—Yoav Shoham is a professor emeritus at Stanford College and cofounder of AI21 Labs.
At Google’s I/O 2025 occasion in Might, the corporate confirmed off a digital assistant that didn’t simply reply questions; it helped work on a bicycle restore by discovering an identical person guide, finding a YouTube tutorial, and even calling a neighborhood retailer to ask a few half, all with minimal human nudging. Such capabilities may quickly prolong far outdoors the Google ecosystem.
The imaginative and prescient is thrilling: Clever software program brokers that act like digital coworkers, reserving your flights, rescheduling conferences, submitting bills, and speaking to one another behind the scenes to get issues achieved.
But when we’re not cautious, we’re going to derail the entire concept earlier than it has an opportunity to ship actual advantages. As with many tech tendencies, there’s a threat of hype racing forward of actuality. And when expectations get out of hand, a backlash isn’t far behind. Learn the complete story.
Google’s electrical energy demand is skyrocketing
We obtained two large items of power information from Google this week. The corporate introduced that it’s signed an settlement to buy electrical energy from a fusion firm’s forthcoming first energy plant. Google additionally launched its newest environmental report, which exhibits that its power use from knowledge facilities has doubled since 2020.
Taken collectively, these two bits of stories supply an interesting have a look at simply how desperately large tech firms are looking for clear electrical energy to energy their knowledge facilities as power demand and emissions balloon within the age of AI. In fact, we don’t know precisely how a lot of this air pollution is attributable to AI as a result of Google doesn’t break that out. (Additionally an issue!) So, what’s subsequent and what does this all imply?
—Casey Crownhart
This text is from The Spark, MIT Know-how Evaluate’s weekly local weather e-newsletter. To obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday, join right here.
+ To learn extra about whether or not nuclear power is mostly a viable strategy to energy the AI growth, take a look at Casey’s current article, which is a part of Energy Hungry: AI and our power future—our new sequence shining a light-weight on the power calls for and carbon prices of the substitute intelligence revolution. You’ll be able to check out the remainder of the bundle right here.
