The Download: coding’s future, the ‘Steroid Olympics,’ and AI-driven science

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['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.\n\n', 'At Anthropic’s developer event in London this week, Code with Claude, attendees were asked if they’d shipped code written entirely by Claude. Almost half the room raised their hands. Many admitted they hadn’t even read the code before pushing it live.\n\nAs tools like Claude Code get better, more and more developers are happy to hand their work off to AI.

Anthropic says it wants to push automation as far as it will go. But not everyone is convinced that’s the right approach.\n\nRead the full story on how AI is reshaping coding for good.\n\n', 'This Sunday, 42 athletes will gather in Las Vegas for the inaugural Enhanced Games, a controversial sporting competition that allows the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The goal?

To “push the boundaries of human performance.”\n\nThe event embodies a zeitgeist of peptide-crazed looksmaxxing, where consumers are encouraged to get thinner than ever, optimize for longevity, and have their “best baby.” In 2026, if you’re not enhancing, what are you even doing?\n\nFind out how the competition reflects our enhancement-obsessed era.\n\nThis story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.\n\n', 'During Tuesday’s Google I/O keynote, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, proclaimed that we are “standing in the foothills of the singularity.” But what struck me as I listened in the audience was the context in which he said those words.\n\nThe contrast reflects two directions for AI in science. One builds specialized systems like WeatherNext for specific problems.

The other pushes toward agentic, LLM-based systems that could eventually execute cutting-edge research projects without human involvement.\n\nThe big scientific announcement at I/O was Gemini for Science, which leans further into this agent-driven future. It can still call on specialized systems, but Google appears to be transitioning away from them.\n\nHere’s how the shift could affect science.\n\n', 'Many leading AI researchers have turned their attention to a new kind of system that understands the physical environment: world models.\n\nBacked by researchers at Google DeepMind, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and Meta’s former Chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, the idea is gaining serious momentum. Could it change how AI understands reality?\n\nMIT Technology Review editor in chief Mat Honan, senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven, and AI reporter Grace Huckins unpacked it all in an exclusive Roundtables discussion yesterday.\n\nSubscribers can watch the full recording now.\n\nWorld models are also one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now, our list of what’s really worth your attention in the busy, buzzy world of AI.\n\n']