Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Gemini and the coming age of AI
Google released the first phase of its next-generation AI model, Gemini, today. Gemini reflects years of efforts from inside Google, overseen and driven by its CEO Sundar Pichai. (You can read all about Gemini in our report from Melissa Heikkila and Will Douglas Heaven here.) Pichai, who previously oversaw Chrome and Android, is famously product-obsessed. In his first founder’s letter as CEO in 2016, Pichai predicted that “[w]e will move from mobile first to an AI first world.” In the years since, Pichai has infused AI deeply into all of Google’s products, from Android devices all the way up to […]
Google DeepMind’s new Gemini model looks amazing—but could signal peak AI hype
Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind’s long-rumored response to OpenAI’s GPT-4, has been building for months. Today the company finally revealed what it has been working on in secret all this time. Was the hype justified? Yes—and no. Gemini is Google’s biggest AI launch yet—its push to take on competitors OpenAI and Microsoft in the race for AI supremacy. There is no doubt that the model is best-in-class across a wide range of capabilities—an “everything machine,” as one observer puts it. “The model is innately more capable,” Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, told MIT Technology […]
The Download: AI coding assistants, and China’s app disputes
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. Millions of coders are now using AI assistants. How will that change software? Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told his students they’d no longer be working with Python, one of the most popular entry-level programming languages. Instead, they’d be using an AI tool called Copilot, a turbocharged autocomplete for computer code, to use Rust, a language that was newer, more powerful, and much harder […]
How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made
Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told his students to throw out the course materials he’d given them. Instead of working with Python, one of the most popular entry-level programming languages, the students would now be using Rust, a language that was newer, more powerful, and much harder to learn. Gift, a software developer with 25 years of experience, had only just learned Rust himself. But he was confident his students would be fine with the last-minute switch-up. That’s because they’d also each get a special new […]
Chinese apps are letting public juries settle customer disputes
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Have you ordered food delivery lately? If you have, you probably know that particular feeling of frustration when you have to wait too long for your order or, when you finally receive it, the food isn’t what you asked for. These feelings are then often exacerbated by the difficulty of trying to make things right via app. Meituan, the most popular food delivery app in China, has proposed one solution: inviting ordinary users to serve on “juries” […]
The Download: Big Tech’s AI stranglehold, and gene-editing treatments
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. Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech —By Amba Kak, Sarah Myers West and Meredith Whittaker, members of the AI Now Institute Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the ecosystem around generative AI was vibrant and competitive. But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it poses. […]
Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech
Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the industry around generative AI was a vibrant competitive ecosystem. But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it poses. Put simply, in the context of the current paradigm of building larger- and larger-scale AI systems, there is no AI without Big Tech. With vanishingly few exceptions, every startup, new entrant, and even AI research lab is dependent on these firms. All rely on […]
AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. World leaders are currently in Dubai for the UN COP28 climate talks. As 2023 is set to become the hottest year on record, this year’s meeting is a moment of reckoning for oil and gas companies. There is also renewed focus and enthusiasm on boosting cleantech startups. The stakes could not be higher. But there’s one thing people aren’t talking enough about, and that’s the carbon footprint of AI. One part of the reason is that big tech companies […]
Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison. Worldwide, those emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase from 2022 levels, according to this year’s Global Carbon Budget Report, released today. As delegates gather in Dubai for this year’s UN climate summit, a record-setting year for emissions underscores the need to make dramatic changes, and quickly. “There has been great progress in reducing […]
Capitalizing on machine learning with collaborative, structured enterprise tooling teams
Advances in machine learning (ML) and AI are emerging on a near-daily basis—meaning that industry, academia, government, and society writ large are evolving their understanding of the associated risks and capabilities in real time. As enterprises seek to capitalize on the potential of AI, it’s critical that they develop, maintain, and advance state-of-the-art ML practices and processes that will offer both strong governance and the flexibility to change as the demands of technology requirements, capabilities, and business imperatives change. That’s why it’s critical to have strong ML operations (MLOps) tooling, practices, and teams—those that build and deploy a set of […]