Plus: OpenAI is facing seven new legal complaints

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 first new subsea habitat in 40 years is about to launch

Vanguard feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides behind a curtain.

But you can’t just fire up Vanguard’s engine and roll off the lot. Once it is sealed and moved to its permanent home beneath the waves of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary early next year, Vanguard will be the world’s first new subsea habitat in nearly four decades.Teams of four scientists will live and work on the seabed for a week at a time, entering and leaving the habitat as scuba divers. Read our story about some of their potential missions.

—Mark Harris

Cloning isn’t just for celebrity pets like Tom Brady’s dog

This week, we heard that Tom Brady had his dog cloned. The former quarterback revealed that his Junie is actually a clone of Lua, a pit bull mix that died in 2023.

Brady’s announcement follows those of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Barbra Streisand, who also famously cloned their pet dogs. But some believe there are better ways to make use of cloning technologies, such as diversifying the genetic pools of inbred species, or potentially bringing other animals back from the brink of extinction. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI is facing a wave of new lawsuits The cases concern wrongful death complaints, and claims ChatGPT caused mental breakdowns. (NYT $)+ One family claims ChatGPT “goaded” their son into taking his own life. (CNN)+ The looming crackdown on AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Tesla shareholders approved Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay packageMore than 75% of voters backed it. (WSJ $)+ Musk had hinted he’d leave Tesla if the deal wasn’t greenlit. (Axios)+ Tesla has to hit its ambitious targets before he can get his hands on the cash. (Wired $)3 The EU is poised to water down the AI actAfter pressure from Big Tech and the US government. (FT $)+ While the legislation was passed last year, many provisions haven’t kicked in yet. (Reuters)

4 Meta is earning a colossal amount of money from scam adsThey accounted for 10% of its revenue last year. (Reuters)+ Meta claims it “aggressively” addresses scam ads on its platform. (CNBC)

5 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is pivoting to AIIt’s shifting its philanthropic focus from social justice programs to curing disease. (WP $)+ To achieve its goals, the charity will need extra computing power. (NYT $)

6 Unesco has adopted global standards on neurotechnologyExperts were increasingly concerned that a lack of guardrails could give rise to unethical practices. (The Guardian)+ Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Benchmarks hugely oversell AI performanceA new study questions their reliability and the validity of their results. (NBC News)+ How to build a better AI benchmark. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Kim Kardashian blames ChatGPT for failing her law examsIt’s almost like she shouldn’t have been consulting it for legal expertise in the first place. (Hollywood Reporter)+ AI and social media is worsening brain rot. (NYT $)+ How AI is introducing errors into courtrooms. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Hyundai is using robot dogs to inspect its EV production lineAnd they may soon be joined by a bipedal master. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed yet againThe highly anticipated video game has big, big shoes to fill. (Bloomberg $)+ It’ll land a full 13 years after its previous incarnation—or will it? (BBC)

Quote of the day

“This is what oligarchy looks like.”

—Senator Bernie Sanders reacts to Tesla shareholders’ decision to award Elon Musk a $1 trillion pay package in a post on X.

One more thing

Finding forgotten Indigenous landscapes with electromagnetic technology

The fertile river valleys of the American Midwest hide tens of thousands of Indigenous earthworks, according to experts: geometric structures consisting of walls, mounds, ditches, and berms, some dating back nearly 3,000 years.Archaeologists now believe that the earthworks functioned as religious gathering places, tombs for culturally important clans, and annual calendars, perhaps all at the same time. They can take the form of giant circles and squares, cloverleafs and octagons, complex S-curves and simple mounds.Until recently, it seemed as if much of the continent’s pre-European archaeological heritage had been carelessly wiped out, uprooted, and lost for good. But traces remain: electromagnetic remnants in the soil that can be detected using specialty surveying equipment. And archaeologists and tribal historians are working together to uncover them. Read the full story.

—Geoff Manaugh

We can still have nice things

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