Google CEO says more than 25% of new Google code is generated by AI
Benji Edwards | Ars Technica
“We’ve always used tools to create new things, and developers are continuing that tradition using AI. On Tuesday, Google’s CEO said AI systems now generate more than a quarter of the new code for the company’s products, with human programmers overseeing computer-generated contributions. The statement released during Google’s Q3 2024 earnings call shows that AI tools are already having a significant impact on software development.”
Waymo raises $5.6 billion from outside investors
Eli Tan | new york times
“Waymo has raised $5.6 billion from outside investors as it seeks to ramp up its autonomous robotaxi fleet and expand into new cities. This is the largest fund to date. …After Waymo experienced its first commercial success, new funding came into play. Robotaxis are currently completing more than 100,000 rides per week in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, doubling that number in May, and will be operating in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta by 2025 through a partnership with Uber. .”
A place to get a glimpse into the future of AI robots
Will Knight | mad
“Physical Intelligence, also known as PI or π, was founded earlier this year by several prominent robotics researchers to pursue new robotics approaches inspired by breakthroughs in AI language capabilities. ‘The amount of data we are training on is far greater than any robot model ever created,’ said Sergey Levine, co-founder of Physical Intelligence and associate professor at UC Berkeley.
Tom Clines | IEEE spectrum
“The PPPL team invented this fusion reactor, completed last year, using primarily off-the-shelf components. Its core is a glass vacuum chamber surrounded by a 3D printed nylon shell that holds 9,920 meticulously placed permanent rare earth magnets. “Sixteen copper coil electromagnets, resembling giant pineapple slices, crisscross the shell.”
Wall Street Giants Invest $50 Billion in AI and Power Projects
Catherine Blunt | wall street journal
“This investment addresses AI’s massive energy demands and the increasing stress that AI is placing on the U.S. power grid. …The companies say they are now working with large technology companies to accelerate access to electricity, which has been constrained in some parts of the U.S. as data center developers compete for power sources and access to the grid. ‘The capital needs are enormous, and one of the biggest bottlenecks (perhaps the bottleneck) is electricity availability,’ said Doug Kimmelman, ECP founder and senior partner.
Ted C. Fishman | IEEE spectrum
“To the casual observer, the data industry may seem intangible, its products made of weightless pieces. But what struck me most while standing next to the busy construction site for DataBank’s ATL4 is the sheer volume of material – mainly concrete – that provides the shape of the Goliath that will house, protect, power and cool the AI hardware. Big data is something big and specific. And that causes big problems.”
Waymo explores using Google’s Gemini to train Robotaxis
Andrew J. Hawkins | The Verge
“Waymo has long touted its relationship with Google’s DeepMind and decades of AI research as a strategic advantage over its competitors in the autonomous driving space. Now, the Alphabet-owned company is going one step further by developing a new training model for robotaxi built on Google’s multimodal large language model (MLLM) Gemini.”
SpaceX has captured its massive rocket. So what’s next?
Eric Berger | Ars Technica
“For NASA’s Artemis program, our best attempt to bring together the milestones and key goals of the Starship program over the next few years, before unlocking the ability to land humans on the Moon and launch flight demonstration missions to Mars, is to: It’s the same. Just for fun, I’ve also included estimated dates for each milestone. “This is our best guess and we are almost certainly wrong.”
Meet the first star system that ‘solves’ the three-body problem
Ethan Siegel | Big Think
“It’s easy to have a planet orbiting a single star. In a double star system, it may orbit close to one star or far from both stars. Although this configuration is stable, adding a third star to the mix was thought to destabilize planet formation because mutual gravitational interactions would eventually lead to ejection. That wisdom was thrown out the window with the discovery of GW Orionis, which boasts several massive dust rings and possibly more planets. “All orbit three stars simultaneously.”
Image credit: David Clode on Unsplash
