AI

Testosterone. Methenolone. Nandrolone. Human growth hormone and EPO. Meldonium, modafinil, and mixed amphetamine salts. Clomiphene, anastrozole, levothyroxine, and liothyronine. Patches and capsules, creams and pills. A whole galaxy of steroids, metabolic modulators, and synthetic hormones coursing through the blood of a few dozen swimmers, sprinters, and weightlifters. And millions of dollars up for grabs for athletes who could break world records and usher in the age of superhumanity. On Sunday, May 24, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in Las Vegas, I witnessed a libertarian thought experiment come to life. The inaugural Enhanced Games were the first sporting competition where participants were encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. The founders say they’re challenging dated sporting norms and helping to build a world where we can all live better, longer lives. Critics say the event is an embarrassment, that it glamorizes the use of dangerous substances and puts lives at risk.  The open-air venue was compact and decked out in bright blue, with a six-lane, 100-meter track down one side, a four-lane Olympic-length swimming pool down the other, and a weightlifting platform and stage at the front. You could see the golden façade of the Trump Hotel looming in the background. The scene had all the trappings of an NFL game, with the too-loud music and crowd work on the big screen—a “flex cam”  gave the well-muscled an excuse to unveil their biceps. Between events, adverts flashed up for the line of performance products sold by Enhanced, the company behind the event: injectable peptides that supposedly support cellular energy and skin elasticity, daily supplement powders with names like “Stronger” and “Longer.” SAEED RAHBARAN SAEED RAHBARAN Australian swimmer James Magnussen was the first athlete to sign up with Enhanced but hasn’t broken any world records. He finished last in his two events in Las Vegas. The day started with the weightlifters, under the blazing sun. But by 4 p.m., only one of them had even attempted a world-record lift. Two had pulled out injured. Some athletes were competing without taking drugs because of the money on offer, and as the competition went on, they had the better of their enhanced peers: Hunter Amstrong, a 25-year-old American swimmer and triple Olympic medalist, won the backstroke by more than a second. In the men’s 100-meter sprint, the non-enhanced US athlete Fred Kerley romped to an easy victory. “Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said of his doped opponents in his post-race interview. “They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more.” At the bar, bodybuilders swapped before-and-after pictures and talked about their stacks, and VCs and finance bros traded LinkedIn details. Lukas Lakutsin, a 6-foot-10, 354-pound Russian bodybuilder who was milling around the entrance to the VIP suites, initially told me he didn’t use any performance-enhancing drugs. Except testosterone replacement therapy, of course. But he didn’t think that really counted. “I’m almost 34 years old,” he said. “I need to do this to stay strong.” The “protocol” for Enhanced athletes only includes FDA-approved drugs. While Enhanced’s team might make recommendations, individuals have the final say on what they want to take, if anything.SAEED RAHBARAN Jeremy Sigal, an influencer and author, wore a USA tank top that showed off hugely muscled arms adorned with prison tattoos. He told me he was proudly natural, in both his health and his personal life. “I’ve got an exceptional credit score,” he said. He has written 12 books on marketing and leadership. Later, I looked up his most recent book online. It’s called Simp to Pimp: 10 Steps to Fix Why She’s Not Banging You and lists AI as a coauthor. What I saw in Las Vegas probably wasn’t the future of sport. But it was a perfect encapsulation of our present moment, as Silicon Valley biohackers, alt-right looksmaxxers, Make America Healthy Again boosters, and longevity-obsessed scientists all vie to remake reality in their own image. For them, the Enhanced Games offered a glimpse of a future where medical advances push the human race to new heights, and where they never have to get old.  I’ve tracked Enhanced’s journey from a crazy idea scribbled on a napkin to a public company valued at $1.2 billion. Behind the scenes, there have been power struggles, life-changing victories, and moments of total farce. As I recently, finally, watched the games unfold, two questions bounced around my head: Were they right? And what does that mean for the rest of us? In December 2022, the Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza flew to Miami to spend New Year’s Eve with his friend and mentor Peter Thiel. A decade earlier, D’Souza had helped Thiel orchestrate the lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker—a stunning revenge against the gossipy New York media blog that had outed him as gay. Now he was armed with a disruptive idea that he thought Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, would love. It was inspired by the buff bodies he’d been seeing at the gym, highlighting a disconnect between a workout culture where the use of steroids was an open secret and a sporting establishment where it was, at least on paper, an inviolable taboo. His initial pitch was provocative and confrontational: a grand sporting event to rival the Olympic Games, where competitors could take any substance they wanted—their body, their choice. The first time I met D’Souza, in the spring of 2024, he had founded the company and attracted some initial investment but seemed obsessed with taking on the fat cats at the International Olympic Committee and reinventing sports (even though he didn’t seem to be a huge sports fan himself). On Enhanced’s Discord server, I found a folder full of memes with names like IOC Clowns.jpg. The whole thing felt very unserious. That would change.  D’Souza told me that Thiel had previously introduced him to Christian Angermayer, a German biotech billionaire, who would come onboard at Enhanced. He’s funded clinical trials of psychedelics through his company Atai Life Sciences

