This is the typical next step before it launches a commercial service.
Read more YouTube megastar MrBeast announced on Monday that his company, Beast Industries, is buying Step, a teen-focused banking app.
Read more The move comes as Bluesky’s competitors, X and Threads, have long supported drafts.
Read more AI isn’t going to replace major SaaS apps with vibe-coded versions, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi believes. But it could give rise to competitors.
Read more This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
Lots of influential people in tech last week were describing Moltbook, an online hangout populated by AI agents interacting with one another, as a glimpse into the future. It appeared to show AI systems doing useful things for the humans that created them (one person used the platform to help him negotiate a deal on a new car). Sure, it was flooded with crypto scams, and many of the posts were actually written by people, but something about it pointed to a future of helpful AI, right?
The whole experiment reminded our senior editor for AI, Will Douglas Heaven, of something far less interesting: Pokémon.
Back in 2014, someone set up a game of Pokémon in which the main character could be controlled by anyone on the internet via the streaming platform Twitch. Playing was as clunky as it sounds, but it was incredibly popular: at one point, a million people were playing the game at the same time.
“It was yet another weird online social experiment that got picked up by the mainstream media: What did this mean for the future?” Will says. “Not a lot, it turned out.”
The frenzy about Moltbook struck a similar tone to Will, and it turned out that one of the sources he spoke to had been thinking about Pokémon too. Jason Schloetzer, at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, saw the whole thing as a sort of Pokémon battle for AI enthusiasts, in which they created AI agents and deployed them to interact with other agents. In this light, the news that many AI agents were actually being instructed by people to say certain things that made them sound sentient or intelligent makes a whole lot more sense.
“It’s basically a spectator sport,” he told Will, “but for language models.”
Will wrote an excellent piece about why Moltbook was not the glimpse into the future that it was said to be. Even if you are excited about a future of agentic AI, he points out, there are some key pieces that Moltbook made clear are still missing. It was a forum of chaos, but a genuinely helpful hive mind would require more coordination, shared objectives, and shared memory.
“More than anything else, I think Moltbook was the internet having fun,” Will says. “The biggest question that now leaves me with is: How far will people push AI just for the laughs?”
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.
Moltbook was peak AI theater
For a few days recently, the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.”
We observed! Launched on January 28, Moltbook went viral in a matter of hours. It’s been designed as a place where instances of a free open-source LLM-powered agent known as OpenClaw (formerly known as ClawdBot, then Moltbot), could come together and do whatever they wanted.
But is Moltbook really a glimpse of the future, as many have claimed? Or something else entirely? Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
The ascent of the AI therapist
We’re in the midst of a global mental-health crisis. More than a billion people worldwide suffer from a mental-health condition, according to the World Health Organization. The prevalence of anxiety and depression is growing in many demographics, particularly young people, and suicide is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives globally each year.
Given the clear demand for accessible and affordable mental-health services, it’s no wonder that people have looked to artificial intelligence for possible relief. Millions are already actively seeking therapy from popular chatbots, or from specialized psychology apps like Wysa and Woebot.
Four timely new books are a reminder that while the present feels like a blur of breakthroughs, scandals, and confusion, this disorienting time is rooted in deeper histories of care, technology, and trust. Read the full story.
—Becky Ferreira
This story is from the most recent print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine, which shines a light on the exciting innovations happening right now. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land.
Making AI Work, MIT Technology Review’s new AI newsletter, is here
For years, our newsroom has explored AI’s limitations and potential dangers, as well as its growing energy needs. And our reporters have looked closely at how generative tools are being used for tasks such as coding and running scientific experiments.
But how is AI actually being used in fields like health care, climate tech, education, and finance? How are small businesses using it? And what should you keep in mind if you use AI tools at work? These questions guided the creation of Making AI Work, a new AI mini-course newsletter. Read more about it, and sign up here to receive the seven editions straight to your inbox.
