it’s not good for us.”
The risk is that our cognitive abilities will weaken over time. “If you’re not constantly exercising your muscles, they can atrophy,” Mark said. “And that’s exactly what can happen with our minds.” People with weaker critical thinking skills are more likely to fall prey to misinformation, she added.
Interactions with AI-powered “synthetic companions” can be just as harmful. Relationships between human beings take work—time, effort, and understanding. None of that is needed if you’re forming a relationship with a sycophantic bot. The “muscle” we risk atrophying here is emotional intelligence, which surveys suggest is already on the decline, said Mark.
She’s not painting a particularly rosy picture.
“If we continue on this trajectory, attention spans are diminished, loneliness is rising, boredom is rising, emotional intelligence decreasing, and actually our sense of purpose, according to studies, is also decreasing,” she said.
Luckily, she thinks we can course-correct by changing our relationship with these technologies. The key factor is effort.
The more effort we put into something, the deeper the satisfaction we stand to gain, Mark told me. That means making an effort to read a book rather than skimming its summary, and to meet with friends in person when you can. Try not to use GPS in places where you can probably manage without it.
“I love technology; we can’t give it up,” she told me. “[But] we have to learn how to create new life routines.”
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.
On June 5, 404 Media reported that attackers had been using Meta’s AI customer support agent to steal Instagram accounts. Their approach was simple: They asked the agent to link the accounts to email addresses that they controlled, and the agent complied. One attacker broke into the dormant Obama White House account and made pro-Iran posts; others took over accounts with valuable, single-word handles, possibly in order to sell them.
AI cybersecurity concerns are nothing new. Since Anthropic announced in April that its Mythos model was too good at hacking to be released to the general public, commentators, researchers, and federal officials alike have fixated on the idea that superpowered AI systems could lay waste to our computer infrastructure. That’s not quite what this Instagram hack was: There, AI was the target rather than the attacker, and the method was far simpler than anything Mythos would cook up. But as companies offload more work to AI, these comparatively unsophisticated attacks could wreak their own havoc.
“As AI becomes more and more widely used—especially when AI is more and more widely used to automate our work flows, like account recovery—I think attackers are going to be more and more motivated to attack AI itself,” says Neil Gong, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University.
Gong and other scholars have been issuing warnings about the security vulnerabilities of AI agents for a while. They publish papers and blog posts detailing exploits such as indirect prompt injection, which involves hijacking agents using commands hidden in websites, emails, or other seemingly anodyne data sources. Compared with these techniques, the Meta hack was practically mindless. The only complication that hackers had to overcome was using a VPN that matched the true account owner’s location; then they directly asked the support agent to change the account’s email address, and it complied.
Meta has not commented publicly on how this vulnerability slipped through the cracks. But given the simplicity of the exploit, Gong says, it should have been uncovered easily, before the agent was deployed. “It’s really surprising,” he says. “I don’t understand why they didn’t find this simple problem.”
Jessica Ji, a senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, agrees. “It raises questions like: Were there even guardrails in place?” she says. “Did anyone think to test for this kind of scenario?” She notes that the oversight is particularly striking coming from a company like Meta, which has extensive expertise in both AI and cybersecurity. Meta did not respond to a request for comment for this article, but on Monday a Meta spokesperson said on X that the vulnerability had been resolved.
As embarrassing a moment as this might be for Meta in particular, it also highlights some core vulnerabilities shared by all AI agents. Unlike traditional software, agents can respond in flexible—and unexpected—ways to new circumstances, which is why they might be able to substitute for human customer support agents. But AI agents can also be tricked in ways that humans wouldn’t be, and because they can take real-world actions, those mistakes have consequences. “A human would say, ‘Okay, why do you want to change the email address?’ and maybe respond with a security question,” says Somesh Jha, a professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “What is going on with these agents is they’re very eager to finish the task. It’s almost like some elementary school student who just wants to please the teacher.”
There are ways to mitigate the risks. Companies can use traditional software to build guardrails that make sure agents follow strict rules, such as always asking for answers to security questions before sending sensitive account information to a new email address. And the experts consulted for this article all agree that agents should undergo rigorous red-teaming, a process in which developers try their best to attack a system in order to discover its vulnerabilities before it is deployed.
But there are also countervailing forces. Companies want to deploy capable agents, and the more power an agent has—and the fewer guardrails it is subject to—the more work it can potentially take on. “Security and utility always have a trade-off,” says Bo Li, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And adequate red-teaming can be expensive. Defenders have to expend more resources than attackers do, because attackers only need to discover a single exploit, while defenders try to discover and patch as many as they can. When attackers are working toward something as valuable as a single-word Instagram handle, they’ll pour resources into finding exploits, so defenders have to spend even more money to protect that prize.
As AI models continue to improve, hardening their defenses might actually get easier. Though the probabilistic nature of large language models means that LLM agents will always be vulnerable to some forms of attack, a more sophisticated model might have identified an attempt to change the email associated with the Obama White House account as suspicious. And AI systems can be used for agent red-teaming, much as participants in Anthropic’s Project Glasswing use Mythos to identify vulnerabilities in their software.
Still, experts expect that the problem of securing AI agents will only become more pressing in the future. As agents grow more capable, companies that adopt them may want to give them more power, both to provide more services with fewer humans and to avoid being left behind by their competitors. In the fast-moving world of AI, the time needed to carefully secure risky agentic systems might seem like an unconscionable delay.
“Everybody wants to be the first to do something and just push things out without careful scrutiny and red-teaming,” Jha says. “I think it’s a very dangerous thing.”
US Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould and New York Representative Gregory Meeks sparred over Donald Trump’s influence on regulators he has nominated as president at a Thursday oversight hearing.