Trump’s tariffs will deliver a big blow to climate tech 3 Apr 2:43 PM (11 hours ago)
US president Donald Trump’s massive, sweeping tariffs sent global stock markets tumbling on Thursday, setting the stage for a worldwide trade war and ratcheting up the dangers of a punishing recession.
Experts fear that the US cleantech sector is especially vulnerable to a deep downturn, which would undermine the nation’s progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and undercut its leadership in an essential, growing industry.
“It would be hard for me to think of cleantech or climate tech sectors that aren’t facing huge risks,” says Noah Kaufman, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden.
“I think we’re a country without a federal climate strategy at this point, with an economy headed in the wrong direction, so I don’t see a lot of reason to be optimistic,” he adds.
How deep and wide-ranging the impact of the coming economic shifts could be depends on many variables still in play and on reactions still to come. In particular, the negotiations underway in Congress over the budget will determine the fate of subsidies for electric vehicles, battery production, and other clean technologies. Many of those programs were established by former president Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
But there are mounting challenges and rising risks across the cleantech and climate tech sectors. Notably any slowdown in the broader economy threatens to tighten corporate and venture capital funding for startups working on carbon removal, synthetic aviation fuels, electric delivery vehicles, and other technologies that help companies meet climate action goals.
In addition, Trump’s tariffs, particularly the now 54% levy on Chinese goods, will push up the costs of key components for many businesses. Notably, the US imported $4 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from China during the first four months of last year, so the tariff increase would impose a huge tax on products that go into electric vehicles, laptops, phones, and many other devices.
Higher prices for aluminum, steel, copper, cement, and numerous other goods and materials will also drive up the costs of doing all sorts of business, including building wind turbines, solar farms, and geothermal plants. And if China, Canada, the European Union, and other nations respond with retaliatory trade measures, as is widely expected, it will also become harder or more expensive for US companies to export goods like EVs or battery components to overseas markets.
Even traditional energy stocks took a beating on Wall Street Thursday, out of fear that any broader economic sluggishness will drive down electricity demand.
Trump administration cuts to the Department of Energy and other federal programs could also take away money from demonstration projects that help cleantech companies test and scale up their technologies. And if Congress does eliminate certain subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, it could halt billion-dollar projects that are being planned or perhaps even some that are already under construction.
The growing policy uncertainty and weakening economic conditions alone may already be causing some of this to occur.
Since Trump took office, companies have canceled, delayed, or scaled back at least nine US “clean energy supply chain” developments or operations, according to the Big Green Machine, a database maintained by Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, and student researchers there. The projects that have been affected represent some $8 billion in public and private investments, and more than 9,000 jobs.
They include KORE Power’s planned battery facility in Arizona, which the company halted; Envision Automotive Energy Supply’s paused expansion in Florence County, South Carolina; and Akasol’s closure of two plants in Michigan.
VW also scaled back production at its recently expanded EV factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, amid slower-than-expected growth in sales and, perhaps, the expectation that the Trump administration will strive to roll back consumer tax credits for vehicle purchases.
“The biggest challenge for companies that are making hundred-million- or billion-dollar capital investments is dealing with the uncertainty,” Turner says. “Uncertainty is a real deterrent to making big bets.”
Venture capital investments in clean energy have been cooling for a while. They peaked at $24.5 billion in 2022 and settled at around $18 billion annually during the last two years, according to data provided by Pitchbook. First-quarter figures for this year aren’t yet available, though industry watchers are keen to see where they land.
Some parts of the cleantech sector could hold up better than others through the Trump administration and any upcoming economic gloom.
The Pitchbook report, for instance, noted that the surge in development of AI data centers is fueling demand for “dispatchable energy sources.” That means the type that can run around the clock, such as nuclear fission, fusion, and geothermal (though in practice, the data center boom has often meant commissioning or relying on natural-gas plants that produce planet-warming emissions).
Trump’s new energy secretary, Chris Wright, previously the chief executive of the oilfield services company Liberty Energy, has also talked favorably about nuclear power and geothermal—and rather unfavorably about renewables like solar and wind.
But observers fear that more sectors will lose than win in any economic downturn to come, and Turner stresses that the decisions made during this administration could last well beyond it.
“The near-term concern is that this emerging clean-energy industry in the US suffers a significant pullback and the US cedes this market to other countries, especially China, that are actively working to position themselves to be leaders in the clean-energy future,” he says.
The long-term concern, he adds, is that if government policies on cleantech simply advance and retreat with the whims of each administration, companies will stop trying to make long-term investments that bank on such subsidies, grants or loans.
Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy and applied economics at MIT, also notes that China and the European Union are forging ahead in developing policies to drive down emissions and build up carbon-free sectors. She observes that they’re both now moving on to the tougher work of cleaning up heavy industries like steel, while the US is “losing ground on even making clean electricity.”
“It’s the worst kind of US exceptionalism,” she says.
The Download: dethroning SpaceX, and air-conditioning’s energy demands 3 Apr 4:10 AM (21 hours ago)
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.
Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX
SpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman to gain near-monopoly status over rocket launches in the US. It is now also the go-to launch provider for commercial customers, having lofted numerous satellites and five private crewed spaceflights, with more to come.
Other space companies have been scrambling to compete for years, but developing a reliable rocket takes slow, steady work and big budgets. Now at least some of them are catching up. Read the full story.
—Ramin Skibba
We should talk more about air-conditioning
—Casey Crownhart
Things are starting to warm up here in the New York City area, and it’s got me thinking once again about something that people aren’t talking about enough: energy demand for air conditioners.
I get it: Data centers are the shiny new thing to worry about. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be thinking about the strain that gigawatt-scale computing installations put on the grid. But a little bit of perspective is important here.
