The Download: China’s empty data centers, and OpenAI’s new practical image generator

3 The US government has hired a vaccine skeptic to conduct a major vaccine study
The long-discredited David Geier will oversee analysis of whether jabs cause autism. (WP $)
+ The White House appears to be targeting mRNA vaccines. (FT $)
+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Microsoft has unveiled two deep reasoning Copilot AI agents
The two agents, called Researcher and Analyst, are designed to do just that. (The Verge)
+ How ChatGPT search paves the way for AI agents. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Inside the rise of Chinese hacking
The cyber threat posed by the country is increasingly sophisticated—and aggressive. (Economist $)

6 Google has instructed workers to remove DEI terms from their work
The company has offered up alternative language to use in its place.(The Information $)

7 Synthesia is offering shares to reward human actors for its AI avatars
The compensation scheme is the first of its kind. (FT $)
+ Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies. (MIT Technology Review)

8 China’s RedNote is working to keep its influx of TikTok “refugees”
To do so, it’ll need to expand its user base outside the Chinese diaspora. (Rest of World)

9 This operating system is designed to keep running during civilization’s collapse
Collapse OS is designed to give us access to lost knowledge in case of disaster. (Wired $)

10 No one really knows how long people live
Longevity research is bogged down in bad record-keeping. (NY Mag $)
+ The quest to legitimize longevity medicine. (MIT Technology Review)