—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 handbook, finding a YouTube tutorial, and even calling an area retailer to ask a couple of half, all with minimal human nudging. Such capabilities might 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 accomplished.
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 total story.
Google’s electrical energy demand is skyrocketing
We received two huge 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 reveals that its power use from knowledge facilities has doubled since 2020.
Taken collectively, these two bits of reports provide a captivating take a look at simply how desperately huge tech corporations are attempting to find 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 Expertise Evaluation’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 technique to energy the AI growth, take a look at Casey’s latest article, which is a part of Energy Hungry: AI and our power future—our new collection shining a light-weight on the power calls for and carbon prices of the bogus intelligence revolution. You’ll be able to check out the remainder of the bundle right here.
