It’s been a busy and productive year here at MIT Technology Review. We published magazine issues on power, creativity, innovation, bodies, relationships, and security. We hosted 14 exclusive virtual conversations with our editors and outside experts in our subscriber-only series, Roundtables, and held two events on MIT’s campus. And we published hundreds of articles online, following new developments in computing, climate tech, robotics, and more. 

As the year winds down, we wanted to give you a chance to revisit a bit of this work with us. Whether we were covering the red-hot rise of artificial intelligence or the future of biotech, these are some of the stories that resonated the most with our readers. 

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.

Understanding AI’s energy use was a huge global conversation in 2025 as hundreds of millions of people began using generative AI tools on a regular basis. Senior reporters James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart dug into the numbers and published an unprecedented look at AI’s resource demand, down to the level of a single query, to help us know how much energy and water AI may require moving forward. 

We’re learning more about what vitamin D does to our bodies

Vitamin D deficiency is widespread, particularly in the winter when there’s less sunlight to drive its production in our bodies. The “sunshine vitamin” is important for bone health, but as senior reporter Jessica Hamzelou reported, recent research is also uncovering surprising new insights into other ways it might influence our bodies, including our immune systems and heart health.

What is AI?

Senior editor Will Douglas Heaven’s expansive look at how to define AI was published in 2024, but it still managed to connect with many readers this year. He lays out why no one can agree on what AI is—and explains why that ambiguity matters, and how it can inform our own critical thinking about this technology.

Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine

In this thought-provoking op-ed, a team of experts at Stanford University argue that creating living human bodies that can’t think, don’t have any awareness, and can’t feel pain could shake up medical research and drug development by providing essential biological materials for testing and transplantation. Recent advances in biotechnology now provide a potential pathway to such “bodyoids,” though plenty of technical challenges and ethical hurdles remain. 

It’s surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot

Chatbots were everywhere this year, and reporter Rhiannon Williams chronicled how quickly people can develop bonds with one. That’s all right for some people, she notes, but dangerous for others. Some folks even describe unintentionally forming romantic relationships with chatbots. This is a trend we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on in 2026. 

Is this the electric grid of the future?

The electric grid is bracing for disruption from more frequent storms and fires, as well as an uncertain policy and regulatory landscape. And in many ways, the publicly owned utility company Lincoln Electric in Nebraska is an ideal lens through which to examine this shift as it works through the challenges of delivering service that’s reliable, affordable, and sustainable.

Exclusive: A record-breaking baby has been born from an embryo that’s over 30 years old

This year saw the birth of the world’s “oldest baby”: Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, who arrived on July 26. The embryo he developed from was created in 1994 during the early days of IVF and had been frozen and sitting in storage ever since. The new baby’s parents were toddlers at the time, and the embryo was donated to them decades later via a Christian “embryo adoption” agency.  

How these two brothers became go-to experts on America’s “mystery drone” invasion

Twin brothers John and Gerald Tedesco teamed up to investigate a concerning new threat—unidentified drones. In 2024 alone, some 350 drones entered airspace over a hundred different US military installations, and many cases went unsolved, according to a top military official. This story takes readers inside the equipment-filled RV the Tedescos created to study mysterious aerial phenomena, and how they made a name for themselves among government officials. 

10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025 

Our newsroom has published this annual look at advances that will matter in the long run for over 20 years. This year’s list featured generative AI search, cleaner jet fuel, long-acting HIV prevention meds, and other emerging technologies that our journalists think are worth watching. We’ll publish the 2026 edition of the list on January 12, so stay tuned. (In the meantime, here’s what didn’t make the cut.)  

Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry.

Last year, the fantasy author Joanna Maciejewska went viral (if such a thing is still possible on X) with a post saying “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” Clearly, it struck a chord with the disaffected masses.

Regrettably, 18 months after Maciejewska’s post, the entertainment industry insists that machines should make art and artists should do laundry. The streaming platform Disney+ has plans to let its users generate their own content from its intellectual property instead of, y’know, paying humans to make some new Star Wars or Marvel movies.

Elsewhere, it seems AI-generated music is resonating with a depressingly large audience, given that the AI band Breaking Rust has topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. If the people demand AI slop, who are we to deny them?