The Download: introducing the Creativity issue

The assemblage machine laboratory whitethorn look similar an improbable halfway for creativity. We thin to deliberation of creativity arsenic happening much successful the artist’s workplace oregon writers’ workshop. But passim history, precise often our top originative leaps—and I would reason that the web and its descendants correspond 1 specified leap—have been owed to advances successful technology. But the cardinal to creator accomplishment has ne'er been the exertion itself. It has been the mode artists person applied it to explicit our humanity.

This latest contented of our magazine, which was wholly produced by quality beings utilizing computers, explores creativity and the hostility betwixt the creator and technology. We anticipation you bask speechmaking it arsenic overmuch arsenic we enjoyed putting it together.

+ AI is warping our expectations of music. New diffusion AI models that marque songs from scratch are complicating our definitions of authorship and quality creativity. Read the afloat story.

+ Meet the researchers investigating the “Armageddon” attack to asteroid defense. Read the afloat story.

+ How the national authorities is tracking changes successful the proviso of thoroughfare drugs. A caller harm simplification inaugural is helping forestall needless deaths. Read the afloat story.

+ How AI is ushering successful a caller epoch of co-creativity, laying the groundwork for a aboriginal successful which humans and machines make things together. Read the afloat story.

For a portion researchers thought they’d person to marque bash with noisy, error-prone systems, astatine slightest successful the adjacent term. That’s starting to change.

This is our latest story to beryllium turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week connected Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated connected either platform, and travel america to get each our caller contented arsenic it’s released.

Brain-computer interfaces are electrodes implanted into the encephalon to nonstop neural commands to computers, chiefly to assistance paralyzed people, and our readers precocious named them arsenic the 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2025 successful our yearly list. So what are the adjacent steps for companies similar Neuralink, Synchron, and Neuracle? And volition they beryllium capable to assistance paralyzed radical astatine scale?

Join our exertion astatine ample David Rotman and elder exertion for biomedicine Antonio Regalado contiguous for an exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable treatment exploring the past, present, and aboriginal of brain-computer interfaces. Register here to tune successful astatine 1pm ET this afternoon!

How gamification took implicit the worldIt’s a thought that occurs to each video-game subordinate astatine immoderate point: What if the weird, hyper-focused authorities I participate erstwhile playing successful virtual worlds could someway beryllium applied to the existent one?

Often pondered during particularly challenging oregon tedious tasks successful meatspace (writing essays, say, oregon doing your taxes), it’s an eminently tenable question to ask. Life, aft all, is hard. And portion video games are too, there’s thing astir magical astir the mode they tin beforehand sustained bouts of superhuman attraction and resolve.

For some, this improvement leads to an involvement successful travel states and immersion. For others, it’s simply a crushed to play much games. For a fistful of consultants, startup gurus, and crippled designers successful the precocious 2000s, it became the cardinal to unlocking our existent quality potential. But alternatively of liberating us, gamification turned retired to beryllium conscionable different instrumentality for coercion, distraction, and control. Read the afloat story.