I just finished up a new story about a novel way to make heat exchangers, a crucial component in air conditioners and a whole host of other technologies that cool our buildings, food, and electronics. Let’s dig into why I’m writing about the guts of cooling technologies, and why this sector really needs innovation. Read the full story.
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 has announced sweeping new tariffs
Experts fear the measures will spark a global trade war. (FT $)
+ The new tariffs are significantly higher than America’s targeted trade partners. (Vox)
+ US tech companies are reliant on global supply chains. What happens next? (Wired $)
+ Tech stocks dropped sharply following the announcement. (CNBC)
2 Elon Musk tried to control the Wisconsin Supreme Court race—and lost
The billionaire was mocked on his own platform, X, after the state rejected the Republican candidate he spent millions bankrolling. (The Guardian)
+ It was the most expensive judicial election in American history. (Economist $)
+ It appears as though Musk’s political influence is waning. (The Atlantic $)
3 Amazon made a bid to keep TikTok operational in the US
As has mobile tech company AppLovin. (WSJ $)
+ The founder of OnlyFans partnered with a crypto foundation in another bid. (Reuters)
4 Parents are worried about their teenagers’ smartphone use
But drawing firm conclusions about phones and social media’s effects on their mental health is far from easy. (Nature)
5 How China gets around America’s chip restrictions
Smuggling and subsidiaries are just some of the ways it skirts the bans. (Rest of World)
+ This super-thin semiconductor is just one molecule thick. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Neuralink is looking for new patients across the world
The company has implanted devices in three people’s brains to date. (Bloomberg $)
+ Brain-computer interfaces face a critical test. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Italian police are investigating a major fire at a Tesla dealership
The blaze destroyed 17 cars in Rome. (The Guardian)
8 Publishers are experimenting with AI translations for books
Not everyone agrees that the technology is ready. (The Markup)
9 Vibe coding needs a reality check
A new AI app created using the loose process generated a recipe for deadly cyanide ice cream. (404 Media)
10 You may be unwittingly following JD Vance’s wife on Instagram
If you were following Kamala Harris’s husband on the platform, you’re now following Usha Vance. (TechCrunch)
Quote of the day
“Elon Musk’s money might buy some ads, but it repels voters.”
—Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler reflects on how his party’s candidate Susan Crawford won the state’s Supreme Court election, despite Musk spending $25 million supporting her Trump-endorsed rival, The Hill reports.
The big story
The lucky break behind the first CRISPR treatment
December 2023
The world’s first commercial gene-editing treatment is set to start changing the lives of people with sickle-cell disease. It’s called Casgevy, and it was approved in November 2022 in the UK.
The treatment, which will be sold in the US by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, employs CRISPR, which can be easily programmed by scientists to cut DNA at precise locations they choose.
But where do you aim CRISPR, and how did the researchers know what DNA to change? That’s the lesser-known story of the sickle-cell breakthrough. Read more about it.
—Antonio Regalado
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.)
+ If you’re stuck for what to read next, this list of the 21st century’s best books is a great source of inspiration.
+ Controversial ranking time—do you agree that Abbey Road is the Beatles’ best album?
+ Inside the tricky technicalities of time travel.
+ Uhoh: magnolia paint is making a comeback.
We should talk more about air-conditioning 3 Apr 2:00 AM (yesterday, 2:00 am)
Things are starting to warm up here in the New York City area, and it’s got me thinking once again about something that people aren’t talking about enough: energy demand for air conditioners.
I get it: Data centers are the shiny new thing to worry about. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be thinking about the strain that gigawatt-scale computing installations put on the grid. But a little bit of perspective is important here.
According to a report from the International Energy Agency last year, data centers will make up less than 10% of the increase in energy demand between now and 2030, far less than the energy demand from space cooling (mostly air-conditioning).
I just finished up a new story that’s out today about a novel way to make heat exchangers, a crucial component in air conditioners and a whole host of other technologies that cool our buildings, food, and electronics. Let’s dig into why I’m writing about the guts of cooling technologies, and why this sector really needs innovation.
One twisted thing about cooling and climate change: It’s all a vicious cycle. As temperatures rise, the need for cooling technologies increases. In turn, more fossil-fuel power plants are firing up to meet that demand, turning up the temperature of the planet in the process.
“Cooling degree days” are one measure of the need for additional cooling. Basically, you take a preset baseline temperature and figure out how much the temperature exceeds it. Say the baseline (above which you’d likely need to flip on a cooling device) is 21 °C (70 °F). If the average temperature for a day is 26 °C, that’s five cooling degree days on a single day. Repeat that every day for a month, and you wind up with 150 cooling degree days.
I explain this arguably weird metric because it’s a good measure of total energy demand for cooling—it lumps together both how many hot days there are and just how hot it is.
And the number of cooling degree days is steadily ticking up globally. Global cooling degree days were 6% higher in 2024 than in 2023, and 20% higher than the long-term average for the first two decades of the century. Regions that have high cooling demand, like China, India, and the US, were particularly affected, according to the IEA report. You can see a month-by-month breakdown of this data from the IEA here.
That increase in cooling degree days is leading to more demand for air conditioners, and for energy to power them. Air-conditioning accounted for 7% of the world’s electricity demand in 2022, and it’s only going to get more important from here.
There were fewer than 2 billion AC units in the world in 2016. By 2050, that could be nearly 6 billion, according to a 2018 report from the IEA. This is a measure of progress and, in a way, something we should be happy about; the number of air conditioners tends to rise with household income. But it does present a challenge to the grid.
Another piece of this whole thing: It’s not just about how much total electricity we need to run air conditioners but about when that demand tends to come. As we’ve covered in this newsletter before, your air-conditioning habits aren’t unique. Cooling devices tend to flip on around the same time—when it’s hot. In some parts of the US, for example, air conditioners can represent more than 70% of residential energy demand at times when the grid is most stressed.
