According to MIT Technology Review, their most popular stories of 2025 centered on the hard numbers behind AI’s expansion and frontier biotech ethics. Senior reporters James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart published a groundbreaking analysis quantifying AI’s energy and water use down to a single query, as hundreds of millions adopted generative AI. Another top piece was senior reporter Jessica Hamzelou’s dive into surprising new research on vitamin D’s effects beyond bone health, including on immunity and the heart. A 2024 essay by senior editor Will Douglas Heaven on why no one can agree on a definition for AI also saw massive readership this year. Finally, a Stanford University op-ed arguing for the creation of non-sentient, ethically sourced human “bodyoids” for medical testing resonated strongly with readers.
The AI Energy Reckoning
That story on AI’s energy footprint? It clearly hit a nerve. And it’s about time. For years, we’ve talked about AI’s potential in abstract, almost magical terms. But in 2025, with the tech fully embedded in daily life, people started asking the practical, gritty questions: What’s this actually costing the planet? The MIT Tech Review team did the unglamorous work of tracing the resource trail from a simple query back through the massive, water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers. Here’s the thing: when you multiply one query’s footprint by billions per day, the scale becomes almost incomprehensible. It’s the kind of reporting that moves the conversation from “isn’t AI cool?” to “can our infrastructure and climate goals even handle this?”
Vitamin D and “Bodyoid” Futures
The other big trend in the top reads is a fascination with our own biology—both optimizing it and, well, manufacturing parts of it. The vitamin D piece is classic science reporting: taking something we all vaguely know is “good for us” and revealing the complex, ongoing science behind it. It’s personal and immediately relevant. But the “bodyoid” op-ed is on another level entirely. It’s one of those ideas that sounds like science fiction until you realize the underlying biotech, like synthetic embryos and organoids, is basically already here. The proposal is to grow living, biological human bodies that are essentially empty shells—no brain, no consciousness, no pain. The ethical hurdles are, obviously, colossal. But you can see why it captivated readers. It forces you to ask: What *is* a person? And if we could eliminate suffering in medical testing and organ sourcing, would the ends justify these profoundly unsettling means?
Why Defining AI Matters
It’s fascinating that Will Douglas Heaven’s “What is AI?” essay from 2024 kept pulling in readers this year. I think that’s a symptom of AI fatigue mixed with genuine confusion. When a term is applied to everything from your email spam filter to a system that can generate a feature film, the word loses all meaning. That ambiguity isn’t just academic. It has real consequences for regulation, public understanding, and hype. If we can’t agree on what it is, how can we possibly govern it wisely or discuss its risks coherently? The enduring popularity of this piece suggests people are craving that foundational clarity amidst the noise.
The Takeaway: Tech’s Tangible Cost
So what’s the through-line here? Look, the fluffy, futuristic hype stories didn’t make the top cut. Readers in 2025 were drawn to work that dealt with concrete impacts and profound ethical dilemmas. They wanted the math on AI’s physical footprint and the deep dive into the ethics of making synthetic human matter. There’s a growing demand for journalism that treats powerful technologies not as inevitabilities, but as choices with measurable costs and consequences. That’s a healthy sign. Basically, the audience is saying: Show me the numbers, and make me think about the trade-offs. That’s a much harder job than just writing about the next shiny product launch, but it’s clearly the work that matters most right now.
