Latest news with #Google-backed
CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Middle East is becoming a leader in tech investment: Constellation Research
Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research, discusses the reports that Google-backed artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is looking to raise funds from the Middle East.
New York Post
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
An AI founder spent $38.2M for a Florida penthouse — because he predicts values will soar in the future
Daniel Nadler, founder of the Google-backed medical AI company OpenEvidence, has purchased a $38.2 million triplex penthouse at the Surf Club, Four Seasons Private Residences in Surfside, Florida, marking his first real-estate acquisition in the US. The deal closed off-market, with Nadler paying cash for the fully furnished, oceanfront residence, according to the Wall Street Journal. The roughly 6,000-square-foot home includes five bedrooms, some 2,000 square feet of terrace space and a rooftop deck with an infinity-edge pool overlooking the Atlantic. 8 Daniel Nadler, the 42-year-old tech entrepreneur behind Google-backed medical AI startup OpenEvidence, has paid $38.2 million in cash for a triplex penthouse at the Surf Club, Four Seasons Private Residences in Surfside, Florida. dbox 8 Previously living in the hotel to simplify his life while building his $3.5 billion company, Nadler was drawn to the idea of a permanent residence there after learning units were for sale. The development, as seen in this rendering, offers posh settings. The Four Seasons 'It actually just feels almost like one of those Venetian palazzos, but in the sky,' Nadler told the Journal. The seller, an entity tied to Claire and Anthony Florence, had acquired the property for $29.35 million in 2022, according to public records. They could not be reached for comment. Ximena Penuela of Fort Realty handled both sides of the transaction. Nadler, 42, moved to Miami earlier this year and had been staying at the adjoining Four Seasons Hotel, which made its heralded opening there less than a decade ago. 'I didn't want the overhead of dealing with houses and all of the stuff that comes with houses,' he said. 'If I could wake up at 4 a.m. and just order room service — this is so perfect.' 8 The roughly 6,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home — with 2,000 square feet of terraces and a rooftop infinity pool — wasn't publicly listed when he snapped it up. But as this rendering shows, residents at the development live quite large. CHRISTIAN HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY 8 Calling it 'a Venetian palazzo in the sky,' Nadler said he sees the property appreciating significantly. dbox 8 Nadler bought the residence, filled with amenities, from Claire and Anthony Florence, who had purchased it for $29.35 million in 2022. dbox The idea of living in a hotel, he added, was partly inspired by inventor Nikola Tesla, who spent his final years residing in a New York hotel. 'It sounds completely insane, but there's precedent,' Nadler said. The penthouse was not publicly listed when it caught his attention, but Nadler said he was eager to move quickly. 'I wanted to pounce on it,' he said, believing the property will appreciate substantially. 'Whatever I paid, I think it will be double that in five years.' 8 Originally from Canada, Nadler also co-founded Kensho Technologies, which sold for $550 million in 2018. Daniel Nadler/LinkedIn 8 Nadler sees Miami's business-friendly climate and hotel-like amenities — including room service — as key drivers of the market. CHRISTIAN HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY 8 The deal marks his first US real estate purchase, and he stands to get quite the treat. As for negotiations, Nadler said there were none. 'He said that's what he wanted, and I said OK.' Originally from Canada — as is the Four Seasons brand — Nadler co-founded Kensho Technologies, which sold for $550 million in 2018. His current venture, OpenEvidence, is valued at $3.5 billion. OpenEvidence was created to help physicians efficiently sort through a copious amount of medical research information. Nadler said he was drawn to Florida's pro-business climate and is bullish on the Miami market, which he believes will be reflected in future property values.
Indian Express
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Elon Musk's xAI rolls out ‘AI Companions' feature on Grok app with anime-style avatars
Just days after Grok sparked outrage for posting a slew of antisemitic and abusive statements on X, including praise for Adolf Hitler, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk-owned xAI is now being used to interact with AI-generated anime girl waifus. The AI startup on Monday, July 14, introduced a new feature called AI Companions that is available on the Grok app. However, only users subscribed to the $30 per month 'Super Grok' package can access the feature. The feature can be used to interact with two types of AI Companions, an anime girl dressed in a short black dress and a 3D fox creature named Bad Rudy. 'Cool feature just dropped for @SuperGrok on Companions in settings,' Musk wrote in a post on X. 'This is pretty cool,' he added, sharing a photo of the blonde-haired anime goth girl. grokコンパニオンの好感度上げがだるいのでお互いで勝手にあげて貰ってる — 篠原 修司 (@digimaga) July 15, 2025 It is currently unclear if these AI Companions on the Grok app are meant to role-play as romantic interests or serve as different skins for users on the app. The new in-app Grok feature comes at a time when several companies are experimenting with allowing users to role-play with AI chatbots. For instance, Character AI is an online platform that lets users chat with several AI-powered characters. The Google-backed startup is facing multiple lawsuits filed by parents of teen users who have alleged that their children were exposed to 'deceptive and hypersexualised product.' Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) also called out AI companies such as Character AI for rolling out chatbots that pose as psychologists or mental health professionals. A recent study by Stanford University researchers found that people using chatbots like 'companions, confidants, and therapists' are vulnerable to 'significant risks'. xAI's decision to create more AI-generated personalities within Grok comes after the chatbot announced itself as 'MechaHitler' last week. Grok also suggested that Hitler would be best-placed to combat supposed 'anti-white hatred' as he would 'spot the pattern and handle it decisively.' It further said that people with Jewish surnames were responsible for 'extreme anti-white activism', among other responses criticised by users. The company has apologised for the 'horrific behaviour' of Grok. 'After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse,' xAI said, adding that the underlying LLM powering Grok was not affected. xAI said it removed a set of hard-coded instructions that caused Grok to veer off course. Despite the changes, users pointed out that the newly released Grok 4 version of the chatbot continues to return antisemitic propaganda.