The good news is that we’re seeing innovations in cooling technology. Some companies are building cooling systems that include an energy storage component, so they can charge up when energy is plentiful and demand is low. Then they can start cooling when it’s most needed, without sucking as much energy from the grid during peak hours.
We’ve also covered alternatives to air conditioners called desiccant cooling systems, which use special moisture-sucking materials to help cool spaces and deal with humidity more efficiently than standard options.
And in my latest story, I dug into new developments in heat exchanger technology. Heat exchangers are a crucial component of air conditioners, but you can really find them everywhere—in heat pumps, refrigerators, and, yes, the cooling systems in large buildings and large electronics installations, including data centers.
We’ve been building heat exchangers basically the same way for nearly a century. These components basically move heat around, and there are a few known ways to do so with devices that are relatively straightforward to manufacture. Now, though, one team of researchers has 3D-printed a heat exchanger that outperforms some standard designs and rivals others. This is still a long way from solving our looming air-conditioning crisis, but the details are fascinating—I hope you’ll give it a read.
We need more innovation in cooling technology to help meet global demand efficiently so we don’t stay stuck in this cycle. And we’ll need policy and public support to make sure that these technologies make a difference and that everyone has access to them too.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX 3 Apr 1:00 AM (yesterday, 1:00 am)
SpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman to gain near-monopoly status over rocket launches in the US; it accounted for 87% of the country’s orbital launches in 2024, according to an analysis by SpaceNews. Since the mid-2010s, the company has dominated NASA’s launch contracts and become a major Pentagon contractor. It is now also the go-to launch provider for commercial customers, having lofted numerous satellites and five private crewed spaceflights, with more to come.
Other space companies have been scrambling to compete for years, but developing a reliable rocket takes slow, steady work and big budgets. Now at least some of them are catching up.
A host of companies have readied rockets that are comparable to SpaceX’s main launch vehicles. The list includes Rocket Lab, which aims to take on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 with its Neutron rocket and could have its first launch in late 2025, and Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, which recently completed the first mission of a rocket it hopes will compete against SpaceX’s Starship.
Some of these competitors are just starting to get rockets off the ground. And the companies could also face unusual headwinds, given that SpaceX’s Elon Musk has an especially close relationship with the Trump administration and has allies at federal regulatory agencies, including those that provide oversight of the industry.
But if all goes well, the SpaceX challengers can help improve access to space and prevent bottlenecks if one company experiences a setback. “More players in the market is good for competition,” says Chris Combs, an aerospace engineer at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “I think for the foreseeable future it will still be hard to compete with SpaceX on price.” But, he says, the competitors could push SpaceX itself to become better and provide those seeking access to space with a wider array of options..
A big lift
There are a few reasons why SpaceX was able to cement its position in the space industry. When it began in the 2000s, it had three consecutive rocket failures and seemed poised to fold. But it barreled through with Musk’s financial support, and later with a series of NASA and defense contracts. It has been a primary beneficiary of NASA’s commercial space program, developed in the 2010s with the intention of propping up the industry.
“They got government contracts from the very beginning,” says Victoria Samson, a space policy expert at the Secure World Foundation in Broomfield, Colorado. “I wouldn’t say it’s a handout, but SpaceX would not exist without a huge influx of repeated government contracts. To this day, they’re still dependent on government customers, though they have commercial customers too.”
SpaceX has also effectively achieved a high degree of vertical integration, Samson points out: It owns almost all parts of its supply chain, designing, building, and testing all its major hardware components in-house, with a minimal use of suppliers. That gives it not just control over its hardware but considerably lower costs, and the price tag is the top consideration for launch contracts.
The company was also open to taking risks other industry stalwarts were not. “I think for a very long time the industry looked at spaceflight as something that had to be very precise and perfect, and not a lot of room for tinkering,” says Combs. “SpaceX really was willing to take some risks and accept failure in ways that others haven’t been. That’s easier to do when you’re backed by a billionaire.”
What’s finally enabled international and US-based competitors to emerge has been a growing customer base looking for launch services, along with some investors’ deep pockets.
Some of these companies are taking aim at SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which can lift as much as about 20,000 kilograms into orbit and is used for sending multiple satellites or the crewed Dragon into space. “There is a practical monopoly in the medium-lift launch market right now, with really only one operational vehicle,” says Murielle Baker, a spokesperson for Rocket Lab, a US-New Zealand company.
Rocket Lab plans to take on the Falcon 9 with its Neutron rocket, which is expected to have its inaugural flight later this year from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The effort is building on the success of the company’s smaller Electron rocket, and Neutron’s first stage is intended to be reusable after it parachutes down to the ocean.
Another challenger is Texas-based Firefly, whose Alpha rocket can be launched from multiple spaceports so that it can reach different orbits. Firefly has already secured NASA and Space Force contracts, with more launches coming this year (and on March 2 it also became the second private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon). Next year, Relativity Space aims to loft its first Terran R rocket, which is partially built from 3D-printed components. And the Bill Gates–backed Stoke Space aims to launch its reusable Nova rocket in late 2025 or, more likely, next year.
Competitors are also rising for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, holding out the prospect of more options for sending massive payloads to higher orbits and deep space. Furthest along is the Vulcan Centaur rocket, a creation of United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It’s expected to have its third and fourth launches in the coming months, delivering Space Force satellites to orbit. Powered by engines from Blue Origin, the Vulcan Centaur is slightly wider and shorter than the Falcon rockets. It currently isn’t reusable, but it’s less expensive than its predecessors, ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV, which are being phased out.