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 failing to punish polluters
The number of civil lawsuits it’s pursuing has sharply dropped in comparison to Trump’s first term. (Ars Technica)
+ Rising GDP = greater carbon emissions. But does it have to? (The Guardian)
2 The European Union has warned Meta against blocking rival AI assistants
It’s the latest example of Brussels’ attempts to rein in Big Tech. (Bloomberg $)
3 AI ads took over the Super Bowl
Hyping up chatbots and taking swipes at their competitors. (TechCrunch)
+ They appeared to be trying to win over AI naysayers, too. (WP $)
+ Celebrities were out in force to flog AI wares. (Slate $)
4 China wants to completely dominate the humanoid robot industry
Local governments and banks are only too happy to oblige promising startups. (WSJ $)
+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review)
5 We’re witnessing the first real crypto crash
Cryptocurrency is now fully part of the financial system, for better or worse. (NY Mag $)
+ Wall Street’s grasp of AI is pretty shaky too. (Semafor)
+ Even traditionally safe markets are looking pretty volatile right now. (Economist $)
6 The man who coined vibe coding has a new fixation
“Agentic engineering” is the next big thing, apparently. (Insider $)
+ Agentic AI is the talk of the town right now. (The Information $)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)
7 AI running app Runna has adjusted its aggressive training plans 
Runners had long suspected its suggestions were pushing them towards injury. (WSJ $)
8 San Francisco’s march for billionaires was a flop
Only around three dozen supporters turned up. (SF Chronicle)
+ Predictably, journalists nearly outnumbered the demonstrators. (TechCrunch)
9 AI is shaking up romance novels 
But models still aren’t great at writing sex scenes. (NYT $)
+ It’s surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot. (MIT Technology Review)
10 ChatGPT won’t be replacing human stylists any time soon
Its menswear suggestions are more manosphere influencer than suave gentleman. (GQ)
Quote of the day
“There is no Plan B, because that assumes you will fail. We’re going to do the start-up thing until we die.”
—William Alexander, an ambitious 21-year old AI worker, explains his and his cohort’s attitudes towards trying to make it big in the highly-competitive industry to the New York Times.
One more thing
The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last?
In May 2023 a leaked memo reported to have been written by Luke Sernau, a senior engineer at Google, said out loud what many in Silicon Valley must have been whispering for weeks: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Big Tech’s grip on AI.
In many ways, that’s a good thing. AI won’t thrive if just a few mega-rich companies get to gatekeep this technology or decide how it is used. But this open-source boom is precarious, and if Big Tech decides to shut up shop, a boomtown could become a backwater. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
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 or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Dark showering, anyone?
+ Chef Yujia Hu is renowned for his shoe-shaped sushi designs.
+ Meanwhile, in the depths of the South Atlantic Ocean: a giant phantom jelly has been spotted.
+ I have nothing but respect for this X account dedicated to documenting rats and mice in movies and TV 
For years, our newsroom has explored AI’s limitations and potential dangers, as well as its growing energy needs. And our reporters have looked closely at how generative tools are being used for tasks such as coding and running scientific experiments.
But how is AI actually being used in fields like health care, climate tech, education, and finance? How are small businesses using it? And what should you keep in mind if you use AI tools at work? These questions guided the creation of Making AI Work, a new AI mini-course newsletter.
Sign up for Making AI Work to see weekly case studies exploring tools and tips for AI implementation. The limited-run newsletter will deliver practical, industry-specific guidance on how generative AI is being used and deployed across sectors and what professionals need to know to apply it in their everyday work. The goal is to help working professionals more clearly see how AI is actually being used today, and what that looks like in practice—including new challenges it presents.
You can sign up at any time and you’ll receive seven editions, delivered once per week, until you complete the series.
Each newsletter begins with a case study, examining a specific use case of AI in a given industry. Then we’ll take a deeper look at the AI tool being used, with more context about how other companies or sectors are employing that same tool or system. Finally, we’ll end with action-oriented tips to help you apply the tool.
Here’s a closer look at what we’ll cover:
- Week 1: How AI is changing health care
Explore the future of medical note-taking by learning about the Microsoft Copilot tool used by doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
- Week 2: How AI could power up the nuclear industry
Dig into an experiment between Google and the nuclear giant Westinghouse to see if AI can help build nuclear reactors more efficiently.
- Week 3: How to encourage smarter AI use in the classroom
Visit a private high school in Connecticut and meet a technology coordinator who will get you up to speed on MagicSchool, an AI-powered platform for educators.
- Week 4: How small businesses can leverage AI
Hear from an independent tutor on how he’s outsourcing basic administrative tasks to Notion AI.
- Week 5: How AI is helping financial firms make better investments
Learn more about the ways financial firms are using large language models like ChatGPT Enterprise to supercharge their research operations.
- Week 6: How to use AI yourself
We’ll share some insights from the staff of MIT Technology Review about how you might use AI tools powered by LLMs in your own life and work.
- Week 7: 5 ways people are getting AI right
The series ends with an on-demand virtual event featuring expert guests exploring what AI adoptions are working, and why.
If you’re not quite ready to jump into Making AI Work, then check out Intro to AI, MIT Technology Review’s first AI newsletter mini-course, which serves as a beginner’s guide to artificial intelligence. Readers will learn the basics of what AI is, how it’s used, what the current regulatory landscape looks like, and more. Sign up to receive Intro to AI for free.
Our hope is that Making AI Work will help you understand how AI can, well, work for you. Sign up for Making AI Work to learn how LLMs are being put to work across industries.
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