Can Fried Chicken Help Save the World?
Food was of course a big topic here: It's many people's 'gateway drug' to sustainability, as one clever attendee told me. And I would say that only one thing outshone this subject at the three-day event—which featured topics as diverse as whether we will ever see EV-style planes and what's in store for climate tech investments as covered by Khosla Ventures LLC Founder Vinod Khosla—and that was the one, the only Jane Fonda.
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Gizmodo
18 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Google Neutralizes Its Rivals… For Now
For over two decades, 'Google it' has been the default way to find answers online. Now that dominance is being tested by a new wave of AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and upstarts such as Perplexity, which deliver conversational answers instead of a list of links. These disruptors are being cast as a mortal threat to Google Search, long the undisputed king of the internet. But on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered a powerful counter-narrative, armed with staggering new data that suggests the AI 'threat' is actually making its core product stronger than ever. The story Google is telling is not one of defense, but of offense. Far from cannibalizing its search business, AI is encouraging people to search more, ask new kinds of questions, and engage more deeply with the platform. 'We see AI powering an expansion in how people are searching for and accessing information, unlocking completely new kinds of questions you can ask Google,' Pichai said in remarks for the company's Q2 earnings call. 'Overall queries and commercial queries on Search continued to grow year over year. And our new AI experiences significantly contributed to this increase in usage.' Pichai revealed that the company's new AI features are now driving 'over 10% more queries globally' for the types of searches that show them, a clear sign that AI is expanding the pie, not just slicing it differently. At the heart of Google's strategy is a two-pronged approach designed to serve both casual users and power users simultaneously. The first approach is AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that now appear at the top of many search results. This feature has been rolled out at a massive scale, now serving, Pichai claims, over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories. It's the mainstream integration designed to make everyday search faster and more efficient for the masses. The second axis is AI Mode, an end-to-end conversational search experience for more complex and nuanced questions. While still rolling out, this power-user tool has already attracted, the CEO says, over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. and India. This is Google's direct answer to the advanced capabilities of its new competitors—ChatGPT and Perplexity— offering a space for deeper exploration within Google ecosystem. Is This the End of Google As We Know It? According to Google, this evolution of search is resonating most strongly with the users who will define the next decade of the internet: young people. Pichai emphasized that the growth in new search behaviors, particularly multimodal search—using tools like Google Lens or Circle to Search to ask questions with images—was 'most pronounced among younger users.' By integrating AI in a way that feels intuitive and powerful to a generation that has grown up with visual communication, Google wants to make sure it stays relevant. The ultimate validation of this strategy lies in the numbers. In a direct rebuttal to fears that AI would kill its golden goose, Alphabet reported $54.19 billion in second-quarter search revenue, up 12% year-over-year. The AI-powered experience is proving to be not just engaging, but highly lucrative. Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted during the earnings' call with analysts that advertisers using the company's new AI-powered tools are seeing tangible benefits, with AI Max campaigns delivering '14% more conversions' on average. This proves that a more complex, AI-driven search experience can be even more valuable for advertisers, he claimed. OpenAI's ChatGPT and smaller players like Perplexity AI are winning early adopters who prefer direct, conversational responses over Google's traditional list of blue links. These platforms summarize and synthesize information instantly, bypassing the need to click through multiple sites. This shift threatens Google's core business model: search advertising. A shift from traditional search to AI-generated answers could reshape how people consume information online. Instead of clicking through multiple sources, users may rely on a single AI response, potentially concentrating power in fewer platforms and reducing traffic to independent publishers. For Google, the challenge is to evolve fast enough to keep its users while preserving the revenue streams that make up the bulk of its business. 'We'll focus on the organic experience for the near term,' Pichai told analysts. Google is not simply adding AI to its old search box to keep competitors at bay. It's building an entirely new information engine, one designed to answer questions people never even thought to ask. The AI race has forced Google to evolve fast, and it could make Search more indispensable, and more profitable, than ever. Google wants to stay the gatekeeper of how we access information.