Mark Peller, the company’s senior vice president on Vulcan development and advanced programs, says the new rocket comes with multiple advantages. “One is overall value, in terms of dollars per pound to orbit and what we can provide to our customers,” he says, “and the second is versatility: Vulcan was designed to go to a range of orbits.” He says more than 80 missions are already lined up.
Vulcan’s fifth flight, slated for no earlier than May, will launch the long-awaited Sierra Space Dream Chaser, a spaceplane that can carry cargo (and possibly crew) to the International Space Station. ULA also has upcoming Vulcan launches planned for Amazon’s Kuiper satellite constellation, a potential Starlink rival.
Meanwhile, though it took a few years, Blue Origin now has a truly orbital heavy-lift spacecraft: In January, it celebrated the inaugural launch of its towering New Glenn, a rocket that’s only a bit shorter than NASA’s Space Launch System and SpaceX’s Starship. Future flights could launch national security payloads.
Competition is emerging abroad as well. After repeated delays, Europe’s heavy-lift Ariane 6, from Airbus subsidiary Arianespace, had its inaugural flight last year, ending the European Space Agency’s temporary dependence on SpaceX. A range of other companies are trying to expand European launch capacity, with assistance from ESA.
China is moving quickly on its own launch organizations too. “They had no less than seven ‘commercial’ space launch companies that were all racing to develop an effective system that could deliver a payload into orbit,” Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says of China’s efforts. “They are moving fast and they have capital behind them, and they will absolutely be a competitor on the global market once they’re successful and probably undercut what US and European launch companies are doing.” The up-and-coming Chinese launchers include Space Pioneer’s reusable Tianlong-3 rocket and Cosmoleap’s Yueqian rocket. The latter is to feature a “chopstick clamp” recovery of the first stage, where it’s grabbed by the launch tower’s mechanical arms, similar to the concept SpaceX is testing for its Starship.
Glitches and government
Before SpaceX’s rivals can really compete, they need to work out the kinks, demonstrate the reliability of their new spacecraft, and show that they can deliver low-cost launch services to customers.
The process is not without its challenges. Boeing’s Starliner delivered astronauts to the ISS on its first crewed flight in June 2024, but after thruster malfunctions, they were left stranded at the orbital outpost for nine months. While New Glenn reached orbit as planned, its first stage didn’t land successfully and its upper stage was left in orbit.
SpaceX itself has had some recent struggles. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Falcon 9 more than once following malfunctions in the second half of 2024. The company still shattered records last year, though, with more than 130 Falcon 9 launches. It has continued with that record pace this year, despite additional Falcon 9 delays and more glitches with its booster and upper stage. SpaceX also conducted its eighth Starship test flight in March, just two months after the previous one, but both failed minutes after liftoff, raining debris down from the sky.
Any company must deal with financial challenges as well as engineering ones. Boeing is reportedly considering selling parts of its space business, following Starliner’s malfunctions and problems with its 737 Max aircraft. And Virgin Orbit, the launch company that spun off from Virgin Galactic, shuttered in 2023.
Another issue facing would-be commercial competitors to SpaceX in the US is the complex and uncertain political environment. Musk does not manage day-to-day operations of the company. But he has close involvement with DOGE, a Trump administration initiative that has been exerting influence on the workforces and budgets of NASA, the Defense Department, and regulators relevant to the space industry.
Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who bankrolled the groundbreaking 2021 commercial mission Inspiration4, returned to orbit, again via a SpaceX craft, on Polaris Dawn last September. Now he may become Trump’s NASA chief, a position that could give him the power to nudge NASA toward awarding new lucrative contracts to SpaceX. In February it was reported that SpaceX’s Starlink might land a multibillion-dollar FAA contract previously awarded to Verizon.
It is also possible that SpaceX could strengthen its position with respect to the regulatory scrutiny it has faced for environmental and safety issues at its production and launch sites on the coasts of Texas and Florida, as well as scrutiny of its rocket crashes and the resulting space debris. Oversight from the FAA, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency may be weak. Conflicts of interest have already emerged at the FAA, and the Trump administration has also attempted to incapacitate the National Labor Relations Board. SpaceX had previously tried to block the board from acting after nine workers accused the company of unfair labor practices.
SpaceX did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s requests for comment for this story.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of emphasis to relieve a lot of the regulations, in terms of environmental impact studies, and things like that,” Samson says. “I thought there’d be a separation between [Musk’s] interests, but now, it’s hard to say where he stops and the US government begins.”
Regardless of the politics, the commercial competition will surely heat up throughout 2025. But SpaceX has a considerable head start, Bingen argues: “It’s going to take a lot for these companies to effectively compete and potentially dislodge SpaceX, given the dominant position that [it has] had.”
Ramin Skibba is an astrophysicist turned science writer and freelance journalist, based in the Bay Are
The machines are rising — but developers still hold the keys 2 Apr 9:50 AM (yesterday, 9:50 am)
Rumors of the ongoing death of software development — that it’s being slain by AI — are greatly exaggerated. In reality, software development is at a fork in the road: embracing the (currently) far-off notion of fully automated software development or acknowledging the work of a software developer is much more than just writing lines of code.
The decision the industry makes could have significant long-term consequences. Increasing complacency around AI-generated code and a shift to what has been termed “vibe coding” — where code is generated through natural language prompts until the results seem to work — will lead to code that’s more error-strewn, more expensive to run and harder to change in the future. And, if the devaluation of software development skills continues, we may even lack a workforce with the skills and knowledge to fix things down the line.
This means software developers are going to become more important to how the world builds and maintains software. Yes, there are many ways their practices will evolve thanks to AI coding assistance, but in a world of proliferating machine-generated code, developer judgment and experience will be vital.
