The Download: Google’s Project Astra, and China’s export bans

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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.

Google’s new Project Astra could be generative AI’s killer app

Google DeepMind has announced an impressive grab bag of new products and prototypes that may just let it seize back its lead in the race to turn generative artificial intelligence into a mass-market concern.

Top billing goes to Gemini 2.0—the latest iteration of Google DeepMind’s family of multimodal large language models, now redesigned around the ability to control agents—and a new version of Project Astra, the experimental everything app that the company teased at Google I/O in May.

The margins between top-end models like Gemini 2.0 and those from rival labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are now slim. These days, advances in large language models are less about how good they are and more about what you can do with them. And that’s where agents come in.

MIT Technology Review got to try out Astra in a closed-door live demo last week. It gave us a hint at what’s to come. Find out more in the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

China banned exports of a few rare minerals to the US. Things could get messier.

—Casey Crownhart

I’ve thought more about gallium and germanium over the last week than I ever have before (and probably more than anyone ever should).

China banned the export of those materials to the US last week and placed restrictions on others. The move is just the latest drama in escalating trade tensions between the two countries.

While the new export bans could have significant economic consequences, this might be only the beginning. China is a powerhouse, and not just in those niche materials—it’s also a juggernaut in clean energy, and particularly in battery supply chains. So what comes next could have significant consequences for EVs and climate action more broadly. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 It’s looking pretty likely 2024 will be the hottest year on record
But average temperatures are just one way of assessing our warming world. (New Scientist $)
+ The first few months of 2025 are likely to be hotter than average, too. (Reuters)
+ The US is about to make a sharp turn on climate policy. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Meta has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund
In an effort to strengthen their previously fractious relationship. (WSJ $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only tech figure seeking the President-elect’s ear. (Insider $)

3 How China secretly repatriates Uyghurs
Even the United Nations is seemingly powerless to stop it. (WP $)
+ Uyghurs outside China are traumatized. Now they’re starting to talk about it. (MIT Technology Review)

4 How Big Tech decides when to scrub a user’s digital footprint
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione’s Instagram has been taken down—but his Goodreads hasn’t. (NYT $)
+ Why it’s dangerous to treat public online accounts as the full story. (NY Mag $)

5 Russia-backed hackers targeted Ukraine’s military using criminal tools
Which makes it even harder to work out who did it. (TechCrunch)

6 What Cruise’s exit means for the rest of the robotaxi industry
Automakers are becoming frustrated waiting for the technology to mature. (The Verge)
+ Cruise will focus on developing fully autonomous personal vehicles instead. (NYT $)

7 Researching risky pathogens is extremely high stakes
The potential for abuse has some researchers worried we shouldn’t undertake it at all. (Undark Magazine)
+ Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Altermagnetism could be computing’s next big thing
It would lead to faster, more reliable electronic devices. (FT $)

9 Why some people need so little sleep
Gene mutations appear to hold at least some of the answers. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Babies spend most of their time asleep. New technologies are beginning to reveal why. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Inside the creeping normalization of AI movies
The world’s largest TV manufacturer wants to make films for people too lazy to change the channel. (404 Media)
+ Unsurprisingly, it’ll push targeted ads, too. (Ars Technica)
+ How AI-generated video is changing film. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“They’ve made him a martyr for all the troubles people have had with their own insurance companies.”

—Felipe Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, explains why murder suspect Luigi Mangione is being lionized online to Reuters.

The big story

Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch

November 2024

Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.

But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.

—Edd Gent

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 tweet ’em at me.)

+ Working life getting you down? These pictures of bygone office malaise will make you feel a whole lot better (or worse—thanks Will!)
+ Gen Z are getting really into documenting their lives via digital cameras, apparently.
+ If you believe that Alan MacMasters invented the first electric bread toaster, I’m sorry to inform you that you’ve fallen for an elaborate online hoax.
+ The case for a better Turing test for AI-generated art.