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The Download: three-person babies, and tracking “AI readiness” in the US

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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.

Researchers announce babies born from a trial of three-person IVF

Eight babies have been born in the UK thanks to a technology that uses DNA from three people: the two biological parents plus a third person who supplies healthy mitochondrial DNA. The babies were born to mothers who carry genes for mitochondrial diseases and risked passing on severe disorders. 

In the team’s approach, patients’ eggs are fertilized with sperm, and the DNA-containing nuclei of those cells are transferred into donated fertilized eggs that have had their own nuclei removed. The new embryos contain the DNA of the intended parents along with a tiny fraction of mitochondrial DNA from the donor, floating in the embryos’ cytoplasm.

The study, which makes use of a technology called mitochondrial donation, has been described as a “tour de force” and “a remarkable accomplishment” by others in the field. But not everyone sees the trial as a resounding success. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

These four charts show where AI companies could go next in the US

No one knows exactly how AI will transform our communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. Because it’s hard to predict the impact AI will have on jobs, many workers and local governments are left trying to read the tea leaves to understand how to prepare and adapt.

A new interactive report released by the Brookings Institution attempts to map how embedded AI companies and jobs are in different regions of the United States in order to prescribe policy treatments to those struggling to keep up. Here are four charts to help understand the issues.

—Peter Hall

In defense of air-conditioning

—Casey Crownhart

I’ll admit that I’ve rarely hesitated to point an accusing finger at air-conditioning. I’ve outlined in many stories and newsletters that AC is a significant contributor to global electricity demand, and it’s only going to suck up more power as temperatures rise.

But I’ll also be the first to admit that it can be a life-saving technology, one that may become even more necessary as climate change intensifies. And in the wake of Europe’s recent deadly heat wave, it’s been oddly villainized. Read our story to learn more.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Donald Trump is cracking down on “dangerous science”
But the scientists affected argue their work is essential to developing new treatments. (WP $)
+ How MAHA is infiltrating states across the US. (The Atlantic $)

2 The US Senate has approved Trump’s request to cancel foreign aid 
The White House is determined to reclaim around $8 billion worth of overseas aid. (NYT $)
+ The bill also allocates around $1.1 billion to public broadcasting. (WP $)
+ HIV could infect 1,400 infants every day because of US aid disruptions. (MIT Technology Review)

3 American air strikes only destroyed one Iranian nuclear site 
The remaining two sites weren’t damaged that badly, and could resume operation within months. (NBC News)

4 The US is poised to ban Chinese technology in submarine cables
The cables are critical to internet connectivity across the world. (FT $)
+ The cables are at increasing risk of sabotage. (Bloomberg $)

5 The US measles outbreak is worsening
Health officials’ tactics for attempting to contain it aren’t working. (Wired $)
+ Vaccine hesitancy is growing, too. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A new supercomputer is coming
The Nexus machine will search for new cures for diseases. (Semafor)

7 Elon Musk has teased a Grok AI companion inspired by Twilight
No really, you shouldn’t have… (The Verge)
+ Inside the Wild West of AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Future farms could be fully autonomous 🐄
Featuring AI-powered tractors and drone surveillance. (WSJ $)
+ African farmers are using private satellite data to improve crop yields. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Granola is Silicon Valley’s favorite new tool
No, not the tasty breakfast treat. (The Information $)

10 WeTransfer isn’t going to train its AI on our files after all
After customers reacted angrily on social media. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.”

—Andrew Schulz, a comedian and podcaster who interviewed Donald Trump last year, explains why he’s starting to lose faith in the President to Wired.

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.)

+ Happy birthday David Hasselhoff, 73 years young today!
+ The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things is here, and things are getting weird.
+ Windows 95, you will never be bettered.
+ I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a fridge cigarette.

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In defense of air-conditioning

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I’ll admit that I’ve rarely hesitated to point an accusing finger at air-conditioning. I’ve outlined in many stories and newsletters that AC is a significant contributor to global electricity demand, and it’s only going to suck up more power as temperatures rise.

But I’ll also be the first to admit that it can be a life-saving technology, one that may become even more necessary as climate change intensifies. And in the wake of Europe’s recent deadly heat wave, it’s been oddly villainized. 

We should all be aware of the growing electricity toll of air-conditioning, but the AC hate is misplaced. Yes, AC is energy intensive, but so is heating our homes, something that’s rarely decried in the same way that cooling is. Both are tools for comfort and, more important, for safety.  So why is air-conditioning cast as such a villain?

In the last days of June and the first few days of July, temperatures hit record highs across Europe. Over 2,300 deaths during that period were attributed to the heat wave, according to early research from World Weather Attribution, an academic collaboration that studies extreme weather. And human-caused climate change accounted for 1,500 of the deaths, the researchers found. (That is, the number of fatalities would have been under 800 if not for higher temperatures because of climate change.)

We won’t have the official death toll for months, but these early figures show just how deadly heat waves can be. Europe is especially vulnerable, because in many countries, particularly in the northern part of the continent, air-conditioning is not common.

Popping on a fan, drawing the shades, or opening the windows on the hottest days used to cut it in many European countries. Not anymore. The UK was 1.24 °C (2.23 °F) warmer over the past decade than it was between 1961 and 1990, according to the Met Office, the UK’s national climate and weather service. One recent study found that homes across the country are uncomfortably or dangerously warm much more frequently than they used to be.

The reality is, some parts of the world are seeing an upward shift in temperatures that’s not just uncomfortable but dangerous. As a result, air-conditioning usage is going up all over the world, including in countries with historically low rates.

The reaction to this long-term trend, especially in the face of the recent heat wave, has been apoplectic. People are decrying AC across social media and opinion pages, arguing that we need to suck it up and deal with being a little bit uncomfortable.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I do live in the US, where roughly 90% of homes are cooled with air-conditioning today. So perhaps I am a little biased in favor of AC. But it baffles me when people talk about air-conditioning this way.

I spent a good amount of my childhood in the southeastern US, where it’s very obvious that heat can be dangerous. I was used to many days where temperatures were well above 90 °F (32 °C), and the humidity was so high your clothes would stick to you as soon as you stepped outdoors. 

For some people, being active or working in those conditions can lead to heatstroke. Prolonged exposure, even if it’s not immediately harmful, can lead to heart and kidney problems. Older people, children, and those with chronic conditions can be more vulnerable. 

In other words, air-conditioning is more than a convenience; in certain conditions, it’s a safety measure. That should be an easy enough concept to grasp. After all, in many parts of the world we expect access to heating in the name of safety. Nobody wants to freeze to death. 

And it’s important to clarify here that while air-conditioning does use a lot of electricity in the US, heating actually has a higher energy footprint. 

In the US, about 19% of residential electricity use goes to air-conditioning. That sounds like a lot, and it’s significantly more than the 12% of electricity that goes to space heating. However, we need to zoom out to get the full picture, because electricity makes up only part of a home’s total energy demand. A lot of homes in the US use natural gas for heating—that’s not counted in the electricity being used, but it’s certainly part of the home’s total energy use.

When we look at the total, space heating accounts for a full 42% of residential energy consumption in the US, while air conditioning accounts for only 9%.

I’m not letting AC off the hook entirely here. There’s obviously a difference between running air-conditioning (or other, less energy-intensive technologies) when needed to stay safe and blasting systems at max capacity because you prefer it chilly. And there’s a lot of grid planning we’ll need to do to make sure we can handle the expected influx of air-conditioning around the globe. 

But the world is changing, and temperatures are rising. If you’re looking for a villain, look beyond the air conditioner and into the atmosphere.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

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