The dangers of AI-generated code are already here
The risks of AI-generated code aren’t science fiction: they’re with us today. Research done by GitClear earlier this year indicates that with AI coding assistants (like GitHub Copilot) going mainstream, code churn — which GitClear defines as “changes that were either incomplete or erroneous when the author initially wrote, committed, and pushed them to the company’s git repo” — has significantly increased. GitClear also found there was a marked decrease in the number of lines of code that have been moved, a signal for refactored code (essentially the care and feeding to make it more effective).
In other words, from the time coding assistants were introduced there’s been a pronounced increase in lines of code without a commensurate increase in lines deleted, updated, or replaced. Simultaneously, there’s been a decrease in lines moved — indicating a lot of code has been written but not refactored. More code isn’t necessarily a good thing (sometimes quite the opposite); GitClear’s findings ultimately point to complacency and a lack of rigor about code quality.
Can AI be removed from software development?
However, AI doesn’t have to be removed from software development and delivery. On the contrary, there’s plenty to be excited about. As noted in the latest volume of the Technology Radar — Thoughtworks’ report on technologies and practices from work with hundreds of clients all over the world — the coding assistance space is full of opportunities.
Specifically, the report noted tools like Cursor, Cline and Windsurf can enable software engineering agents. What this looks like in practice is an agent-like feature inside developer environments that developers can ask specific sets of coding tasks to be performed in the form of a natural language prompt. This enables the human/machine partnership.
That being said, to only focus on code generation is to miss the variety of ways AI can help software developers. For example, Thoughtworks has been interested in how generative AI can be used to understand legacy codebases, and we see a lot of promise in tools like Unblocked, which is an AI team assistant that helps teams do just that. In fact, Anthropic’s Claude Code helped us add support for new languages in an internal tool, CodeConcise. We use CodeConcise to understand legacy systems; and while our success was mixed, we do think there’s real promise here.
Tightening practices to better leverage AI
It’s important to remember much of the work developers do isn’t developing something new from scratch. A large proportion of their work is evolving and adapting existing (and sometimes legacy) software. Sprawling and janky code bases that have taken on technical debt are, unfortunately, the norm. Simply applying AI will likely make things worse, not better, especially with approaches like vibe.
This is why developer judgment will become more critical than ever. In the latest edition of the Technology Radar report, AI-friendly code design is highlighted, based on our experience that AI coding assistants perform best with well-structured codebases.
In practice, this requires many different things, including clear and expressive naming to ensure context is clearly communicated (essential for code maintenance), reducing duplicate code, and ensuring modularity and effective abstractions. Done together, these will all help make code more legible to AI systems.
Good coding practices are all too easy to overlook when productivity and effectiveness are measured purely in terms of output, and even though this was true before there was AI tooling, software development needs to focus on good coding first.
AI assistance demands greater human responsibility
Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger recently claimed that in three years software engineers won’t write any code: they will only review AI-created code. This might sound like a huge claim, but it’s important to remember that reviewing code has always been a major part of software development work. With this in mind, perhaps the evolution of software development won’t be as dramatic as some fear.
But there’s another argument: as AI becomes embedded in how we build software, software developers will take on more responsibility, not less. This is something we’ve discussed a lot at Thoughtworks: the job of verifying that an AI-built system is correct will fall to humans. Yes, verification itself might be AI-assisted, but it will be the role of the software developer to ensure confidence.
In a world where trust is becoming highly valuable — as evidenced by the emergence of the chief trust officer — the work of software developers is even more critical to the infrastructure of global industry. It’s vital software development is valued: the impact of thoughtless automation and pure vibes could prove incredibly problematic (and costly) in the years to come.
This content was produced by Thoughtworks. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
The Download: how to make better cooling systems, and farming on Mars 2 Apr 4:10 AM (yesterday, 4:10 am)
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 3D printing could make better cooling systems
A new 3D-printed design could make an integral part of cooling systems like air conditioners or refrigerators smaller and more efficient, according to new research.
Heat exchangers are devices that whisk away heat, and they’re everywhere—used in data centers, ships, factories, and buildings. The aim is to pass as much heat as possible from one side of the device to the other. Most use one of a few standard designs that have historically been easiest and cheapest to make.
Energy demand for cooling buildings alone is set to double between now and 2050, and new designs could help efficiently meet the massive demand forecast for the coming decades. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
MIT Technology Review Narrated: The quest to figure out farming on Mars
If we’re going to live on Mars we’ll need a way to grow food in its arid dirt. Researchers think they know a way.
This is our latest story 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 Thousands of US health agency workers have been laid off
Experts warn that patients will die preventable deaths as a result. (Wired $)
+ How will the US respond to the measles and bird flu outbreaks? (Reuters)
+ US cuts could lead to serious delays in forecasting extreme weather. (Undark)
+ The wide-ranging cuts are also likely to lose America money. (The Atlantic $)
2 Donald Trump is set to discuss a proposal to save TikTok
He’s due to meet with aides today to thrash out a new ownership structure. (NYT $)
+ Oracle and Blackstone are among the companies in talks to make an offer. (WSJ $)
+ The White House is playing the role of investment bank. (The Guardian)
3 X has asked the Supreme Court to exempt its users from law enforcement
It claims to be worried by broad, suspicionless requests. (FT $)
4 Things aren’t looking good for Mexico-based Chinese companies
Trump’s tariff plans could imperil an awful lot of deals. (WSJ $)
+ The US Chips Act is another probable casualty. (Bloomberg $)
5 US lawmakers want to regulate AI companions
A proposed bill would allow users to sue if they suffer harm from their interactions with a companion bot. (WP $)
+ We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence.’ (MIT Technology Review)
6 Covid hasn’t gone away
And life for the covid-conscious is getting increasingly difficult. (The Atlantic $)
7 Brands are trying to game Reddit to show up in ChatGPT recommendations
Catering to AI search is a whole business model now. (The Information $)
+ Your most important customer may be AI. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Nothing could destroy the universe
Humans have long been obsessed with nothingness. (New Scientist $)
9 Would you flirt with a chatbot?
Tinder wants you to give it a go. (Bloomberg $)
+ The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Trading in your Tesla is TikTok’s favorite trend
Clips of Tesla owners ditching their cars are going viral. (Fast Company $)
+ This guy returned his Cybertruck out of fear his daughter would get bullied. (Insider $)
+ Sales of new Teslas are slumping too. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I’d get on in a heartbeat.”
