Here’s a nice little distraction from your workday: Head to Google, type in any made-up phrase, add the word “meaning,” and search. Behold! Google’s AI Overviews will not only confirm that your gibberish is a real saying, it will also tell you what it means and how it was derived.Continue Reading
An iPad Instagram app might be on the horizon. According to The Information, a Meta employee claims the long-asked-for app is finally in development, fueled by Meta’s desire to ramp up user activity on Instagram as a whole. Right now, Instagram is available on the iPad, but it’s the iPhoneContinue Reading
Stanford’s report shows Chinese AI is on the rise overall, with models from Chinese companies scoring similar to their US counterparts on the LMSYS benchmark. It notes that China publishes more AI papers and files more AI-related patents than the US, although it does not assess the quality of either.Continue Reading
But more piles of fascinating research are only useful to Google if they generate that most important of outputs: profit. Most customers generally aren’t yet willing to pay for AI features directly, so the company may be looking to sell ads in the Gemini app. That’s a classic strategy forContinue Reading
In sci-fi tales, artificial intelligence often powers all sorts of clever, capable, and occasionally homicidal robots. A revealing limitation of today’s best AI is that, for now, it remains squarely trapped inside the chat window. Google DeepMind signaled a plan to change that today—presumably minus the homicidal part—by announcing aContinue Reading
What a great idea I had for the first Plaintext of 2025. After following the frantic competition between OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic to churn out brainier and deeper “frontier” foundation models, I settled on a thesis about what’s ahead: In the new year, those mighty trailblazers will consume billionsContinue Reading
Google announced Tuesday that it is overhauling the principles governing how it uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company removed language promising not to pursue “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause orContinue Reading
