Negotiations between Google DeepMind and its London-based employees stumbled over the possibility of unionization this week, after initial talks left union representatives feeling they had wasted their time, WIRED has learned. In May, DeepMind employees asked Google to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives. The company later denied that … Read more
Chris Harrison, director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University, doesn’t think the new subscription is to help pay for Meta’s AI spending. “The industry has made tremendous strides, even in the last six months, but certainly in the last 18 months, improving token generation efficiency—running these models much more efficiently,” Harrison says. … Read more
Leah Feiger: Yes. Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, they introduced the Data Center Moratorium Act, which would halt the construction of new AI data centers until there were actual national safeguards. This sounds, in so many ways, like a very baked for left wing issue, but shockingly, this is pretty bipartisan. There … Read more
Backroomsthe recent horror movie mega-hit, is a film replete with ideas about repetition and degradation. Its central theme—the horror of a world that seems to be mindlessly, monstrously, ripping off our own—was regarded in some circles as a critique of generative AI. The idea has clearly struck a nerve. Recently passing $300 million at the … Read more
This is because AI models don’t just need text data to improve; they need diverse inputs in other forms, like audio or video. If Google can gather more data, and more types of data, from its vast array of users, then maybe it could innovate faster than its competitors. Google’s massive user base is spread … Read more
The last time Google released a smart speaker, the world was in the throes of a pandemic. Yes, it’s been six years since the company trotted out a dedicated speaker. However, this newest Google Home Speaker brings a big change with it: The device has been redesigned to showcase the new Gemini assistant instead of … Read more
A local court in Germany has issued a ruling that could reshape the operation of search engines and artificial-intelligence-based chatbots worldwide. The Munich Regional Court preliminarily ruled that Google is liable for a series of false statements generated by its AI Overviews feature, requiring the company to prevent the dissemination of erroneous or inaccurate claims … Read more
Slowly but surely, artificial intelligence is finding its way into sports. The latest venue? This year’s World Cup, where Google will be partnering with the defending champions Argentina to showcase Gemini on and off the pitch. The agreement with the Argentine Football Association (AFA) makes Gemini the main global sponsor of the national team. As … Read more
It’s been 17 years since I sat in on the iconic weekly search quality meeting in the Ouagadougou conference room at Google’s Mountain View campus. That Thursday morning, around three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives sat at a table or sprawled on the floor to discuss why certain search queries or categories didn’t yield … Read more
Leah FeigerYes, definitely. Brian Barrett: Delightful. OpenClaw, a little agent that can just run autonomously, has access to all your stuff. Gemini Spark is Google’s answer to OpenClaw. It’s the same sort of autonomous assistant that can do all the things, but because it’s Google, it has access to everything that you do on Google … Read more