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 State of AI: A vision of the world in 2030  

There are huge gulfs of opinion when it comes to predicting the near-future impacts of generative AI. In one camp there are those who predict that over the next decade the impact of AI will exceed that of the Industrial Revolution—a 150-year period of economic and social upheaval so great that we still live in the world it wrought. 

At the other end of the scale we have team ‘Normal Technology’: experts who push back not only on these sorts of predictions but on their foundational worldview. That’s not how technology works, they argue.

Advances at the cutting edge may come thick and fast, but change across the wider economy, and society as a whole, moves at human speed. Widespread adoption of new technologies can be slow; acceptance slower. AI will be no different. What should we make of these extremes? 

Read the full conversation between MIT Technology Review’s senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and Tim Bradshaw, FT global tech correspondent, about where AI will go next, and what our world will look like in the next five years.

This is the final edition of The State of AI, a collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. Read the rest of the series, and if you want to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the world of AI, sign up to receive our free Algorithm newsletter every Monday.

How AI is changing the economy

There’s a lot at stake when it comes to understanding how AI is changing the economy at large. What’s the right outlook to have? Join Mat Honan, editor in chief, David Rotman, editor at large, and Richard Waters, FT columnist, at 1pm ET today to hear them discuss what’s happening across industries and the market. Sign up now to be part of this exclusive subscriber-only event.

The must-reads

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

1 Trump says he’ll sign an order blocking states from regulating AI
But he’s facing a lot of pushback, including from members of his own party. (CNN)
+ The whole debacle can be traced back to congressional inaction. (Semafor)

2 Google’s new smart glasses are getting rave reviews 
You’ll be able to get your hands on a pair in 2026. Watch out, Apple and Meta. (Tech Radar)

3 Trump gave the go-ahead for Nvidia to sell powerful AI chips to China
The US gets a 25% cut of the sales—but what does it lose longer-term? (WP $)
+ And how much could China stand to gain? (NYT $)
+ How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions. (MIT Technology Review)

4 America’s data center backlash is here
Republican and Democrat alike, local residents are sick of rapidly rising power bills. (Vox $)
+ More than 200 environmental groups are demanding a US-wide moratorium on new data centers. (The Guardian)
+ The data center boom in the desert. (MIT Technology Review)

5 A quarter of teens are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support
Given the lack of real-world help, can you really blame them? (The Guardian)
+ Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered. (MIT Technology Review)

6 ICEBlock is suing the US government over its App Store removal 
Its creator is arguing that the Department of Justice’s demands to Apple violated his First Amendment rights. (404 Media)
+ It’s one of a number of ICE-tracking initiatives to be pulled by tech platforms this year. (MIT Technology Review)

7 This band quit Spotify, but it’s been replaced by AI knockoffs
The platform seems to be struggling against the tide of slop. (Futurism) 
+ AI is coming for music, too. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Think you’re immune to online ads? Think again
If you’re scrolling on social media, you’re being sold to. Relentlessly. (The Verge $)

9 People really do not like Microsoft Copilot
It’s like Clippy all over again, except it’s even less avoidable. (Quartz $)

10 The longest solar eclipse for 100 years is coming
And we’ll only have to wait until 2027 to see it! (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“Governments and MPs are shooting themselves in the foot by pandering to tech giants, because that just tells young people that they don’t care about our future.”

—Adele Zeynep Walton, founding member of online safety campaign group Ctrl+Alt+Reclaim, tells The Guardian why young activists are taking matters into their own hands. 

One more thing

COURTESY OF OCEANBIRD

Inside the long quest to advance Chinese writing technology

Every second of every day, someone is typing in Chinese. Though the mechanics look a little different from typing in English—people usually type the pronunciation of a character and then pick it out of a selection that pops up, autocomplete-style—it’s hard to think of anything more quotidian. The software that allows this exists beneath the awareness of pretty much everyone who uses it. It’s just there.

What’s largely been forgotten is that a large cast of eccentrics and linguists, engineers and polymaths, spent much of the 20th century torturing themselves over how Chinese was ever going to move away from the ink brush to any other medium. Read the full story.

—Veronique Greenwood

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.)

+ Pantone chose a ‘calming’ shade of white for its Color of 2026… and people are fuming. 
+ Ozempic needles on the Christmas tree, anyone? Here’s why we’re going crazy for weird baubles. 
+ Can relate to this baby seal for instinctively heading to the nearest pub.
+ Thrilled to see One Battle After Another get so many Golden Globes nominations.

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.

Why it’s so hard to stop tech-facilitated abuse

After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior. One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.

And Gioia is far from alone. In fact, tech-facilitated abuse now occurs in most cases of intimate partner violence—and we’re doing shockingly little to prevent it. Read the full story. 

—Jessica Klein 

This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!

Why AI hardware needs to be open

—by Ayah Bdeir, a leader in the maker movement, champion of open source AI, and founder of littleBits, the hardware platform that teaches STEAM to kids through hands-on invention. 

Once again, the future of technology is being engineered in secret by a handful of people and delivered to the rest of us as a sealed, seamless, perfect device. When technology is designed like this, we are reduced to consumers. We don’t shape the tools; they shape us. 

However, this moment creates a chance to do things differently. Because away from the self-centeredness of Silicon Valley, a quiet, grounded sense of resistance is reactivating.  Read the full story.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business

In China, people are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Our story about this trend is the latest to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 Iran is going offline to avoid Israeli cyberattacks
A government spokesperson said it plans to disconnect completely from the global internet this evening. (The Verge)
+ How attacks on Iran’s oil exports could hurt China. (WSJ $)

2 Trump is giving TikTok another reprieve from a US ban
It’s been a full five years since he signed the original executive order telling Bytedance to sell it. (CNN)
+ Why Chinese manufacturers are going viral on TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shooting are all over social media
Whenever there’s an information vacuum, people are all too keen to fill it with noise and nonsense. (NBC) 
+ The shooting suspect allegedly used data broker sites to find targets’ addresses. (Wired $)

4 Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft are starting to boil over 
OpenAI has even threatened to report its formerly close partner to antitrust regulators. (WSJ $)
+ Here are the concessions OpenAI is seeking. (The Information $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review) 

5 California cops are using AI cameras to investigate ICE protests
And sharing license plate data with other agencies, a practice some experts say is illegal. (404 Media)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Social media is now Americans’ primary news source
It’s overtaken TV for the first time. (Reuters)
+ They watched more TV via streaming than cable last month, too. (NYT $)

7 Weight loss drugs may not work quite as well as hoped
Researchers analysed data from 51,085 patients and found bariatric surgery delivered better, more sustainable results. (The Guardian)

8 What is AI doing to reading? 
Here’s what we stand to gain—and lose—when we outsource reading to machines. (New Yorker $) 

9 India is relying on China to build up its EV market
It’s taking a drastically different course to the US. (Rest of World)
+ Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)

10 People are building AI tools to decipher cats’ meows 
Bet at least half of them are “feed me.” (Scientific American $)

Quote of the day

“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

—Remarks made by federal judge Williams G. Young this week as he voided some of the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health grants, saying they were discriminatory, the New York Times reports. 

One more thing

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | GETTY

Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch

Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.

But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.

—Edd Gent

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.)

+ Wait a minute, Will Smith was offered a role in Inception? Much to think about.
+ No pain, no gain? Not necessarily.
+ John Waters, you really are one of a kind.
+ Say it ain’t so—I refuse to believe that young love is dead!