—Butch Wilmore, one of the pair of astronauts who was stuck in space for nine months, explains how he’d be willing to fly on the beleaguered Starliner again, the Washington Post reports.
The big story
Bringing the lofty ideas of pure math down to earth
April 2023
—Pradeep Niroula
Mathematics has long been presented as a sanctuary from confusion and doubt, a place to go in search of answers. Perhaps part of the mystique comes from the fact that biographies of mathematicians often paint them as otherworldly savants.
As a graduate student in physics, I have seen the work that goes into conducting delicate experiments, but the daily grind of mathematical discovery is a ritual altogether foreign to me. And this feeling is only reinforced by popular books on math, which often take the tone of a pastor dispensing sermons to the faithful.
Luckily, there are ways to bring it back down to earth. Popular math books seek a fresher take on these old ideas, be it through baking recipes or hot-button political issues. My verdict: Why not? It’s worth a shot. Read the full story.
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.)
+ Why are cats the way they are? This database might help us find out.
+ John McFall could become the first disabled person in space.
+ ASMR at the V&A is just delightful.
+ Addicted to lip balm? You’re not the only one.
How 3D printing could make better cooling systems 2 Apr 12:00 AM (2 days ago)
A new 3D-printed design could make an integral part of cooling systems like air conditioners or refrigerators smaller and more efficient, according to new research.
Heat exchangers are devices that whisk away heat, and they’re everywhere—used in data centers, ships, factories, and buildings. The aim is to pass as much heat as possible from one side of the device to the other. Most use one of a few standard designs that have historically been easiest and cheapest to make.
“Heat exchangers are at the center of the industrial economy. They’re an essential part of every machine and every system that moves energy,” says William King, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and one of the authors of the new study. Existing designs tend to favor straight lines, right angles, and round tubes, he adds.
King and his colleagues used 3D printing to design a heat exchanger that includes features to optimize heat movement, like wavy walls and pyramid-shaped bumps, which wouldn’t be possible to make using traditional manufacturing techniques.
The team had set out to design a system based on a common refrigerant called R-134a, which is commonly used in devices like air conditioners and refrigerators. When cold water lowers the temperature of the refrigerant, it changes from a gas to a liquid on its path through the device. That liquid refrigerant can then go on to other parts of the cooling system, where it’s used to lower the temperature of anything from a room to a rack of servers.
The best way to cool the refrigerant tends to involve building very thin walls between the two sides of the device and maximizing the amount of contact that the water and the refrigerant make with those walls. (Think about how much colder you’d get wearing a thin T-shirt and pants and lying down on ice than simply touching it with your gloved hands.)
To design the best possible heat exchanger, researchers used simulations and developed machine-learning models to help predict the performance of different designs under different conditions. After 36,000 simulations, the researchers landed on the one they decided to develop.
Among the key components: small fins that jut out on the side of the device that touches the water, increasing the surface area to maximize heat transfer. The team also designed wavy passageways for the water to pass through—once again helping to maximize surface area. Simulations helped the researchers figure out exactly how curvy the passages should be and where precisely to place the fins.
On the side of the devices where the refrigerant passes through, the design includes small pyramid-shaped bumps along the walls. These not only maximize the area for cooling but also help mix the refrigerant as it passes through and prevent liquid from coating the wall (which would slow down the heat transfer).
After settling on a design, the researchers used a 3D-printing technique called direct metal laser sintering, in which lasers melt and fuse together a metal powder (in this case, an aluminum alloy), layer by layer.
In testing, the researchers found that the heat exchanger created with this technique was able to cool down the refrigerant more efficiently than other designs. The new device was able to achieve a power density of over six megawatts per meter cubed—outperforming one common traditional design, the shell-tube configuration, by between 30% and 50% with the same pumping power. The device’s power density was similar to that of brazed plate heat exchangers, another common design in industry.
Overall, this device doesn’t dramatically outperform the state-of-the-art technology, but the technique of using modeling and 3D printing to produce new heat exchanger designs is promising, says Dennis Nasuta, director of research and development at Optimized Thermal Systems, a consulting firm that works with companies in the HVAC industry on design and research. “It’s worth exploring, and I don’t think that we know yet where we can push it,” Nasuta says.
One challenge is that today, additive manufacturing techniques such as laser sintering are slow and expensive compared with traditional manufacturing; they wouldn’t be economical or feasible to rely on for all our consumer cooling devices, he says. For now, this type of approach could be most useful in niche applications like aerospace and high-end automotives, which could more likely bear the cost, he adds.
This particular study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research. Next-generation ships have more electronics aboard than ever, and there’s a growing need for compact and efficient systems to deal with all that extra heat, says Nenad Miljkovic, one of the authors of the study.
Energy demand for cooling buildings alone is set to double between now and 2050, and new designs could help efficiently meet the massive demand forecast for the coming decades. But challenges including manufacturing costs would need to be overcome to help innovations like the one designed by King and his team make a dent in real devices.
Another barrier to adopting these new techniques, Nasuta says, is that current standards don’t demand more efficiency. Other technologies already exist that could help make our devices more efficient, but they’re not used for the same reason.
