The Download: inside animals’ minds, and how to make AI agents useful

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.

What do jumping spiders find sexy? How DIY tech is offering insights into the animal mind.

Studying the minds of other animals comes with a challenge that human psychologists don’t usually face: Your subjects can’t tell you what they’re thinking. 

To get answers from animals, scientists need to come up with creative experiments to learn why they behave the way they do. Sometimes this requires designing and building experimental equipment from scratch. 

These contraptions can range from ingeniously simple to incredibly complex, but all of them are tailored to help answer questions about the lives and minds of specific species. Do honeybees need a good night’s sleep? What do jumping spiders find sexy? Do falcons like puzzles? For queries like these, off-the-shelf gear simply won’t do. Check out these contraptions custom-built by scientists to help them understand the lives and minds of the animals they study. 

—Betsy Mason

This piece is from the latest print issue of MIT Technology Review, which is all about the weird and wonderful world of food. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive future copies once they land.

How ChatGPT search paves the way for AI agents

It’s been a busy few weeks for OpenAI. Alongside updates to its new Realtime API platform, which will allow developers to build apps and voice assistants more quickly, it recently launched ChatGPT search, which allows users to search the internet using the chatbot.

Both developments pave the way for the next big thing in AI: agents. These AI assistants can complete complex chains of tasks, such as booking flights. OpenAI’s strategy is to both build agents itself and allow developers to use its software to build their own agents, and voice will play an important role in what agents will look and feel like.

Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter, sat down with Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s head of product for its platform, and Romain Huet, head of developer experience, last week to hear more about the two big hurdles that need to be overcome before agents can become a reality. Read the full story.

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

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

1 America is heading to the polls
Here’s how Harris and Trump will attempt to lead the US to tech supremacy. (The Information $)
+ The ‘Stop the Steal’ election denial movement is preparing to contest the vote. (WP $)
+ The muddy final polls suggest it’s still all to play for. (Vox)

2 Abortion rights are on the 2024 ballot
A lack of access to basic health care has led to the deaths of at least four women. (NY Mag $)
+ Nine states will decide whether to guarantee their residents abortion access. (Fortune)
+ If Trump wins he could ban abortion nationwide, even without Congress. (Politico)

3 Inside New York’s election day wargames
Tech, business and policy leaders gathered to thrash out potential risks. (WSJ $)+ Violence runs throughout all aspects of this election cycle. (FT $)

4 Elon Musk’s false and misleading X election posts have billions of views
In fact, they’ve been viewed twice as much as all X’s political ads this year. (CNN)
+ Musk’s decision to hitch himself to Trump may end up backfiring, though. (FT $)

5 Meta will permit the US military to use its AI models
It’s an interesting update to its previous policy, which explicitly banned its use for military purposes. (NYT $)
+ Facebook has kept a low profile during the election cycle. (The Atlantic $)
+ Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The hidden danger of pirated software
It’s not just viruses you should be worried about. (404 Media)

7 Apple is weighing up expanding into smart glasses
Where Meta leads, Apple may follow. (Bloomberg $)
+ The coolest thing about smart glasses is not the AR. It’s the AI. (MIT Technology Review)

8 India’s lithium plans may have been a bit too ambitious
Reports of a major lithium reserve appear to have been massively overblown.(Rest of World)
+ Some countries are ending support for EVs. Is it too soon? (MIT Technology Review)

9 Your air fryer could be surveilling you
Household appliances are now mostly smart, and stuffed with trackers. (The Guardian)

10 How to stay sane during election week
Focus on what you can control, and try to let go of what you can’t. (WP $)
+ Here’s how election gurus are planning to cope in the days ahead. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to log off. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“We’re in kind of the ‘throw spaghetti at the wall’ moment of politics and AI, where this intersection allows people to try new things for propaganda.”

—Rachel Tobac, chief executive of ethical hacking company SocialProof Security, tells the Washington Post why a deepfake video of Martin Luther King endorsing Donald Trump is being shared online in the closing hours of the presidential race.

The big story

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush

December 2023

Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.

Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share.

They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost. But they’re having to navigate an ethical minefield in order to do so. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

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.)

+ Move over Moo Deng—Haggis the baby pygmy hippo is the latest internet star!
+ To celebrate the life of the late, great Quincy Jones, check out this sensational interview in which he spills the beans on everything from the Beatles’ musical shortcomings to who shot Kennedy. Thank you for the music, Quincy.
+ The color of the season? Sage green, apparently.
+ Dinosaurs are everywhere, you just need to look for them.