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 “steroid olympics” were a circus—and a window into our culture —Amit Katwala A couple of weeks ago, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in Las Vegas, I witnessed a libertarian thought experiment come to life. The inaugural Enhanced Games were the first sporting competition where participants were encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. For supporters of the event, the Enhanced Games offered a glimpse of a future in which medical advances push the human race to new heights—and they never have to get old. As I watched the games unfold, two questions bounced around my head: were they right? And what does that mean for the rest of us? Read the full story to understand the answers. MIT Technology Review Narrated: a reality check on the AI jobs hysteria Despite the growing hysteria over AI’s threat to white-collar jobs, there’s still scant evidence that the technology has had a large-scale impact on the labor market. Analysis of US labor data shows that unemployment in occupations most exposed to AI is actually lower than in less-exposed jobs. There are also no signs that large numbers of workers are shifting from AI-threatened professions into supposedly safer manual-labor jobs. It’s true that things aren’t great in the job market. But the reason isn’t simply the rise of AI. —David Rotman This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish 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 Anthropic has released a “safe” version of MythosIt promises it has enough guardrails and user limitations to be safe. (BBC)+ It has a price tag twice as high as the previous flagship system. (NYT $)+ Anthropic previously claimed Mythos was too dangerous to release. (CNBC)+ But critics suspect that was a marketing play. (Guardian)+ Selective access has become a key strategy for AI labs. (Axios) 2 Seattle has banned new data centers for a yearIt’s the largest US city to have passed such a moratorium.(Guardian)+ Its biggest tech firm, Amazon, has tried to stop the ban. (The Verge)+ The movement to stop data centers is growing. (NYT $) 3 Democratic senators are pushing for a military AI restriction lawThey want a human commander to have the final say. (Gizmodo)+ But humans in the loop in an AI war is an illusion. (MIT Technology Review) 4 SpaceX plans to launch space data center tests by late 2027Orbital compute is central to the company’s growth pitch. (Reuters $)+ It’s also shared new designs for its space data centers. (BI)+ We’d need these four things to put them in orbit. (MIT Technology Review) 5 China has been accused of escalating AI espionageA report claims Beijing is hacking tech firms to catch up with the US. (CNBC)+ There are no winners in a US-China AI arms race. (MIT Technology Review)6 The Trump family has made about $2.3 billion from cryptoWhile investors lost about the same amount. (Gizmodo)+ The Trumps risked next-to-nothing on their crypto ventures. (Reuters $) 7 Apple isn’t launching Siri AI in the European UnionIt’s blaming EU interoperability requirements. (The Verge)+Brussels says Apple didn’t try to find a compliance solution. (Reuters $)  8 China’s new drone rules have spooked its thriving industry Drone firms face new commercial barriers. (Financial Times $)+ China’s drone sector leads the world. (NYT $) 9 A judge has cancelled a trial after finding both legal teams used AIThe case descended into GenAI tools arguing against each other. (404 Media)+ Courts have been flooded with AI-generated lawsuits. (MIT Technology Review) 10 The dinosaur-killing asteroid created a thriving new ecosystemMicroscopic life flourished in the extended heat. (New Scientist $) Quote of the day “AI technologies today are designed by and for WEIRD societies—Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.”  —Aditya Vashistha, an assistant professor at Cornell University, tells Rest of World why AI systems don’t serve global needs. One More Thing LAUREN SIMKIN BERKE Why the definition of design might need a change The word “design” once carried a far wider set of meanings than it does today. They ranged from the literal and material (like tracing) through the tactical (to contrive and achieve a goal) to the organizational and institutional—the “designation” of people and objects. Over centuries, as designing became increasingly separated from making, that broader understanding faded. But now there is a growing case for reclaiming the word’s original sense: not just the search for a more beautiful shape, but the shaping of a more beautiful and sustainable world.  Find out why we should retool the word “design.” —Nicholas de Monchaux 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.) + This history of humanity’s search for alien life is fascinating.+ Watch a damaged painting slowly return to life in this art restoration video.+ Admire young stars across every stage of cosmic formation in this stunning space picture of the month.+ Daredevil divers have captured the first-ever underwater footage of an adult great white in the Mediterranean Sea.

Most browser AI tutorials cover text because it is a natural starting point, but the applications people actually want to build are rarely text-only.

Most browser AI tutorials cover text because it is a natural starting point, but the applications people actually want to build are rarely text-only.

