Plus: the Pentagon has tapped Elon Musk to co-lead a future warfare project. An AI "mind-reading" tool can reconstruct what you're looking at based on a brain scan A new AI tool can guess what you're looking at just by analyzing your brain scans--and recreate that image with remarkable precision. It can go the other way too, and predict a person's brain activity based on what they're looking at. The researchers hope the "mindreading" tool could reveal more about how the brain works. It could also help locked-in people communicate and, incredibly, maybe even allow scientists to recreate the content of dreams. But other scientists warn that a similar approach could reveal people's inner thoughts and mental imagery, potentially without their consent.

A new AI tool can guess what you're looking at just by analyzing your brain scans--and recreate that image with remarkable precision. It can go the other way too, and predict a person's brain activity based on what they're looking at. In the image above, for example, the left-hand image of each pair is what the user actually saw--and its right-hand counterpart is what the model recreated based on the brain scan. Michal Irani, who developed the tool with her colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, hopes her "mindreading" tool will ultimately reveal more about how the brain works, and could perhaps be used to help locked-in people communicate, or allow scientists to recreate the content of dreams. Judy Illes, a neuroethicist and professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the research, describes the work as "magnificent." "The idea [of using this approach] to help people with neurologic conditions therapeutically is tremendously exciting," she says. But other scientists warn that a similar approach could be used to reveal the inner thoughts and mental imagery of people, potentially without their consent. "The results seem very impressive," says Tommy Sprague, a neuroscientist at the University of California Santa Barbara. "But if there's a way to surreptitiously extract information about what you're thinking about, then 150 years of sci-fi can come true anytime, and that's worrisome in a lot of ways."

From e-bikes to stoves, here's how companies are adding energy storage in surprising ways. If you want to install a big battery in New York City, you have to cut through a notoriously tough tangle of regulations. That's made it difficult to get large energy storage projects on the grid. Faced with those obstacles, some startups are getting creative, finding ways to use relatively small batteries in unexpected places, from induction stovetops to food carts. By deploying these more consumer-focused batteries, the companies are helping people directly, cutting pollution or power bills. And these units, while small on their own, could add up to a lot of capacity.

The Download: OpenAI's chief research officer explains its hacking response Plus: Trump and tech executives have agreed to "self-regulate" AI. "We're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot" over hack fallout, says OpenAI's chief research officer Two months after OpenAI's agents hacked into the computers of AI company Hugging Face, the company is still dealing with the fallout. Last week brought news of another hack, this time into Australia's national health-care system, which the government says OpenAI did not report for 84 days. But OpenAI insists it is not on the back foot. "I do kind of reject the premise that OpenAI is a company with visible impacts in the world and therefore OpenAI is not training safe and aligned models," says Mark Chen, the company's chief research officer. In many ways, the buck stops with Chen. I sat down with him to talk about the fallout from the hacks, what his company is doing about it, and why he thinks things are not as bad as they seem.

Two months after the bombshell news that a swarm of its agents had broken their containment and hacked into the computers of the AI company Hugging Face, OpenAI is still putting out fires. A steady drip of disclosures about other hacks in the weeks since has kept OpenAI in the spotlight and raised serious questions about the safety of its technology. Last week brought news of another hack, this time into Australia's national health-care system. The Australian government says that OpenAI did not notify it of the breach until 84 days after it happened. But OpenAI insists it is not on the back foot.

The Download: climate tech companies to watch and AI's discovery problem Plus: OpenAI has scrapped a new AI model over safety concerns. With the planet nearing 1.5 C of warming, climate policies being unraveled, and Big Tech backpedaling on its climate ambitions, it can be tempting to give in to climate doom and defeatism. But despite the headwinds, the world has still made incredible progress. That's why publishes its annual list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch . Once a year, we compile a list of 10 companies that we believe have done the most, or have the best chance, to make a real dent in emissions or improve public safety and health. We've now finalized our 2026 list and will publish it on October 6.

The negative climate news is piling up, but there are some bright spots of progress if you know where to look. Earlier this month, the UN announced the planet will tip past 1.5 C of warming, "likely within the next few years," squashing any lingering hope that nations would cut emissions fast enough to achieve the loftiest goal of the Paris climate agreement. In the US, the world's second-largest-emitting country, its leader continues to deny climate realities and unravel climate policies . Big Tech is backpedaling on its climate ambitions, as companies race to build massive AI data centers. And all this comes amid yet another season of shattered heat records, raging wildfires, and deadly floods. It can be tempting to give in to climate doom and defeatism.

As AI moves from pilots to production, enterprises must decide when consumption pricing still fits--and when AI infrastructure should be treated as a productive asset. When customers talk about AI costs, the conversation usually starts with token prices and ends with access to the latest, most capable model in the cloud. Do they always need that level of capability? But that is often where the conversation goes. As AI moves from experimentation to production, model choice is only part of the equation. When demand becomes steady and business-critical, a consumption-only approach can turn AI spending into a variable monthly line item that is difficult to forecast as usage, workloads, and model requirements change.

The US has spent billions building a "virtual wall" of surveillance towers along its southern border over the past 25 years, promising they will help detect and apprehend border crossers and save lives. Some were even under the watch of newly installed AI-powered towers designed to spot people automatically. Our findings reveal a humanitarian crisis more visible than previously known, and repeated failures of the virtual wall's basic security promise. Watch a conversation examining the failures of border surveillance technology and uncovering the stories of the people who die in the borderlands. The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die?

When can we say AI made a scientific discovery? AI companies' insistence that their technology is making breakthroughs, not just aiding scientists, is making real progress harder to recognize. Last Wednesday, Anthropic announced that earlier this year it had launched a molecular biology lab, where Claude agents read and conjecture about hard biology problems and human scientists run experiments on what they report. And this AI-powered lab, the company said, had made its first discovery. To understand what Anthropic says its system did, imagine you're flipping through a library of millions of DNA sequences, amassed as scientists sequence more and more of the living world. One step toward a breakthrough might be finding a peculiar sequence that encodes an interesting enzyme, perhaps.