The Download: fully artificial chicken eggs and why Musk lost
Quick Answer
Colossal Biosciences has developed a fully artificial chicken egg, aiming to resurrect extinct bird species.
Quick Take
Colossal Biosciences has developed a fully artificial chicken egg, aiming to resurrect extinct bird species. Meanwhile, Elon Musk lost a lawsuit against OpenAI regarding misleading information about its nonprofit mission, raising questions about the AI race's future.
Key Points
- Colossal's artificial eggshells are 3D-printed and used to grow chicks.
- Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI was centered on alleged misinformation.
- Google is revamping its search box for the first time in 25 years.
- Samsung workers are planning a strike over AI profit sharing.
- A new White House executive order on AI safety is expected this week.
📖 Reader Mode
~5 min readPlus: Google is changing its search box for the first time in 25 years.
May 20, 2026
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.
Colossal Biosciences is growing chickens in a 3D-printed artificial eggshell
The baby chicks were shifting and starting to pip—or trying to hatch. But not from an egg. Instead, these chickens were growing inside transparent 3D-printed plastic cups at the Dallas headquarters of Colossal Biosciences.
The biotech company yesterday claimed it has developed a “fully artificial egg” as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa.
Some scientists think Colossal is overstating the breakthrough. But the technology may represent an early step toward artificial wombs.
Read the full story on the science and controversy behind the artificial eggshell.
—Antonio Regalado
Inside the Musk v. Altman Trial
Elon Musk has lost his landmark lawsuit against OpenAI, which centered on allegations that its cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman misled him about the company’s nonprofit mission. But what really happened in the courtroom, and what does it mean for the AI race?
AI reporter and attorney Michelle Kim, who covered the trial for MIT Technology Review, joined our editor in chief Mat Honan to unpack it all in an exclusive Roundtables discussion yesterday.
Subscribers can watch the full recording now.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: this scientist rewarmed and studied pieces of his friend’s cryopreserved brain
L. Stephen Coles’s brain sits in a vat at a storage facility in Arizona. It has been held there at a temperature of around −146 degrees °C for over a decade, largely undisturbed. Before he died in 2014, Coles had the brain frozen with an ambitious goal in mind: reanimation.
His friend, cryobiologist Greg Fahy, believes it could be revived one day. But other experts are less optimistic.
Still, Fahy’s research could lead to new ways to study the brain. And using cryopreservation for organ transplantation is becoming a viable reality.
—Jessica Hamzelou
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.
Can AI learn to understand the world?
The limitations of LLMs are pushing AI researchers towards new systems that understand the physical environment: world models. The likes of Google DeepMind, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and Meta’s former Chief AI Scientist, AI Yann LeCun, have brought this technology to the forefront of AI.
To explore where this technology is heading next, MIT Technology Review is hosting an exclusive Roundtables discussion on Thursday, May 21, with editor in chief Mat Honan, senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven, and AI reporter Grace Huckins. Register here to join the session at 19:30 GMT / 2:30 PM ET / 11:30 AM PT.
World 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.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Google is changing its search box for the first time in 25 years
Its AI-powered overhaul centers on an “intelligent search box”. (Wired $)
+ “Information agents” will gather information on a user’s behalf. (TechCrunch)
+ Google, Gemini, and Gmail may one day be a single search box. (The Verge)
+ AI means the end of search as we know it. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Samsung workers plan to strike tomorrow over AI profit sharing
They say that their employer isn’t sharing the rewards of the AI boom. (WSJ $)
+ And want 15% of the company’s annual operating profit. (CNBC)
+ South Korea may invoke emergency powers to stop the strike. (Reuters $)
3 The White House is set to release a new executive order on AI safety
It’s slated to launch this week. (Axios)
+ The order seeks early government access to advanced models. (NYT $)
4 The FBI plans to buy nationwide access to license plate readers
It wants “data in near real time” from cameras across the US. (Ars Technica)
+ The tech could let it track drivers nationwide. (Newsweek)
5 Google will launch a new line of smart glasses this fall
They’re the company’s first attempt since the Google Glass flop. (BBC)
+ Google Gemini will power the interactions with the user. (Guardian)
+ Meanwhile, Anduril and Meta are making smart glasses for warfare. (MIT Technology Review)
6 A new bill in Congress proposes a new annual fee for EVs
It could cost drivers an extra $130 a year. (NYT $)
+ The fee will cover highway maintenance costs. (WSJ $)
7 OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival lab Anthropic
Karpathy was also previously Tesla’s director of AI. (Fortune)
+ He coined the term “vibe coding.” (MIT Technology Review)
8 The fears over Anthropic's Mythos AI model look overstated
Cybersecurity experts say the hacking threat is exaggerated. (Reuters $)
9 Silicon Valley keeps misreading China’s role in tech
Viewing Chinese firms as enemies could do more to hurt than help the US. (Rest of World)
10 A book about AI’s effects on truth contains false quotes created by AI
It’s among a spate of controversies involving AI-generated quotes. (NYT $)
+ Yesterday, a lawyer apologised for including them in a court filing. (Reuters $)
+ A senior journalist was recently suspended for using them. (Guardian)
Quote of the day
“It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism—we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know.”
—Sigrid Rausing, publisher of literary magazine Granta, casts doubts on the authenticity of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winners, Wired reports.
One More Thing
SELMAN DESIGN
Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?
Max was only a toddler when his parents noticed there was “something different” about the way he moved. He was slower than other kids his age, and he struggled to jump. He couldn’t run. A genetic test confirmed their fears: Max had Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Desperate to slow its progression, Max's parents enrolled him in an experimental gene therapy trial. The FDA had approved the medicine on weak evidence—a move that has become increasingly common.
We urgently need to question how these decisions are made. Who should have access to experimental therapies? And who should get to decide?
Deep Dive
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