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Travel + Leisure
18 minutes ago
- Travel + Leisure
This New Program Lets You Skip TSA and Customs for Connecting Flights—What to Know
Traveling internationally from Texas just got easier to manage. That's thanks to American Airlines, which became the first carrier in the United States this week to allow travelers flying into the country from London to skip the time-consuming process of having to pick up their luggage and re-check it in order to go through customs when continuing onto another U.S. destination. The pilot program is being conducted at American's hub of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) with flights from London Heathrow Airport (LHR), according to the airline. Best of all, travelers will be able to clear U.S. Customs right at their arrival gate. David Seymour, the chief operating officer at American, called the program "game-changing" and said it was "one of the most forward-thinking enhancements we can bring to international travel—and importantly, to our customers—as it delivers a level of convenience and time-savings that's never been available before to customers connecting from international flights." In the U.S., the new program—dubbed One Stop Security—is being managed by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA). American said it was expected to significantly shorten connection times and make it easier for bags to make it to their final destinations. "It really is a commonsense security approach for us to streamline security from abroad to the United States," TSA Deputy Administrator Adam Stahl said in an interview with FOX News . "It really underscores and piggybacks onto the president's and the administration's golden age of travel. With the new process, if a passenger was flying from LHR to Seattle, for example, with a stop first in Dallas, their bag would be checked all the way through to their final destination. Previously, they would have needed to first pick up their luggage at international baggage claim, go through customs, and then re-check it for the connecting domestic flight. The program has previously been in a testing phase, and was expected to be deployed to additional airports in the future. Travelers looking to speed up the connection process even more should consider flying to the U.S. from an international "preclearance" airport. As the name suggests, passengers at these terminals first clear U.S. Customs before boarding the aircraft and simply walk off the plane when they arrive in the country as travelers on any other domestic flight would. Preclearance is offered in several countries, including in Canada, across the Caribbean, in the United Arab Emirates, and in Ireland, including at the Dublin Airport.
Geek Wire
an hour ago
- Geek Wire
From grief to innovation: Seattle tech vets building personal AI tool with persistent memory and privacy
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Seattle tech and business leader Mary Jesse, CEO of ACME Brains, a new startup developing a personal context engine for AI systems. Mary Jesse couldn't sleep. Grieving after her husband's unexpected death from late-stage cancer, the longtime Seattle business and engineering leader typed three words into ChatGPT: 'I am sad.' The AI's surprisingly compassionate response helped her through that difficult moment, and others that followed, validating her experience and reassuring her that she could get through it. 'It was just really simple,' she recalled. 'But it was so helpful.' It also revealed the popular chatbot's limitations. Jesse found that ChatGPT couldn't easily resurface the context of their past conversations. She worried about the privacy implications, as well. Jesse said she wouldn't normally share such a personal story publicly, but the experience was the basis for what would become her next venture. She and two other tech industry veterans, Alan Caplan and Bob Bergstrom, this week unveiled their new Seattle-based startup, called ACME Brains, which is building what they call a 'personal context engine.' They say the patent-pending AI system will remember key details over time, and give users control over their data. The first product to use the system, currently under development by the startup, is called nexie. It's a personal AI assistant designed to seamlessly resurface information from past conversations, without requiring users to manually search through threads or craft elaborate prompts to maintain continuity over time. Nexie is currently in early development with a working prototype. The company plans to start alpha testing soon, followed by a beta program focused on gathering user feedback prior to a future public launch. The three co-founders bring a broad range of experience to the startup: Jesse, CEO, began her career in the wireless industry, in engineering and leadership roles at McCaw Cellular and AT&T Wireless before co-founding the mobile infrastructure company RadioFrame Networks. She has led and advised early-stage startups and was CEO of MTI, a global provider of smart locks and security systems. Bob Bergstrom, chief scientist. Bergstrom, chief scientist, has worked as both a software engineer and patent attorney for more than four decades. Earlier in his career, he conducted scientific research in x-ray crystallography, and he has since focused on intellectual property strategy and software development. Caplan, COO, was Amazon's first general counsel, starting in its early days after working with Jesse at McCaw Cellular. He led several business units at Amazon, including Kitchen, Payments, and Corporate Development, and went on to hold senior leadership roles at Blue Origin and Vulcan. Alan Caplan, COO. Jesse envisions nexie as everything from a digital journal to a travel companion or even a lightweight system for tracking personal contacts and relationships, depending on a user's needs. The subscription-based service will be available in free and premium versions. It won't rely on advertising or data monetization, a deliberate departure from many consumer tech platforms. While companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are all investing heavily in AI memory features, Jesse said ACME Brains is taking a different approach. Rather than embedding memory within a large language model, its architecture keeps the user's data separate and under their control — seeking to be more efficient and secure. Jesse sees nexie not as a competitor to the big AI platforms and existing LLMs, but as a tool that can enhance them — making their output more useful and meaningful for personal use. Over time, she believes the underlying system ACME Brains is developing could serve as a kind of 'personal credential,' carrying private, user-controlled data and context across AI apps and platforms. The Seattle-based startup has been bootstrapped by its founders so far, with about 11 people working across technology development, marketing, and operations, primarily in a virtual capacity. Jesse said ACME Brains expects a public launch of nexie by late 2025 or early 2026, with sign-ups for future beta testing now available at
