The Download: tricking LLMs, and reviving geothermal plants

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.

A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack

It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at a top AI conference earlier this month.

The flaw concerns how LLMs identify who or what is giving them instructions. By taking advantage of it, the researchers were able to make popular LLMs spit out information they had been trained not to provide, such as how to synthesize cocaine and how to sabotage a commercial aircraft’s navigation system.

Read our story about the flaw the researchers found, its implications—and why it may never be fixed.

—Will Douglas Heaven

How an overlooked geothermal plant got a second chance

In June 2024, a small company called Zanskar purchased a geothermal power plant in New Mexico that was failing fast. The water coming from the underground reservoir was getting colder by the day, making the plant uneconomical to run.

Now, two years later, that plant is running at full capacity again, thanks to a new well. With the help of advanced modeling and modern drilling technology, the company was able to identify a better well site, drill down thousands of feet, and revive the entire operation.

As the world looks for more sources of emissions-free electricity that are available 24-7, Lightning Dock shows there’s still hidden potential deep beneath our feet. Read the full story .

—Casey Crownhart

This  story  is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter.  Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: South Korea’s hottest new bachelors are chip workers

Baek, a 35-year-old manager at the South Korean semiconductor titan SK Hynix, was enrolled in a matchmaking company a year ago. In a move typical of anxious South Korean parents, his mother signed him up, hoping to find a good wife for her son.

Lately, says Baek, he and his coworkers are having better luck finding dates—perhaps because of the dazzling bonuses they just got. Flush with eye-popping profits from the AI chip boom, SK Hynix agreed to pay 10% of operating profits to employees, which translates to an extra $476,000 per employee this year.

Read our story about how chip workers like Baek have become the most sought-after bachelors and bachelorettes in South Korea .

—Michelle Kim

This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

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

1 The US government has just banned Roombas It’s not just Chinese humanoids—robot vacuum cleaners are included in a new FCC ban too. ( The Verge $) + Who wins and who loses from the ban on foreign robots? ( Ars Technica ) + China says it will retaliate. ( CNBC ) 2 The ongoing fires in Europe are breaking modern records And there’s likely even more destruction coming. ( NYT $) + Thousands of people have just been evacuated on the Greek island of Crete. ( BBC ) 3 Google DeepMind has dismantled its Nobel-winning AlphaFold team It reflects a broader industry move away from specialist tools towards more general, AI-powered agents for science. ( FT $) + Google I/O showed how the path for AI-driven science is shifting. ( MIT Technology Review ) 4 Data centers are easy to build. To run? Not so much For that, you need time and money to invest in grid infrastructure, like new transmission lines. ( 404 Media $) + The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags. ( MIT Technology Review ) + AI companies are hiring thousands of electricians and carpenters to get data centers up and running. ( NYT $) 5 DoorDash plans to launch a drone delivery program It’ll be a while before we get to make use of it, though. ( TechCrunch ) + The US may be heading toward a drone-filled future . ( MIT Technology Review ) 6 AI is accelerating global digital inequality Money, infrastructure and talent are pooling in a relatively small number of places. ( IEEE Spectrum ) 7 Quantum computers promise mathematical superpowers And it feels like we’re inching closer to a commercial machine. ( The Economist $) + PsiQuantum has a plan to make a massive quantum computer out of light. ( MIT Technology Review )

8 Anxious Chinese students are using AI for university admissions It’s common to pay private coaches to help navigate this high-stakes decision, but AI companies now offer the service for free. ( Rest of World ) + How DeepSeek became a fortune teller for China’s youth. ( MIT Technology Review ) 9 Boomers keep giving their grandkids AI-generated slop books And it’s driving millennial parents mad. ( Wired $) 10 Minecraft is helping children to redesign their cities It just goes to show how creativity can still flourish, even amid war. ( NYT $)

Quote of the day

“I want to see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it.”

—Ray Slater Berry, founder of marketing agency dslx, tells  Wired  why he’s drawn to text written by humans.

One More Thing

HELSING

Europe’s drone-filled vision for the future of war

Europe has started testing an invisible automated intelligence network, known as a “digital targeting web,” conceived under the name Project ASGARD. Its purpose is to connect everything that looks for targets—“sensors,” in military lingo—and everything that fires on them (“shooters”) to a single, shared wireless electronic brain.

Eighty years after total war last transformed the continent, the system signals a brutal new calculus of European defense. “The Russians are knocking on the door,” says Sven Weizenegger, the head of the German military’s Cyber Innovation Hub.

Read our story about how strategists and policymakers are counting on increasingly automated battlefield gadgetry to keep them from bursting through.

—Arthur Holland Michel

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 .)

+ Love  this story  about the studio accident that birthed the 1980s ‘gated reverb’ drum sound. +  Wewere.online  turns solitary web browsing into a multiplayer experience by rendering live cursor trails of other visitors. + Imagine how relaxed you’d get staying in  this coastal cabin  in Tasmania.  + Why do cats always  land on their feet ? It’s thanks to their amazingly flexible spines.