Through the Bing APIs, Microsoft helped other search engines save on the cost and time of crawling billions of web pages and developing a searchable index of all available content. The tools allowed them to automatically submit queries and get back results that they could present to their own users …
Read More »The Reason Murderbot’s Tone Feels Off
A confession: This dispatch will not be coming to you from one of the long-devout Martha Wells faithful. I’m a convert, a curious reader who turned to Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series after reading my colleague Meghan Herbst’s fantastic 2024 profile of the author, which left me questioning who would …
Read More »Google DeepMind’s AI Agent Dreams Up Algorithms Beyond Human Expertise
A key question in artificial intelligence is how often models go beyond just regurgitating and remixing what they have learned and produce truly novel ideas or insights. A new project from Google DeepMind shows that with a few clever tweaks these models can at least surpass human expertise designing certain …
Read More »Google’s Advanced Protection for Vulnerable Users Comes to Android
With the rise of mercenary spyware and other targeted threats, tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have spent the last few years trying to figure out how to protect the digital lives of their most at-risk, vulnerable users around the world. On mobile, the launch of Apple’s iOS Lockdown …
Read More »Android 16 Is Getting a Facelift, and Gemini Is Rolling Onto More Google Platforms
Google I/O is on May 20, but the annual developer conference will be so jam-packed with announcements that Google is opening the valve to release some news early. Today, during a virtual event dubbed The Android Show, the company showed off several features coming to the Android 16, starting with …
Read More »Google Is Using On-Device AI to Spot Scam Texts and Investment Fraud
Digital scammers have never been so successful. Last year Americans lost $16.6 billion to online crimes, with almost 200,000 people reporting scams like phishing and spoofing to the FBI. More than $470 million was stolen in scams that started with a text message last year, according to the Federal Trade …
Read More »Singapore’s Vision for AI Safety Bridges the US-China Divide
The government of Singapore released a blueprint today for global collaboration on artificial intelligence safety following a meeting of AI researchers from the US, China, and Europe. The document lays out a shared vision for working on AI safety through international cooperation rather than competition. “Singapore is one of the …
Read More »OpenAI and the FDA Are Holding Talks About Using AI In Drug Evaluation
The Food and Drug Administration has been meeting with OpenAI to discuss the agency’s use of AI, according to sources with knowledge of the meetings. The meetings appear to be part of a broader effort at the FDA to use this technology to speed up the drug approval process. “Why …
Read More »Amazon Has Made a Robot With a Sense of Touch
Amazon has developed a new warehouse robot that uses touch to rummage around shelves to find the right product to ship to customers. The robot, called Vulcan, is a meaningful step towards making robots less sausage-fingered compared to human beings. Honing robots’ tactile abilities further may allow them to take …
Read More »OpenAI Backs Down on Restructuring Amid Pushback
The newly proposed structure keeps the nonprofit in control, though Monday’s blog post didn’t go into detail about what exactly that will look like. The company specified that its current for-profit subsidiary will become a public benefit corporation (PBC), which is how its competitors Anthropic and xAI are set up. …
Read More »