It will take time for new manufacturing techniques, including 3D printing, to trickle into our devices, Natsua adds: “This isn’t going to be in your AC next year.”
The Download: brain-computer interfaces, and teaching an AI model to give therapy 1 Apr 4:10 AM (2 days ago)
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.
Brain-computer interfaces face a critical test
Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) are electrodes put in paralyzed people’s brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands from their neurons through a wire, or via radio, to a computer. In this way, they can control a computer cursor or, in few cases, produce speech.
Recently, this field has taken some strides toward real practical applications. About 25 clinical trials of BCI implants are currently underway. And this year MIT Technology Review readers have selected these brain-computer interfaces as their addition to our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
How do you teach an AI model to give therapy?
—James O’Donnell
On March 27, the results of the first clinical trial for a generative AI therapy bot were published, and they showed that people in the trial who had depression or anxiety or were at risk for eating disorders benefited from chatting with a bot.
I was surprised by those results. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical that an AI model trained to provide therapy is the solution for millions of people experiencing a mental health crisis. But their findings suggest that the right selection of training data is vital. Read the full story.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, 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 Tech companies are warning their immigrant workers not to leave the US
Employees on high-skilled visas could be denied entry back into the States. (WP $)
+ Officials are considering collecting citizenship applicants’ social media data. (Associated Press)
2 OpenAI has closed one of the largest private funding rounds in history
It plans to put the $40 billion cash injection towards building AGI. (The Guardian)
+ The deal values OpenAI at a whopping $300 billion. (CNBC)
+ The company also teased its first open-weight model in years. (Insider $)
3 SpaceX has launched a mission that’s never been attempted before
It’s taking private customers on an orbit between Earth’s North and South poles. (CNN)
+ Crypto billionaire Chun Wang is footing the bill for the mission. (Reuters)
+ Europe is finally getting serious about commercial rockets. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Some DOGE workers are returning to their old jobs
They’re quietly heading back to their roles at X and SpaceX. (The Information $)+ Top staff were placed on leave after denying DOGE access to their systems. (Wired $)
+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Amazon is going all-in on AI agents
Its new AI model Nova Act is designed to complete tasks such as online shopping. (The Verge)
+ Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake. (MIT Technology Review)
6 DeepMind is making it harder for its researchers to publish studies
It’s reluctant to share innovations that rivals could capitalize on. (FT $)
7 Meet the protestors staking out Tesla dealerships
Professors and attorneys have taken to the streets to fight back. (New Yorker $)
+ Far-right extremists are turning up to defend the company. (Wired $)
8 TikTok’s hottest topic? Tariffs
Content creators are eager to explain what tariffs are to confused audiences. (WSJ $)
+ Donald Trump is threatening to instigate a new range of tariffs this week. (NY Mag $)
+ How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Not everyone can look as cool as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang
His image has been co-opted to promote knockoff leather jackets. (404 Media)
10 Microsoft has killed off its Blue Screen of Death
Goodnight, sweet prince. (Vice)
Quote of the day
“I think that it is one of the most beautiful spaces on the internet for someone to figure out who they are.”
—Amanda Brennan, an internet librarian who worked at Tumblr for seven years, is not surprised by the influx of younger users flocking to her former workplace, Insider reports.
The big story
The quest to protect farmworkers from extreme heat
October 2024
On July 21, 2024, temperatures soared in many parts of the world, breaking the record for the hottest day ever recorded on the planet.
The following day—July 22—the record was broken again.
But even as the heat index rises each summer, the people working outdoors to pick fruits, vegetables, and flowers have to keep laboring.
The consequences can be severe, leading to illnesses such as heat exhaustion, heatstroke and even acute kidney injury.
Now, researchers are developing an innovative sensor that tracks multiple vital signs with a goal of anticipating when a worker is at risk of developing heat illness and issuing an alert. If widely adopted and consistently used, it could represent a way to make workers safer on farms even without significant heat protections. Read the full story.
—Kalena Thomhave
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.)
+ Mescal! Dickinson! Quinn! Keoghan! I’m very excited for the forthcoming Beatles biopics, even if we have to wait three years.
+ How to cook a delicious-looking basque cheesecake.
+ TikTokers have taken to rubbing banana peel on their faces: but does it actually do anything?
+ Spring has barely sprung, but fashion is already looking towards fall.
Brain-computer interfaces face a critical test 1 Apr 2:00 AM (3 days ago)
Tech companies are always trying out new ways for people to interact with computers—consider efforts like Google Glass, the Apple Watch, and Amazon’s Alexa. You’ve probably used at least one.
But the most radical option has been tried by fewer than 100 people on Earth—those who have lived for months or years with implanted brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs.
Implanted BCIs are electrodes put in paralyzed people’s brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands from their neurons through a wire, or via radio, to a computer. In this way, they can control a computer cursor or, in few cases, produce speech.
Recently, this field has taken some strides toward real practical applications. About 25 clinical trials of BCI implants are currently underway. And this year MIT Technology Review readers have selected these brain-computer interfaces as their addition to our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, published in January.
BCIs won by a landslide to become the “11th Breakthrough,” as we call it. It beat out three runners-up: continuous glucose monitors, hyperrealistic deepfakes, and methane-detecting satellites.
The impression of progress comes thanks to a small group of companies that are actively recruiting volunteers to try BCIs in clinical trials. They are Neuralink, backed by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk; New York–based Synchron; and China’s Neuracle Neuroscience.
Each is trialing interfaces with the eventual goal of getting the field’s first implanted BCI approved for sale.
“I call it the translation era,” says Michelle Patrick-Krueger, a research scientist who carried out a detailed survey of BCI trials with neuroengineer Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal at the University of Houston. “In the past couple of years there has been considerable private investment. That creates excitement and allows companies to accelerate.”