As adoption of AI agents looks set to surge by as much as 300% in the next two years, leadership teams are carefully considering the implications of a hybrid human-AI workforce.  Unlike existing enterprise-level automation that relies on manual input, AI agents are capable of autonomously coordinating complex tasks, interacting with multiple tools and environments across an organization. In early applications that center on customer service, HR, and sales, adoption of agentic AI has led to productivity gains of 30-50%.  Their autonomy positions agents more as collaborators than tools, working side-by-side with human employees in blended teams that look poised to upend traditional workplace dynamics.  More than three-quarters of HR leaders believe that the deployment of AI agents will transform existing workplace norms, driving a complete reappraisal of how roles and responsibilities are distributed, how skills are prioritized, and how workplace culture is shaped. Though many admit they’re in the early or preparatory phase of this shift, 86% of chief HR officers predict that navigating digital labor shaped by agentic AI will be a central component of their role in the years ahead. Fluency in the change management aspect of agentic AI adoption will be a crucial differentiator when it comes to unlocking the full potential of the technology going forward, believes Ateet Jayaswal, chief culture and employee experience officer at Wipro, a leading technology services and consulting company. This moment is one that he says, “calls for a mindset shift in how HR leaders would enable their organizations.” Redeploying roles to enable higher-value work As AI agents assume ownership of more complex and integral tasks, the distribution of roles and responsibilities within an organization will undergo significant change. It’s estimated that three-quarters of current roles will require redesign, reskilling, or redeployment by 2030 as a result of agentic AI.  For leadership, this shift should be about reskilling employees toward higher-value work in order to optimize the potential of an agent-human hybrid workforce, says Jayaswal.  For example, Wipro is a complex organization of 240,000 employees across 65 countries. It previously had multiple policies, documents, and knowledge fragmented across different systems, which delayed response to employee queries.  But the company has recently integrated a custom agentic AI assistant—an agent co-created in partnership with enterprise agentic AI platform Ema Unlimited—that can swiftly navigate this complex system, assuming responsibility for 50 HR tasks that had previously fallen to human employees. With the help of an AI agent, average response time to queries has lowered from 48 hours to five seconds.  Human employees have more time to focus on work “that requires a creative and imaginative mind and cross-functional collaboration, leveraging diverse ideas and thoughts to problem-solve,” says Jayaswal. The AI agent, meanwhile, handles rote administrative tasks like sorting timesheets or helping employees navigate policies and take actions in the flow of work.  When reallocating employee responsibilities, though, it is imperative that humans remain in the loop, Jayaswal caveats. When agentic AI is incorporated into enterprise technology, it must work with sensitive and personal data and therefore needs even more stringent guardrails and constraints than consumer applications. “When you expose an AI agent to organizational data, when you integrate it into multiple enterprise systems, then pathways around the AI agent become extremely important,” he says. “It’s an evolving space that leadership needs to have front-of-mind.” Governance should include robust data privacy rules and the establishment of governance layers, such as an AI council, he suggests.   At a fundamental level, the adoption of AI agents will force a re-evaluation of human roles, believes Jayaswal. Rather than employees primarily performing repetitive tasks or troubleshooting, a significant proportion of their time will shift to designing, teaching, and optimizing an AI agent that can do this work for them with far greater speed and predictability and without the agent getting bored.  “The nature of your job changes from being the hero who comes in to solve the problem to designing the hero who can solve the problem,” he summarizes. “The individuals who I have seen thrive in this environment are the ones who make this shift.” An evolving employee skillset Just as roles and responsibilities will be reconfigured to reflect the input of AI agents, the core skills of human employees will be reprioritized. More than four in five HR leaders say they’re planning to reskill workers to become more competitive in a market shaped by AI agents.  Technical skills will be increasingly important. Leading employers such as Salesforce, Danone, and Walmart are already rolling out dedicated AI and digital skills programs that aim to equip everyone from frontline workers to C-suite executives with a baseline level of AI literacy in response to the pervasiveness of the technology.  But desirable soft skills will also evolve, Jayaswal points out. Employees who assign tasks to an AI agent need to plainly articulate what modular steps may be needed to accomplish a task, what the desired outcome should be, and what parameters or guardrails need to be in place to ensure the agent doesn’t access or share confidential data.  As HR executives adapt to a blended workforce, three skills are emerging as top priorities during recruitment, according to a recent survey: relationship building, like forging constructive partnerships and account management; collaboration; and adaptability.  Maintaining a healthy workplace culture In freeing up human employees to focus on higher-value tasks, the hope is that AI agents can elevate the employee experience, deepening fulfilment and satisfaction in the workplace.  “At Wipro, our vision is to improve the life of Wiproites,” says Jayaswal. “We are taking away non-value added work by embracing modern ways of collaborating, engaging, and transacting, leaving associates with higher order work content.”  But leadership teams embracing agentic AI will also need to plan for the new pressures and stressors that the technology can place on a workforce.  There is already confusion and knowledge gaps, with 73% of HR leaders reporting their employees don’t yet understand how digital labor will impact their work. Many organizations have opted to define AI agents as

