I asked my MIT class to consider why some of the advances that MIT Technology Review's journalists thought would change our world never really did--and what we can learn from the flops. Every year, publishes a list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. In fact, the 2026 version is out today. This marks the 25th year the newsroom has compiled this annual list, which means its journalists and editors have now identified 250 technologies as breakthroughs. A few years ago, editor at large David Rotman revisited the publication's original list, finding that while all the technologies were still relevant, each had evolved and progressed in often unpredictable ways. I lead students through a similar exercise in a graduate class I teach with James Scott for MIT's School of Architecture and Planning.

Our reporters and editors constantly debate which emerging technologies will define the future. Once a year, we take stock and share some educated guesses with our readers. Here are the advances that we think will drive progress or incite the most change--for better or worse--in the years ahead. Rubrik is the exclusive sponsor of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2026 and had no editorial influence on this list. Rubrik is a security and AI operations company that aims to secure and accelerate the world's AI transformation.

If you've ever gone hiking, you know trails can be challenging and unpredictable. A path that was clear last week might be blocked today by a fallen tree. Poor maintenance, exposed roots, loose rocks, and uneven ground further complicate the terrain, making trails difficult for a robot to navigate autonomously. After a storm, puddles can form, mud can shift, and erosion can reshape the landscape. This was the fundamental challenge in our work: how can a robot perceive, plan, and adapt in real time to safely navigate hiking trails?

When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out last summer I was in so much pain that I didn't know if I'd be able to play it. Could a video game teach me anything new about suffering? L ast year I became uncomfortably well acquainted with suffering. In March I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder - burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but was painful; even at rest it was horrible.

By studying large language models as if they were living things instead of computer programs, scientists are discovering some of their secrets for the first time. How large is a large language model? Think about it this way. In the center of San Francisco there's a hill called Twin Peaks from which you can view nearly the entire city. Picture all of it--every block and intersection, every neighborhood and park, as far as you can see--covered in sheets of paper. Now picture that paper filled with numbers. LLMs contain a LOT of parameters. That's one way to visualize a large language model, or at least a medium-size one: Printed out in 14-point type, a 200-billion-parameter model, such as GPT4o (released by OpenAI in 2024), could fill 46 square miles of paper--roughly enough to cover San Francisco.

Technology can be a powerful force for good. It can also be an enormous factory for harmful ideas. We tried to keep both of those things in mind when creating the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026. The billionaire investor Peter Thiel (or maybe his ghostwriter) once said, " We were promised flying cars, instead we got 140 characters ." That quip originally appeared in a manifesto for Thiel's venture fund in 2011. All good investment firms have a manifesto, right?

Silicon Valley envisions artificial intelligence ushering in an era of economic plenty. But what if the benefits are largely confined to corporations and investors that own the technology itself? In early 2024, Anish Acharya, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a big venture-capital firm based in Menlo Park, posted an article online titled "How AI Will Usher in an Era of Abundance." Since then, and even before, various Silicon Valley types have been tossing the term around loosely. Last summer, Elon Musk even adopted the term "sustainable abundance" for a new Tesla mission statement.

The Sudanese armed forces (SAF) are renewing efforts for an operation to retake the Kordofan and Darfur regions from the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as the civil war rages deep into its third year. The army has been assessing the RSF's capabilities and resources in readiness for launching the military operation with a large number of military formations fully prepared to launch an attack, it said. Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera's Hiba Moran said the Sudanese army had reorganised and redeployed troops in various part of Kordofan. "We have also seen the Sudanese army retake control of territories in the Kordofan region as well as launch air strikes and drone strikes on several RSF positions in Darfur and Kordofan," she said. "And it looks like these are the preparations or the first steps of that offensive that the army has been speaking about in efforts to regain control of territories in Kordofan and Darfur," she added.

Malaysia has blocked access to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence model Grok amid a global uproar over the chatbot's ability to create sexually explicit images of people without their consent. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Sunday it had temporarily banned Grok after ordering the chatbot's developer xAI and the social media platform X to introduce safeguards to ensure compliance with the law. "MCMC considers this insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance." The Malaysian watchdog's announcement came a day after Indonesia became the world's first country to formally ban the chatbot, which is offered as both a standalone platform and an in-built feature on X. Grok has been mired in controversy in recent days over the use of its image-generation tool to depict real people in minimal clothing and sexualised poses without their consent. The spread of the sexualised deepfakes, some of them including minors, has prompted condemnation and calls to action from officials in numerous countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia.

The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. Government signals support for possible Ofcom intervention on Grok as scrutiny of X's AI tool intensifies Elon Musk's X "is not doing enough to keep its customers safe online", a minister has said, as the UK government prepares to outline possible action against the platform over the mass production of sexualised images of woman and children. Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said the government would fully support any action taken by Ofcom, the media regulator, against X - including the possibility that the platform could be blocked in the UK. Kyle said Ofcom had received information it had requested from X as part of a fast-tracked investigation into the use of platform's built-in AI tool, Grok, to generate large numbers of manipulated images of people, often depicting them in minimal clothing or sexualised poses.