Google Archive

That’s the title of a paper that 404 Media reports was recently published by Alexander Lerchner, a Senior Staff Scientist at Google DeepMind. Regardless of grand pronouncements from folks, including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, about AGI’s potential, the paper states that “phenomenal consciousness” is a physical state, and “not a software artifact that can be accidentally or deliberately created.”

The NYT has a deep dive into the Google co-founder’s hard turn to the right, which is either because he hates the proposed billionaire tax in California or because he’s super into his hardcore MAGA girlfriend. (Or both.) In any case, he’s having “intimate” dinners with Trump — and bringing Sundar Pichai along for the ride.

Eight months after the iOS app launched, Tesla has released an Android version of its Robotaxi app. The service expanded to Houston and Dallas last week, but still seems to only have a small number of vehicles actually on the road.

Initially, Google will invest $10 billion, but could pour up to $30 billion more into Anthropic if it meets certain performance targets, according to Bloomberg.

Android Headlines spotted an unlisted promo video for the I/O pre-show’s second year, since removed from the Android YouTube channel. Apparently the show will stream at 1PM ET on May 12th, a week before I/O on May 19th, and will tee up “one of the biggest years for Android yet.”

That’s “up from 50% last fall,” according to a blog post from Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google recently created a “strike team” to improve its AI models’ coding capabilities and catch up to Anthropic, which as of February writes 70 to 90 percent of its code with Claude Code.

Per 9to5Mac, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian was excited to boast about Gemini’s big new customer. The upgraded Siri is still coming “later this year.”

A new security feature in Chrome Enterprise can help businesses detect and combat “anomalous” activity by AI-powered agents within compromised extensions or online services. Google is rolling out its AI auto browse feature to enterprise customers as well, which can perform multi-step tasks in Chrome on your behalf.

The feature, which first arrived for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in January, lets you use Gmail’s search bar to ask questions about what’s in your inbox. Gmail will then provide an AI-generated summary that draws from the information in your emails.

New AI tools can unlock insights from aerial and satellite images or anchor “imaginative scenes in the real world,” Google says. Pretty niche, but probably useful for urban planners, or putting spaceships in front of New York landmarks.