The Download: AI agents hype, and Google’s electricity plans

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.

Don’t let hype about AI agents get ahead of reality

—Yoav Shoham is a professor emeritus at Stanford University and cofounder of AI21 Labs.

At Google’s I/O 2025 event in May, the company showed off a digital assistant that didn’t just answer questions; it helped work on a bicycle repair by finding a matching user manual, locating a YouTube tutorial, and even calling a local store to ask about a part, all with minimal human nudging. Such capabilities could soon extend far outside the Google ecosystem.

The vision is exciting: Intelligent software agents that act like digital coworkers, booking your flights, rescheduling meetings, filing expenses, and talking to each other behind the scenes to get things done.

But if we’re not careful, we’re going to derail the whole idea before it has a chance to deliver real benefits. As with many tech trends, there’s a risk of hype racing ahead of reality. And when expectations get out of hand, a backlash isn’t far behind. Read the full story.

Google’s electricity demand is skyrocketing

We got two big pieces of energy news from Google this week. The company announced that it’s signed an agreement to purchase electricity from a fusion company’s forthcoming first power plant. Google also released its latest environmental report, which shows that its energy use from data centers has doubled since 2020.

Taken together, these two bits of news offer a fascinating look at just how desperately big tech companies are hunting for clean electricity to power their data centers as energy demand and emissions balloon in the age of AI. Of course, we don’t know exactly how much of this pollution is attributable to AI because Google doesn’t break that out. (Also a problem!) So, what’s next and what does this all mean?

—Casey Crownhart

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

+ To read more about whether nuclear energy is really a viable way to power the AI boom, check out Casey’s recent article, which is part of Power Hungry: AI and our energy future—our new series shining a light on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial intelligence revolution. You can take a look at the rest of the package here.

The must-reads

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

1 Meta’s climate tool was ‘trained using faulty data’
Scientists claim it raised false hopes about the feasibility of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (FT $)
+ xAI’s gas turbines have been greenlit, despite community backlash. (Wired $)
+ Why we need to shoot carbon dioxide thousands of feet underground. (MIT Technology Review)

2 We don’t know whether US insurers will cover vaccines for kids
Major insurers haven’t confirmed whether they’ll keep covering the costs of shots. (Wired $)
+ What’s next for the Gates Foundation’s global health initiatives? (Undark)
+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 The Trump administration wants to gut Biden’s climate law
The Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax incentives are hanging in the balance. (WP $)
+ It’s bad news for one of the US economy’s biggest growth sectors. (Vox)
+ How are we going to feed the world without making climate change worse? (New Yorker $)
+ The President threatened to unravel the landmark law long before he was elected. (MIT Technology Review)

4 There are certain tells a scientific study abstract has been written by AI
Use of hundreds of words has shot up since ChatGPT was made public. (NYT $)
+ Beware over-reliance on AI-text detection tools, though. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Elon Musk doesn’t care about cars any more
Which is terrible news for Tesla and its investors. (WSJ $)
+ Things aren’t looking too hot for Rivian, either. (Insider $)

6 America’s weather forecasting is getting worse
Just a year ago, US storm forecasting was the best it had ever been. Now, its accuracy is rapidly declining. (The Atlantic $)

7 Brazil has sustainable data center ambitions
Environmentalists aren’t convinced, however. (Rest of World)

8 A mysterious object has been spotted passing through the solar system
And we’ve got good reason to believe it originated outside our system. (Ars Technica)

9 A rising band on Spotify is probably AI-generated
But no one seems able to say for sure. (Vice)

10 The homes float in flood water
It’s one solution to building homes on known flood plains. (Fast Company $)
+ How to stop a state from sinking. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“AI doesn’t know what an orgasm sounds like.” 

—Annabelle Tudor, an audiobook narrator, tells the Guardian why she’s not convinced by the industry’s plans to have AI narrate audiobooks.

One more thing

Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?

There has been a trend toward lowering the bar for new medicines, and it is becoming easier for people to access treatments that might not help them—and could even harm them. Anecdotes appear to be overpowering evidence in decisions on drug approval. As a result, we’re ending up with some drugs that don’t work.

We urgently need to question how these decisions are made. Who should have access to experimental therapies? And who should get to decide? Such questions are especially pressing considering how quickly biotechnology is advancing. We’re not just improving on existing classes of treatments—we’re creating entirely new ones. Read the full story.

—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 or skeet ’em at me.)

+ These aerial shots of Glastonbury festival are crazy.
+ Our oceans really are amazing places—take a moment to appreciate them.
+ How to be truly cool, according to science.
+ Happy 62nd birthday to Tracey Emin, still an enfant terrible after all these years.