
Google to discount cloud computing services for US government: Report
will heavily discount cloud computing services for the United States government, in a deal that could be finalised within weeks, the Financial Times reported on Friday, amid President Donald Trump's efforts to implement sweeping measures to minimize federal spending.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that
Oracle
will offer federal agencies a 75% discount on its license-based software and a "substantial" discount on its cloud service through the end of November.
Google's cloud contract is likely "to land in a similar spot", the Financial Times said, citing a senior official at the General Services Administration, adding that equivalent discounts from Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services are expected to follow soon.
"Every single of those companies is totally bought in, they understand the mission," the senior official told the newspaper. "We will get there with all four players."
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Google and the General Services Administration did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment outside regular business hours.
In April, Google agreed to offer a 71% discount till September 30 to U.S. federal agencies for its business apps package that could generate up to $2 billion in cost savings if there is government-wide adoption.
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Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
ChatGPT making us dumb & dumber, but we can still come out wiser
Claude Shannon, one of the fathers of AI, once wrote rather disparagingly: 'I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines.' As we enter the age of AI — arguably, the most powerful technology of our times — many of us fear that this prophecy is coming true. Powerful AI models like ChatGPT can create complex essays, poetry and pictures; Google's Veo stitches together cinema-quality videos; Deep Research agents produce research reports at the drop of a prompt. Our innate human abilities of thinking, creating, and reasoning seem to be now duplicated, sometimes surpassed, by AI. This seemed to be confirmed by a recent — and quite disturbing — MIT Media Lab study, 'Your Brain on ChatGPT'. It suggested that while AI tools like ChatGPT help us write faster, they may be making our minds slower. Through a four-month meticulously executed experiment with 54 participants, researchers found that those who used ChatGPT for essay writing exhibited up to 55% lower brain activity, as measured by EEG signals, compared to those who wrote without assistance. If this was not troubling enough, in a later session where ChatGPT users were asked to write unaided, their brains remained less engaged than people without AI ('brain-only' participants, as the study quaintly labelled them). Memory also suffered — only 20% could recall what they had written, and 16% even denied authorship of their own text! The message seemed to be clear: outsourcing thinking to machines may be efficient, but it risks undermining our capacity for deep thought, retention, and ownership of ideas. Technology has always changed us, and we have seen this story many times before. There was a time when you remembered everyone's phone numbers, now you can barely recall your family's, if that. You remembered roads, lanes and routes; if you did not, you consulted a paper map or asked someone. Today, Google and other map apps do that work for us. Facebook reminds us of people's birthdays; email answers suggest themselves, sparing us of even that little effort of thinking. When autonomous cars arrive, will we even remember how to drive or just loll around in our seats as it takes us to our destination? Jonathan Haidt, in his 'The Anxious Generation,' points out how smartphones radically reshaped childhood. Unstructured outdoor play gave way to scrolling, and social bonds turned into notifications. Teen anxiety, loneliness, and attention deficits all surged. From calculators diminishing our mental arithmetic, to GPS weakening our spatial memory, every tool we invent alters us — subtly or drastically. 'Do we shape our tools, or do our tools shape us?' is a quote commonly misattributed to Marshall McLuhan but this question is hauntingly relevant in the age of AI. If we let machines do the thinking, what happens to our human capacity to think, reflect, reason, and learn? This is especially troubling for children, and more so in India. For one, India has the highest usage of ChatGPT globally. Most of it is by children and young adults, who are turning into passive consumers of AI-generated knowledge. Imagine a 16-year-old using ChatGPT to write a history essay. The output might be near-perfect, but what has she actually learned? The MIT study suggests — very little. Without effortful recall or critical thinking, she might not retain concepts, nor build the muscle of articulation. With exams still based on memory and original expression, and careers requiring problem-solving, this is a silent but real risk. The real questions, however, are not whether the study is correct or is exaggerating, or whether AI is making us dumber or not, but what can we do about it. 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Above all, make everyone AI literate: Much like reading, writing, and arithmetic were foundational in the digital age, knowing how to use AI wisely is the new essential skill of our time. AI literacy is more than just knowing prompts. It means understanding when to use AI, and when not to; how to verify AI output for accuracy, bias, and logic; how to collaborate with AI without losing your own voice, and how to maintain cognitive and ethical agency in the age of intelligent machines. Just as we once taught 'reading, writing, adding, multiplying,' we must now teach 'thinking, prompting, questioning, verifying.' History shows that humans adapt. The printing press did not destroy memory; calculators did not end arithmetic; smartphones did not abolish communication. We evolved with them—sometimes clumsily, but always creatively. Today, with AI, the challenge is deeper because it imitates human cognition. In fact, as AI challenges us with higher levels of creativity and cognition, human intelligence and connection will become even more prized. Take chess: a computer defeated Gary Kasparov in chess back in 1997; since then, a computer or AI can defeat any chess champion hundred times out of hundred. But human 'brains-only' chess has become much more popular now, as millions follow D Gukesh's encounters with Magnus Carlsen. So, if we cultivate AI literacy and have the right guardrails in place; if we teach ourselves and our children to think with AI but not through it, we can come out wiser, not weaker. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.

