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.

When Shubnam saw an Instagram video of a Delhi protest they had attended, they realized a content creator wearing Meta smart glasses had recorded them surreptitiously. The mocking reel drew millions of views, along with transphobic abuse and AI-generated memes.

Experts warn that many others will experience similar ordeals as smart glasses go mainstream. The risks are particularly acute in India, where covert recording and the circulation of images without consent are already pervasive.

The bigger issue is that the smart glasses aren’t just being used to turn ordinary people into targets of viral “pranks.” They’re also becoming a tool of police surveillance.

Here’s why smart glasses are creating new privacy risks in India.

When Jessica Wachter, a University of Pennsylvania finance professor, wanted to assess AI’s impact on the economy over the next few years, she started with a simple fact: a handful of so-called hyperscalers are investing huge amounts of money to build AI data centers.

Instead of trying to predict how widely deployed AI models will be, Wachter asked how fast the hyperscalers’ earnings will need to grow to justify their spending through 2027, when expenditures are expected to reach nearly $1.1 trillion.

The results are eye-opening. AI companies will need to achieve an extraordinary increase in productivity just to break even by 2030.

This is our latest story to become an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts .

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