The Download: sodium-ion batteries and China’s bright tech future

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.

Sodium-ion batteries are making their way into cars—and the grid

For decades, lithium-ion batteries have powered our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But lithium’s limited supply and volatile price have led the industry to seek more resilient alternatives. Enter: sodium-ion batteries. 

They work much like lithium-ion ones: they store and release energy by shuttling ions between two electrodes. But unlike lithium, a somewhat rare element that is currently mined in only a handful of countries, sodium is cheap and found everywhere. Read why it’s poised to become more important to our energy future.

—Caiwei Chen

Sodium-ion batteries are one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. Take a look at what else made the list. 

CES showed me why Chinese tech companies feel so optimistic

—Caiwei Chen

I decided to go to CES kind of at the last minute. Over the holiday break, contacts from China kept messaging me about their travel plans. After the umpteenth “See you in Vegas?” I caved. As a China tech writer based in the US, I have one week a year when my entire beat seems to come to me—no 20-hour flights required.

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, is the world’s biggest tech show, where companies launch new gadgets and announce new developments, and it happens every January. China has long had a presence at CES, but this year it showed up in a big way. Chinese companies showcased everything from AI gadgets to household appliances to robots, and the overall mood among them was upbeat. Here’s why.

This story was first featured in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside story of what’s going on in AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

This company is developing gene therapies for muscle growth, erectile dysfunction, and “radical longevity”  

At some point this month, a handful of volunteers will be injected with experimental gene therapies as part of an unusual clinical trial. The drugs are potential longevity therapies, says Ivan Morgunov, the CEO of Unlimited Bio, the company behind the trial.  

The volunteers—who are covering their own travel and treatment costs—will receive a series of injections in their arms and legs. One of the therapies is designed to increase the blood supply to those muscles. The other is designed to support muscle growth. The company hopes to see improvements in strength, endurance, and recovery. It also plans to eventually trial similar therapies in the scalp (for baldness) and penis (for erectile dysfunction). 

However, some experts warn the trial is too small, and likely won’t reveal anything useful. Read the full story. 

—Jessica Hamzelou

The must-reads

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

1 Apple is teaming up with Google to give Siri an AI revamp 
That’s a giant win for Google, and a blow for OpenAI. (CNBC)

2 Trump wants Elon Musk to help break Iran’s internet blackout
He’s appealing to Musk to let Iranians circumvent it with Starlink. (WP $)
+ Smuggled tech is Iran’s last link to the outside world. (The Guardian)

3 Right-wing influencers have flocked to Minneapolis 
Their goal is to paint it as a lawless city, and justify ICE’s shooting of Renee Nicole Good. (Wired $)

4 The Pentagon is adopting Musk’s Grok AI chatbot 
Just as it faces a backlash across the world for making non-consensual deepfakes. (NPR)
+ The UK is launching a formal probe into X. (The Guardian)
+ It’s also bringing in a new law which will make it illegal to make these sorts of images. (BBC)

5 The push to power AI is devastating coastal villages in Taiwan
A rapid expansion of wind energy is hurting farmers and fishers. (Rest of World)
+ Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Don’t hold your breath for robots’ ChatGPT moment
AI has unlocked impressive advances in robotics, but we’re a very long way from human-level capabilities. (FT $)
+ Will we ever trust humanoid robots in our homes? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Meta is about to lay off hundreds of metaverse employees
Reality Labs is yesterday’s news—now it’s all about AI. (NYT $)

8 We could eradicate flu 
A “universal” flu vaccine could be far better at protecting us than any existing option. (Vox $)

9 You can now reserve a hotel room on the moon
It’s all yours, for just $250,000. (Ars Technica)
+ This astronaut is training tourists to fly in the world’s first commercial space station. (MIT Technology Review)

10 AI images are complicating efforts to find some monkeys in Missouri 
For real. (AP) 

Quote of the day

“In big cities, everyone is an isolated, atomized individual. People live in soundproof apartments, not knowing the surname of their neighbors.”

—A user on social media platform RedNote explains why a new app called ‘Are you dead’ has become popular in China, Business Insider reports. 

One more thing

AI is coming for music, too

While large language models that generate text have exploded in the last three years, a different type of AI, based on what are called diffusion models, is having an unprecedented impact on creative domains. 

By transforming random noise into coherent patterns, diffusion models can generate new images, videos, or speech, guided by text prompts or other input data. The best ones can create outputs indistinguishable from the work of people.

Now these models are marching into a creative field that is arguably more vulnerable to disruption than any other: music. And their output encapsulates how difficult it’s becoming to define authorship and originality in the age of AI. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

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 skeet ’em at me.)

+ Bricking your phone is the new Dry January. 
+ If you’re hankering for an adventure this year, check out this National Geographic list.
+ There are few people more furiously punk than women going through the menopause, as this new TV show demonstrates ($).
+ Aww, look how Pallas cats keep their paws warm in winter.