Technology Review

• 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…

• 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…

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

  Google’s recent unveiling of what it calls a “new class of agentic experiences” feels like a turning point. At its I/O 2025 event in May, for example, 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…

• The Download: how AI could improve construction site safety, and our Roundtables conversation with Karen Hao

  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. How generative AI could help make construction sites safer More than 1,000 construction workers die on the job each year in the US, making it the most dangerous industry for fatal slips, trips,…

• How generative AI could help make construction sites safer

  Last winter, during the construction of an affordable housing project on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a 32-year-old worker named Jose Luis Collaguazo Crespo slipped off a ladder on the second floor and plunged to his death in the basement. He was one of more than 1,000 construction workers who die on the job each year in the US, making…