The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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.

Inside India’s scramble for AI independence

Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI.

That gap has opened largely because India has chronically underinvested in R&D, institutions, and invention. Meanwhile, since no one native language is spoken by the majority of the population, training language models is far more complicated than it is elsewhere.

So when the open-source foundation model DeepSeek-R1 suddenly outperformed many global peers, it struck a nerve. This launch by a Chinese startup prompted Indian policymakers to confront just how far behind the country was in AI infrastructure—and how urgently it needed to respond. Read the full story.

—Shadma Shaikh

Job titles of the future: Pandemic oracle

Officially, Conor Browne is a biorisk consultant. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he has advanced degrees in security studies and medical and business ethics, along with United Nations certifications in counterterrorism and conflict resolution.

Early in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, international energy conglomerates seeking expert guidance on navigating the potential turmoil in markets and transportation became his main clients. 

Having studied the 2002 SARS outbreak, he predicted the exponential spread of the new airborne virus. In fact, he forecast the epidemic’s broadscale impact and its implications for business so accurately that he has come to be seen as a pandemic oracle. Read the full story.

—Britta Shoot

This story is from the most recent print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. Subscribe here to receive future copies once they drop.

The must-reads

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

1 Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ has passed 

Which is terrible news for the clean energy industry. (Vox)
+ An energy-affordability crisis is looming in the US. (The Atlantic $)
+ The President struck deals with House Republican holdouts to get it over the line. (WSJ $)
+ The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Daniel Gross is joining Meta’s superintelligence lab 
He’s jumping ship from the startup he co-founded with Ilya Sutskever. (Bloomberg $)
+ Sutskever is stepping into the CEO role in his absence. (TechCrunch)
+ Here’s what we can infer from Meta’s recent hires. (Semafor)

3 AI’s energy demands could destabilize the global supply
That’s according to the head of the world’s largest transformer maker. (FT $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Elon Musk is threatening to start his own political party
Would anyone vote for him, though? (WP $)
+ You’d think his bruising experience in the White House would have put him off. (NY Mag $)

5 The US has lifted exports on chip design software to China
It suggests that frosty relations between the nations may be thawing. (Reuters)

6 Trump officials are going after this ICE warning app
But lawyers say there’s nothing illegal about it. (Wired $)
+ Downloads of ICEBlock are rising. (NBC News)

7 Wildfires are making it harder to monitor air pollutants
Current tracking technology isn’t built to accommodate shifting smoke. (Undark)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Apple’s iOS 26 software can detect nudity on FaceTime calls
The feature will pause the call and ask if you want to continue. (Gizmodo)

9 Threads has finally launched DMs
But users are arguing there should be a way to opt out of them entirely. (TechCrunch)

10 You can hire a robot to write a handwritten note
Or, y’know, pick up a pen and write it yourself. (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“It’s almost like we never even spoke.”

Richard Wilson, an online dater who is convinced his most recent love interest used a chatbot to converse with him online before they awkwardly met in person, tells the Washington Post about his disappointment.

One more thing

Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business

Once a week, Sun Kai has a video call with his mother, and they discuss his day-to-day life. But Sun’s mother died five years ago, and the person he’s talking to isn’t actually a person, but a digital replica he made of her.

There are plenty of people like Sun who want to use AI to preserve, animate, and interact with lost loved ones as they mourn and try to heal. The market is particularly strong in China, where at least half a dozen companies are now offering such technologies and thousands of people have already paid for them.

But some question whether interacting with AI replicas of the dead is truly a healthy way to process grief, and it’s not entirely clear what the legal and ethical implications of this technology may be. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

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.)+ There’s nothing cooler than wooden interiors right now.
+ Talented artist Ian Robinson creates beautiful paintings of people’s vinyl collections.
+ You’ll find me in every one of Europe’s top wine destinations this summer.
+ Here’s everything you need to remember before Stranger Things returns this fall.