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. David Sinclair plans to test whole-body rejuvenation drugs in the XPrize competition The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has predicted that, one day, you’ll go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make you 10 years younger. MIT Technology Review has learned of his latest step toward this: human tests of a “reprogramming” drug. Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, plans to launch the tests in a $101 million competition organized by the XPrize Foundation. The winners will “restore” a person to an earlier apparent age, as measured by improvements in immune, cognitive, and muscle function. The grand prize goes to any team able to show a 10-year (or greater) relative improvement after one year of treatment.  Sinclair says he plans to give an oral drug mixture to volunteers, in a bid to seek “evidence for age restoration in humans.” Find out how he hopes to reverse ageing through chemical reprogramming. —Antonio Regalado Five things you need to know about AI —Will Douglas Heaven At SXSW London last week, I gave a talk called “Five things you need to know about AI,” in which I shared what I think are the biggest themes in AI right now. I pulled a few things from our first AI10 list, an annual guide to the top trends in this buzzy world, but I also veered off on several tangents. In my half-hour slot, I tried to cover the key talking points that I think help to make sense of what’s going on in tech—and thus the economy—today.   Five key thoughts emerged: AI is everywhere all at once, it’s getting scary, a backlash is growing, it’s becoming a big deal for science—and I didn’t even need to show up at the talk. Read the full story for all the details. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 OpenAI has confidentially filed for a US IPOThe listing could come as early as September. (Reuters $)+ OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion. (Financial Times $)+ The IPO will test investor appetite for AI companies. (WSJ $)+ The move follows IPO filings from Anthropic and SpaceX. (CNN) 2 The US claims BYD, Baidu, Alibaba, and others are aiding China’s militaryThe Pentagon added them to a list of military-linked companies. (WSJ $)+ The designations limit their operations in the US. (BBC)+ The new additions also include humanoid firm Unitree. (TechCrunch)+ The Pentagon is adapting to China’s tech rise. (MIT Technology Review) 3 Apple’s long-awaited AI overhaul of Siri is finally here“Siri AI” promises to be a more conversational assistant. (NYT $)+ It includes a standalone app and screen-reading features. (Reuters $)+ And arrives after two years of repeated delays. (Axios) 4 The White House and Congress are working to limit state AI lawsA new deal would curb state rules for federal legislation. (Axios)+ AI regulation has divided US politicians. (MIT Technology Review) 5  Meta is launching a “workforce academy” for building data centersThe five-week program is free of charge and guarantees a job. (WSJ $)+ It arrives shortly after Meta laid off 8,000 employees. (NPR)6 Taiwan is mulling curbs on AI chip exports to ChinaThe new controls would further align with US restrictions. (Bloomberg $)+ Future AI chips could be built on glass. (MIT Technology Review) 7 Meta has quietly removed face-recognition code from its smart glasses appThe code identified by investigators has disappeared. (Wired $) 8 Humanoid robots are edging towards the battlefieldAmerican and Chinese militaries are pursuing the tech. (BBC) 9 The world’s first wind-powered underwater data center has launchedIt uses less power and water than land-based equivalents. (Guardian) 10 You could get some benefits of sleep without having to nod offIf new brain stimulation works as well on humans as on mice, that is. (New Scientist $) Quote of the day “You’re on the train, but you know that there’s no destination.” —Clara Shih, a former top AI executive at Salesforce and Meta, tells the New York Times that AI training can’t keep up with the field’s advances. One More Thing ILLUSTRATIONS BY AMRITA MARINO Inside the race to make human sex cells in the lab An embryo forms when sperm meets egg. But what if we could start with other cells—if a blood sample or skin biopsy could be transformed into “artificial” sperm and eggs? What if those were all you needed to make a baby? That’s the promise of a radical approach to reproduction. Scientists have already created artificial eggs and sperm from mouse cells and used them to create mouse pups. Artificial human sex cells are next. The advances could herald the end of infertility, but they raise major scientific and ethical challenges.  Read the full story on the new recipes for sperm and eggs. —Jessica Hamzelou 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.) + These chefs turn Pop-Tarts into the desserts that inspired them.+ A choir has beautifully transformed System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!”+ Scientists finally traced crabs’ sideways walk in this fascinating study of evolution.+ This nostalgic essay on the family computer is a touching throwback to early internet life. Top image credit: Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | Getty Images Please send Pop-Tarts to hi@technologyreview.com.  You can follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading! —Thomas