That’s a big change, since for years BCIs have been more like a neuroscience parlor trick, generating lots of headlines but little actual help to patients.
Patrick-Krueger says the first time a person controlled a computer cursor from a brain implant was in 1998. That was followed by a slow drip-drip of tests in which university researchers would find a single volunteer, install an implant, and carry out studies for months or years.
Over 26 years, Patrick-Krueger says, she was able to document a grand total of 71 patients who’ve ever controlled a computer directly with their neurons.
That means you are more likely to be friends with a Mega Millions jackpot winner than know someone with a BCI.
These studies did prove that people could use their neurons to play Pong, move a robot arm, and even speak through a computer. But such demonstrations are of no practical help to people with paralysis severe enough to benefit from a brain-controlled computer, because these implants are not yet widely available.
“One thing is to have them work, and another is how to actually deploy them,” says Contreras-Vidal. “Also, behind any great news are probably technical issues that need to be addressed.” These include questions about how long an implant will last and how much control it offers patients.
Larger trials from three companies are now trying to resolve these questions and set the groundwork for a real product.
One company, Synchron, uses a stent with electrodes on it that’s inserted into a brain vessel via a vein in the neck. Synchron has implanted its “stentrode” in 10 volunteers, six in the US and four in Australia—the most simultaneous volunteers reported by any BCI group.
The stentrode collects limited brain signals, so it gives users only a basic on/off type of control signal, or what Synchron calls a “switch.” That isn’t going to let a paralyzed person use Photoshop. But it’s enough to toggle through software menus or select among prewritten messages.
Tom Oxley, Synchron’s CEO, says the advantage of the stentrode is that it is “as simple as possible.” That, he believes, will make his brain-computer interface “scalable” to more people, especially since installing it doesn’t involve brain surgery.
Synchron might be ahead, but it’s still in an exploratory phase. A “pivotal” study, the kind used to persuade regulators to allow sales of a specific version of the device, has yet to be scheduled. So there’s no timeline for a product.
Neuralink, meanwhile, has disclosed that three volunteers have received its implant, the N1, which consists of multiple fine electrode threads inserted directly into the brain through a hole drilled in the skull.
More electrodes mean more neural activity is captured. Neuralink’s first volunteer, Noland Arbaugh, has shown off how he can guide a cursor around a screen in two dimensions and click, letting him play video games like Civilization or online chess.
Finally, Neuracle says it is running two trials in China and one in the US. Its implant consists of a patch of electrodes placed on top of the brain. In a report, the company said a paralyzed volunteer is using the system to stimulate electrodes in his arm, causing his hand to close in a grasp.
But details remain sparse. A Neuracle executive would only say that “several” people had received its implant.
Because Neuracle’s patient count isn’t public, it wasn’t included in Patrick-Krueger’s tally. In fact, there’s no information at all in the medical literature on about a quarter of brain-implant volunteers so far, so she counted them using press releases or by e-mailing research teams.
Her BCI survey yielded other insights. According to her data, implants have lasted as long as 15 years, more than half of patients are in the US, and roughly 75% of BCI recipients have been male.
The data can’t answer the big question, though. And that is whether implanted BCIs will progress from breakthrough demonstrations into breakout products, the kind that help many people.
“In the next five to 10 years, it’s either going to translate into a product or it’ll still stay in research,” Patrick-Krueger says. “I do feel very confident there will be a breakout.”
How do you teach an AI model to give therapy? 1 Apr 1:00 AM (3 days ago)
On March 27, the results of the first clinical trial for a generative AI therapy bot were published, and they showed that people in the trial who had depression or anxiety or were at risk for eating disorders benefited from chatting with the bot.
I was surprised by those results, which you can read about in my full story. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical that an AI model trained to provide therapy is the solution for millions of people experiencing a mental health crisis. How could a bot mimic the expertise of a trained therapist? And what happens if something gets complicated—a mention of self-harm, perhaps—and the bot doesn’t intervene correctly?
The researchers, a team of psychiatrists and psychologists at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine, acknowledge these questions in their work. But they also say that the right selection of training data—which determines how the model learns what good therapeutic responses look like—is the key to answering them.
Finding the right data wasn’t a simple task. The researchers first trained their AI model, called Therabot, on conversations about mental health from across the internet. This was a disaster.
If you told this initial version of the model you were feeling depressed, it would start telling you it was depressed, too. Responses like, “Sometimes I can’t make it out of bed” or “I just want my life to be over” were common, says Nick Jacobson, an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry at Dartmouth and the study’s senior author. “These are really not what we would go to as a therapeutic response.”
The model had learned from conversations held on forums between people discussing their mental health crises, not from evidence-based responses. So the team turned to transcripts of therapy sessions. “This is actually how a lot of psychotherapists are trained,” Jacobson says.
That approach was better, but it had limitations. “We got a lot of ‘hmm-hmms,’ ‘go ons,’ and then ‘Your problems stem from your relationship with your mother,’” Jacobson says. “Really tropes of what psychotherapy would be, rather than actually what we’d want.”
It wasn’t until the researchers started building their own data sets using examples based on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques that they started to see better results. It took a long time. The team began working on Therabot in 2019, when OpenAI had released only its first two versions of its GPT model. Now, Jacobson says, over 100 people have spent more than 100,000 human hours to design this system.
The importance of training data suggests that the flood of companies promising therapy via AI models, many of which are not trained on evidence-based approaches, are building tools that are at best ineffective, and at worst harmful.
Looking ahead, there are two big things to watch: Will the dozens of AI therapy bots on the market start training on better data? And if they do, will their results be good enough to get a coveted approval from the US Food and Drug Administration? I’ll be following closely. Read more in the full story.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.