The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
EU says it still wants U.S. trade deal, will defend interests
The European Union said on Saturday (July 12, 2025) it was ready to retaliate to defend its interests if the United States pressed ahead with imposing a 30% tariff on European goods from August 1. U.S. President Donald Trump latest salvo surprised the bloc, the United States' largest trading partner, which had hoped to avoid an escalating trade war after intense negotiations and increasingly warm words from the White House. Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU executive which handles trade policy for the 27 member states, said the bloc was ready to keep working towards an agreement before August 1, but was willing to stand firm. "We will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required," she said of possible retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods entering Europe. EU ambassadors will discuss next steps on Sunday, before trade ministers meet in Brussels on Monday for an extraordinary meeting. They will need to decide whether to impose tariffs on 21 billion euros of U.S. imports in retaliation against separate U.S. tariffs against steel and aluminium, or extend a suspension which lasts until the end of Monday. The EU has so far held back from retaliating against the U.S., although it has readied two packages that could hit a combined 93 billion euros of U.S. goods European capitals swiftly backed von der Leyen's position. German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche called for a "pragmatic outcome to the negotiations". Trump's proposed tariffs "would hit European exporting companies hard. At the same time, they would also have a strong impact on the economy and consumers on the other side of the Atlantic," she said. French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that the European Commission needed more than ever to "assert the Union's determination to defend European interests resolutely". Retaliation might need to include so-called anti-coercion instruments if Trump did not back down, Macron said. The tool, drawn up during Trump's first term and used against China, allows the EU to go beyond traditional tariffs on goods and impose restrictions on trade in services, if it deems that a country is using tariffs to force a change in policy. Spain's Economy Ministry backed further negotiations but added that Spain and others in the EU were ready to take "proportionate countermeasures if necessary". Trump has periodically railed against the European Union, saying in February it was "formed to screw the United States". His biggest grievance is the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with the EU, which in 2024 amounted to $235 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The EU has repeatedly pointed to a U.S. surplus in services, arguing it in part redresses the balance. Retaliation Combining goods, services and investment, the EU and the United States are each other's largest trading partners by far. The American Chamber of Commerce to the EU said in March the trade dispute could jeopardise $9.5 trillion of business in the world's most important commercial relationship. Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament's trade committee said he was now convinced the first stage of countermeasures should come into force on Monday, followed quickly by the second package. Trump has said he would mirror any retaliatory moves. Still, Trump has repeatedly announced sweeping tariffs in recent months, only to row back or suspend them before his own self-imposed deadlines. The expectation that he will again relent has led to increasingly muted responses on financial markets, which have recovered since plunging after his initial "Liberation Day" announcement of big global tariffs in April. Three EU officials who spoke on condition on anonymity said they saw Trump's latest threats as a negotiating ploy. Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING, said Trump's move suggested that months of negotiations remained deadlocked and that the situation was inching towards a make-or-break moment for the transatlantic trade relationship. "The EU will now have to decide whether to budge or to play hardball," he said. "This will bring market volatility and even more uncertainty." Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank, noted that the brunt of the U.S. tariffs, if implemented, would be felt by U.S. consumers. However, there would also be clear repercussions for the euro area economy, already struggling with weak growth. The European Central Bank had used a 10% tariff on EU exports to the United States as the baseline in its latest economic projections, which put output growth in the euro area at 0.9% this year, 1.1% in 2026 and 1.3% in 2027. It said a 20% U.S. tariff would curb growth by 1 percentage point over the same period and also pull down inflation to 1.8% in 2027, from 2.0% in the baseline scenario. It did not even offer an estimate for the possibility of a 30% tariff.


India.com
3 hours ago
- India.com
Rs 86000000 in salary: Google, Meta, and OpenAI ready to offer huge money for people with talent in...
Rs 86000000 in salary: Google, Meta, and OpenAI ready to offer huge money for people with talent in… Top Tier Talent Salary: In order to hire special talents, major companies around the world are making changes in their salary structure. Tech giant Google has also made major changes in the way the company pays salaries. It has made changes in the salary to attract good and talented employees. These moves are necessary to stay ahead in the ongoing competition in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Not only Google and Meta but also OpenAI are also offering huge salary packages to talented employees. As per a report by Business Insider, citing US Department of Labour documents, software engineers at Google can get a basic salary of USD34,0000 (approx Rs 3 crore). Apart from the basic salary, the company will also give its shares and bonuses, further increasing the total income. Notably, positions such as Product managers, AI researchers and people working in other technical positions are getting impressive salary packages. Meta Is Offering Huge Salary Google is currently facing a very tough competition from other tech giants such as Meta and OpenAI. These companies are also luring good talents in AI by offering them huge salaries. Meta has also invested huge amount in AI and now hiring AI researchers and engineers to power its Generative AI and Reality Labs division. Meta's significant investment in advanced AI in 2023 is reflected in high salaries for its senior AI researchers, ranging from USD600,000 to USD1 million per anum. The salary also includes bonuses and stock options. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, also offers competitive packages for senior research engineers. These packages range from USD200,000 to USD370,000 in base salary, reaching USD800,000 to USD1 million with equity and profit-sharing incentives. Why Is There A Salary Increase? The tech giants are increasing the salary packages because they want to keep employees who are capable of enhancing large language models, improving generative AI tools, and developing new technologies. According to experts, these high salary packages are not just for new hires but are also to retain good employees in the company.