{"id":17570,"date":"2026-02-05T13:18:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/05\/the-download-attempting-to-track-ai-and-the-next-generation-of-nuclear-power\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:18:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:18:38","slug":"the-download-attempting-to-track-ai-and-the-next-generation-of-nuclear-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/05\/the-download-attempting-to-track-ai-and-the-next-generation-of-nuclear-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The Download: attempting to track AI, and the next generation of nuclear power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is today\u2019s edition of\u00a0The Download<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what\u2019s going on in the world of technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the most misunderstood graph in AI<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every time OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic drops a new frontier large language model, the AI community holds its breath. It doesn\u2019t exhale until METR, an AI research nonprofit whose name stands for \u201cModel Evaluation & Threat Research,\u201d updates a now-iconic graph that has played a major role in the AI discourse since it was first released in March of last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The graph suggests that certain AI capabilities are developing at an exponential rate, and more recent model releases have outperformed that already impressive trend.<\/p>\n

That was certainly the case for Claude Opus 4.5, the latest version of Anthropic\u2019s most powerful model, which was released in late November. In December, METR announced that Opus 4.5 appeared to be capable of independently completing a task that would have taken a human about five hours\u2014a vast improvement over what even the exponential trend would have predicted.<\/p>\n

But the truth is more complicated than those dramatic responses would suggest. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Grace Huckins<\/em><\/p>\n

This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains: our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what\u2019s coming next. <\/strong>You can read more from the series here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Three questions about next-generation nuclear power, answered<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nuclear power continues to be one of the hottest topics in energy today, and in our recent online Roundtables discussion<\/a> about next-generation nuclear power<\/a>, hyperscale AI data centers<\/a>, and the grid, we got dozens of great audience questions.<\/p>\n

These ran the gamut, and while we answered quite a few (and I\u2019m keeping some in mind for future reporting), there were a bunch we couldn\u2019t get to, at least not in the depth I would have liked. So let\u2019s answer a few of your questions about advanced nuclear power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Casey Crownhart<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review<\/em>\u2019s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, <\/strong>sign up here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The must-reads<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve combed the internet to find you today\u2019s most fun\/important\/scary\/fascinating stories about technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 Anthropic\u2019s new coding tools are rattling the markets\u00a0<\/strong>
Fields as diverse as publishing and coding to law and advertising are paying attention. (FT<\/a> $)
+ Legacy software companies, beware. <\/em>(Insider<\/a> $)
+ Is \u201csoftware-mageddon\u201d nigh? It depends who you ask. <\/em>(Reuters<\/a>)<\/p>\n

2<\/strong> This Apple setting prevented the FBI from accessing a reporter\u2019s iPhone<\/strong>
Lockdown Mode has proved remarkably effective\u2014for now. (404 Media<\/a>)
+ Agents were able to access Hannah Natanson\u2019s laptop, however. <\/em>(Ars Technica<\/a>)<\/p>\n

3 Last month\u2019s data center outage disrupted all TikTok categories<\/strong>
Not just the political content that some users claimed. (NPR<\/a>)<\/p>\n

4 Big Tech is pouring billions into AI in India
<\/strong>A newly-announced 20-year tax break should help to speed things along. (WSJ<\/a> $)
+ India\u2019s female content moderators are watching hours of abuse content to train AI. <\/em>(The Guardian<\/a>)
+ Officials in the country are weighing up restricting social media for minors. <\/em>(Bloomberg<\/a> $)
+ Inside India\u2019s scramble for AI independence. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

5 YouTubers are harassing women using body cams
<\/strong>They\u2019re abusing freedom of information laws to humiliate their targets. (NY Mag<\/a> $)
+ AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened? <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

6 Jokers have created a working version of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s inbox<\/strong>
Complete with notable starred threads. (Wired<\/a> $)
+ Epstein\u2019s links with Silicon Valley are vast and deep. <\/em>(Fast Company<\/a> $)
+ The revelations are driving rifts between previously-friendly factions. <\/em>(NBC News<\/a>)<\/p>\n

7 What\u2019s the last thing you see before you die?
<\/strong>A new model might help to explain near-death experiences\u2014but not all researchers are on board. (WP<\/a> $)
+ What is death? <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

8 A new app is essentially TikTok for vibe-coded apps<\/strong>
Words which would have made no sense 15 years ago. (TechCrunch<\/a>)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

9 Rogue TV boxes are all the rage
<\/strong>Viewers are sick of the soaring prices of streaming services, and are embracing less legal means of watching their favorite shows. (The Verge<\/a>)<\/p>\n

10 Climate change is threatening the future of the Winter Olympics \"\u26f7\"<\/strong>
Artificial snow is one (short term) solution. (Bloomberg<\/a> $)
+ Team USA is using AI to try and gain an edge on its competition. <\/em>(NBC News<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Quote of the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014Ajit Varma, head of Mozilla\u2019s web browser Firefox, explains why the company is reversing its previous decision to transform Firefox into an \u201cAI browser,\u201d PC Gamer<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One more thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data<\/strong><\/p>\n

Millions of images of passports, credit cards, birth certificates, and other documents containing personally identifiable information are likely included in one of the biggest open-source AI training sets, new research has found.<\/p>\n

Thousands of images\u2014including identifiable faces\u2014were found in a small subset of DataComp CommonPool, a major AI training set for image generation scraped from the web. Because the researchers audited just 0.1% of CommonPool\u2019s data, they estimate that the real number of images containing personally identifiable information, including faces and identity documents, is in the hundreds of millions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bottom line? Anything you put online can be and probably has been scraped. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Eileen Guo<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We can still have nice things<\/strong><\/p>\n

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? <\/em>Drop me a line<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>skeet \u2019em at me<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

+ If you\u2019re crazy enough to be training for a marathon right now, here\u2019s how to beat boredom on those long, long runs<\/a>.
+ Mark Cohen\u2019s intimate street photography<\/a> is a fascinating window into humanity.
+ A seriously dedicated gamer has spent days painstakingly recreating a Fallout<\/em> vault<\/a> inside the Sims 4<\/em>.
+ Here\u2019s what music\u2019s most stylish men are wearing right now<\/a>\u2014from leather pants to khaki parkas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is today\u2019s edition of\u00a0The Download,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}