AI Reading for Wednesday May 21

Shock and Awe and Google I/O

Lot of news, especially out of Google I/O, my reading queue is full and I can’t even skim all of it, will take me days to catch up. Maybe weeks.

The 15 biggest announcements at Google I/O 2025 - The Verge

Google's shock-and-awe I/O 2025 brings features OpenAI doesn't match yet - BGR

Gemini 2.5: Our most intelligent models are getting even better, including Deep Think, which does good on math and complex coding - Google

Gemini Diffusion (research preview) moves beyond transformers to text diffusion, offering better cost-performance - Google

Fuel your creativity with new generative media models and tools. From Imagen 4 and Veo 3 to Flow, try these new generative media tools today. - Google

This is bananas, does video + audio in one shot. You can make AI images and tell the AI to edit them somewhat more reliably, then make videos based on them, then use AI to splice them together into a coherent video. Sora eat your heart out.

Some examples - Xitter (you gotta check this out)

See also

Learn in newer, deeper ways with LearnLM in Gemini - Google

Our vision for building a universal AI assistant - Google

Details on $250/month Google AI Ultra. - Google

Google rolls out Project Mariner, its web-browsing AI agent - TechCrunch

Google Sees Smart Glasses as the 'Next Frontier' for AI. Working with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster - CNET

Glassholes are back! We tried on Google’s prototype AI smart glasses - The Verge

Google announces a 3D Zoom, I mean Google Meet - CNET

Google Meet can translate what you say into other languages contemporaneously, near real-time - The Verge

Google will integrate Gemini chat UX widgets into Chrome - The Verge

Google made an AI coding tool specifically for UI design - The Verge

Google’s Jules aims to out-code Codex in battle for the AI developer stack - VentureBeat

Gmail’s smart replies will use AI to pull context from your inbox and Drive - The Verge

Use Google AI to Virtually Try on Clothes From Your Phone - Lifehacker

A 20-video playlist -YouTube

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Google cofounder Sergey Brin shares why he's back at the company 'pretty much every day now' to work on AI - Business Insider

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OpenAI, Google, xAI battle for superstar AI talent, shelling out millions - Yahoo Finance

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Emily Chang: Inside OpenAI's Stargate Megafactory with Sam Altman - YouTube

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The Time Sam Altman Asked for a Countersurveillance Audit of OpenAI. - WIRED

Skimming it (can't even keep up any more) Dario Amodei’s AI safety team thought Sam Altman had made undisclosed promises to Microsoft, questioned Altman’s honesty, prompting Altman to request a countersurveillance audit of OpenAI. Sounds bad?

Can Sam Altman Be Trusted with the Future? - The New Yorker

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How an AI-generated summer reading list got published in major newspapers. Apparently 1 guy wrote a 64-page generic summer insert with no local content that was syndicated to many newspapers, and used a lot of AI. - NPR

Sun-Times statement - Chicago Sun-Times

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AI and the death of social media. With the fraud and the deepfakes and the ease of AI profiling you, potentially getting brigaded or being the story of the day, and just dealing with idiot responses, people don't post publicly like they used to. - Business Insider

More AIs and Fewer People Are Taking Polls and Surveys - Schneier on Security

Will AI Empower the PR Industry or Create Endless Seas of Spam? - The Wall Street Journal

AI re-uses cartoonists’ IP - The Daily Cartoonist

Adverse selection and the death of the public information sphere will be the epitaph of our era.

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Apple to Let Third-Party Developers Use Its AI Models - PYMNTS.com

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AI Voice Agents Are Ready to Take Your Call - The Wall Street Journal

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Search and rescue groups warn that hikers are ending up in need of rescue because they're following the questionable recommendations of an AI chatbot. - Futurism

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Robots are building a 9-story building in Toronto - Canada's National Observer

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Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’. Ouch I used to kind of like him, ex CMU prof who invented CAPTCHA - Fortune

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AI poses a bigger threat to women's work than men's, report says - NBC News

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AI doesn't know 'no' – and that's a huge problem for medical bots. Medical jargon is confusing. - New Scientist

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De Novo Antibody Design Enters the AI Drug Discovery Toolbox - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

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The NYC Algorithm Deciding Which Families Are Under Watch for Child Abuse. How good is it, and what biases does it have? Audits acknowledge potential biases in the data, but claim the tool predicts severe harm more accurately than previous methods. - The Markup

Like everyone's a little racist, every model is a little biased - YouTube

"Whoever thinks an unbiased system to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is nor e'er shall be" - Hacker Noon

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LLM as automated enhanced interrogator, or bastard system administrator from hell - The Register

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AI can't replace developers until it understands office politics - The Register

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I feel like you could probably make an investor questionnaire and use it to drive an automated, regularized portfolio optimization to match their objectives and exclusions, but this isn't it - www.pandora-ai.io

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Microsoft used AI to invent a safer coolant — and dunked a PC in it - PCWorld

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During a session on best security practices, Microsoft’s AI security chief got distracted by protesters, accidentally switched to Teams, revealed confidential messages relating to Walmart on the live stream. - The Verge

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You can now watch the Copilot agent run amok in repos and slowly drive devs insane - reddit

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Musk says robotaxis will be geo-fenced to areas of Austin that they know how to navigate. Also says Tesla won't get a new CEO. - Business Insider

Like they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle?

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls US GPU export bans a disaster, praises Trump - The Register

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China plans mega-constellations of up to 28000 satellites. Gonna get a little crowded up there. - WIRED

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Military use of AI technology needs urgent regulation, UN warns - ABC News

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'Configuration Issue' Allows Civitai Users to AI Generate Nonconsensual Porn Videos. I think it's supposed to be an un- or minimally-moderated marketplace of open source models, which might not work if some input/outputs are federal crimes. - 404 Media

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Actors' union complains about Epic Games cloning Darth Vader : "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" - The Register

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