Friday, October 16, 2026 Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. [...]

With artificial intelligence capabilities continuing to expand, universities now face complex, urgent questions about how to navigate increasing challenges, as well as new opportunities. Much attention is now directed toward this, including an MIT report on AI and education published this summer. A new essay from MIT Statistics and Data Science Center [...]

Today, shared Microsoft 365 plans include 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for every family member. Microsoft is about to shrink that allotment dramatically. [...]

Regulating AI at work is happening slowly, but it’s still stuck at the state level. [...]

NASA is preparing for humanity’s first Moon base with three investigations that will hunt for underground shelters, uncover hidden ice, and track dangerous conditions on the lunar surface. The findings could reveal how astronauts can survive and thrive on the Moon while laying the groundwork for future journeys to Mars. [...]

Einstein Probe revealed nearly 10 minutes of soft X-ray activity following a short gamma-ray burst, exposing a phase of neutron star mergers that previous missions may have missed. The prolonged emission could have been powered by a newly formed magnetar and may provide a valuable new counterpart to gravitational-wave signals. [...]

A new light-driven method generates highly reactive hydrogen atoms under mild conditions, opening new possibilities for metal-free chemical synthesis. [...]

Researchers combine nanobodies with self-blinking fluorescent dyes to improve super-resolution microscopy, simplifying nanoscale imaging of cellular structures. [...]

The story is a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Aventine, a non-profit research foundation that creates and supports content about how technology and science are changing the way we live. A robot shaped like a human—white with a black head and torso—has been popping up on video feeds. Perhaps you’ve [...]

The global building boom of power-hungry data centers is straining electrical grids, causing greater reliance on energy from polluting fossil fuels.Christina Delimitrou, a newly tenured associate professor at MIT, is fighting this environmental threat by rethinking how the computer servers and networking equipment inside those data centers operate. She and her [...]

Does AI use help or hurt feedback at work? Here’s what one survey found. [...]

Artificial intelligence has become part of the zeitgeist. And while it’s a polarizing topic, Linda Rabieh has a unique take on AI: “It’s good for business. Our business, of humanistic thinking.” As senior lecturer in the Concourse program, one of MIT’s first-year learning communities, Rabieh has been introducing students to [...]

Researchers discovered a hidden chiral superlattice in uranium oxytelluride that combines ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic behavior, with potential for faster, more robust memory devices. [...]

Scientists used AI to search the largest 2D map of the universe and confirm 70 new gravitational lenses, expanding a key resource for dark matter studies. [...]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the kinds of violent collisions that may have shaped our own solar system, including the giant impact thought to have created the Moon. By studying 21 rare “extreme debris disks” around young stars, researchers found that their dust can [...]

Physicists have found striking evidence for an unusual form of superconducting behavior in uranium ditelluride, where electron pairs organize into rippling patterns called pair density waves. Even more surprisingly, these patterns appear to survive after ordinary superconductivity disappears, suggesting that the electron pairs responsible for superconductivity may begin forming before [...]

As artificial intelligence transforms industries and national security, understanding the latest hardware capabilities is important for maintainind technological advantage.AI accelerators — specialized systems designed to speed up capabilities such as neural networks, deep learning, and machine learning — have been a major area of development for nearly a decade. Since [...]

Google is cutting off free users from the Flash and Pro models. AI Plus subscribers are losing out too [...]

For all the data that AI systems continually amass and analyze, enterprise AI agents often suffer from a curious shortcoming: a lack of knowledge. More than data, knowledge is the understanding of what the data means in the context of individual organizations. AI agents need this understanding to reason about [...]

In 2026, the question for enterprise AI is no longer whether predictive models can outperform statistical forecasts—that argument is settled. The big question now is how to enable predictive systems to act on their own conclusions without drifting from business intent. The frontier has moved from prediction to autonomous decision [...]

A proposed qubit made with superfluid helium could cut quantum computing error rates by around 100 times by shielding quantum information from common forms of electromagnetic noise. If experiments confirm the predictions, the technology could eventually work alongside today’s superconducting qubits or serve as a new kind of quantum memory. [...]

UCLA researchers built an AI system that uses light to analyze more than a dozen videos simultaneously, detecting deepfakes with nearly 98% accuracy. Its speed, low energy demands, and resistance to attacks could make it a powerful tool for screening the growing flood of AI-generated video. [...]

Researchers have shown that exotic quantum particles called non-Abelian anyons can perform the full range of operations needed for universal quantum computing. Using 54 qubits on Quantinuum’s H2 processor, they combined braiding and fusion to unlock capabilities that braiding alone could not provide. [...]

Researchers combine protein language models and neural networks to accurately predict and design bitter-tasting peptides from scratch. [...]

A new study links low spinal bone density to faster cognitive decline and accelerated brain white matter injury. [...]

A new AI control system lets MIT’s tiny flying robot move with insect-like agility, boosting its speed by about 450 percent and allowing it to pull off 10 somersaults in 11 seconds. The technology could eventually enable miniature robots to search earthquake rubble and navigate dangerous spaces that conventional drones [...]