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Business Standard
02-07-2025
- Health
- Business Standard
Should you trust chatbots with health advice? Google study raises concerns
Ever found yourself typing health-related questions into an AI chatbot instead of consulting a doctor? A new Google-backed study has found that people frequently turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini for health-related advice—but many ask questions in ways that can accidentally trick the chatbot into giving biased or incomplete answers. The study, titled What's Up, Doc? Analysing How Users Seek Health Information in Large-Scale Conversational AI Datasets, published on arXiv, raises important concerns about the reliability and safety of using chatbots for health guidance. Conducted by researchers from Google, along with UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, and the University of Washington, the study analysed over 11,000 real-world health conversations with chatbots to understand what people are really asking, and how those questions may sometimes lead them astray. According to the study, most people ask about treatments rather than symptoms or general information. The research also found that users often pose incomplete or leading questions, which result in inaccurate or biased chatbot responses. Why are people turning to AI chatbots for health advice? The study found that rising healthcare costs and limited access to doctors are pushing more people to seek quick, easy health answers from AI chatbots. It highlighted that around 31 per cent of US adults in 2024 had used generative AI for health-related questions. What kind of questions? Mostly about treatments, symptoms, lifestyle changes, and diagnostic tests. Chatbots are becoming the go-to digital 'doctor's assistant' for many. It is about how we ask health questions The researchers built a special dataset called HealthChat-11K with 25,000 user messages across 21 health specialities. They found that: Most conversations are short and focused on quick information Many users provide incomplete context, often leaving out critical details Around 23 per cent of treatment-related queries included leading phrases such as 'Is this the best drug for me?' or 'This should work, right?' These kinds of questions can trigger what researchers call the chatbot's 'sycophancy bias,' meaning the AI might simply agree with the user to sound helpful—even if the advice is incorrect. In some cases, users asked about unsafe or inappropriate treatments, which the chatbot still partially validated. Can chatbots handle complex health questions? The study found that AI chatbots may struggle with vague or partial information. They often assume users know how to describe their conditions properly, which is not always the case. For instance, a person might ask about a medicine without mentioning key medical history, leading to potentially incorrect chatbot responses. Can AI handle emotional conversations? The study also found that people sometimes express frustration, confusion, or gratitude during health-related chats. While emotional exchanges were less common, they often marked key turning points—either ending the conversation or spiralling into repetitive loops where the user kept challenging the chatbot. This highlights a need for AI models to better interpret emotional cues, not just facts. What can improve health chats with AI? The researchers suggested the following improvements: Train chatbots to ask clarifying follow-up questions when context is missing Design systems that recognise and handle leading or biased user questions Build models that respond to emotional cues more sensitively The study reinforces that in health chats with AI, how you ask matters just as much as what you ask. The way a question is framed can significantly influence the quality of the response. So next time you turn to AI for health advice, choose your words carefully—it could make all the difference. For more health updates, follow #HealthWithBS
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google's data center energy use doubled in 4 years
No wonder Google is desperate for more power: the company's data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google's most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That's up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data center growth. And the company's electricity woes are almost entirely a data center problem. In 2024, data centers accounted for 95.8% of the entire company's electron budget. The company's ratio of data-center-to-everything-else has been remarkably consistent over the last four years. Though 2020 is the earliest year Google has made data center electricity consumption figures available, it's possible to use that ratio to extrapolate back in time. Some quick math reveals that Google's data centers likely used just over 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2014. That's growth of seven-fold in just a decade. The tech company has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit by improving the efficiency of its data centers. Those efforts have paid off, and the company is frequently lauded for being at the leading edge. But as the company's power usage effectiveness (PUE) has approached the theoretical ideal of 1.0, progress has slowed. Last year, Google's company-wide PUE dropped to 1.09, a 0.01 improvement over 2023 but only 0.02 better than a decade ago. It's clear that Google needs more electricity, and to keep to its carbon-free pledge, the company has been investing heavily in a range of energy sources, including geothermal, both flavors of nuclear power, and renewables. Geothermal shows promise for data center operations. By tapping into the Earth's heat, enhanced geothermal power plants can consistently generate electricity regardless of the weather. And many startups, including Google-backed Fervo Energy, are making it possible to drill profitable wells in more places. On the nuclear fusion side, Google last week announced it would invest in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and buy 200 megawatts of electricity from its forthcoming Arc power plant, scheduled to come online in the early 2030s. In the nuclear fission world, Google has pledged to buy 500 megawatts of electricity from Kairos Power, a small modular reactor startup. The nuclear deals have yet to deliver power — and they won't for five years or more. In the meantime, the company has been on a renewable energy buying spree. In May, the company bought 600 megawatts of solar capacity in South Carolina, and in January, it announced a deal for 700 megawatts of solar in Oklahoma. Google said in 2024 it was working with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to build several gigawatts worth of carbon-free power plants, a $20 billion investment. The outlay isn't surprising given that solar and (to a lesser extent) wind are the only two sources of power that are readily available before the end of the decade. New nuclear power plants take years to permit and build, and even the most optimistic timelines don't see them connecting to the grid or a data center before the end of the decade. Natural gas, which the U.S. has plenty of, is hamstrung by five-plus-year waitlists for new turbines. That leaves renewables paired with battery storage. Google has contracted with enough renewables to match its total consumption, though those sources don't always deliver electrons when and where the company needs them. 'When we announced to the world that we were achieve that 100% annual matching goal, we were very clear that wasn't the end state,' Michael Terrell, Google's head of advanced energy, told reporters last week. 'The end game was 24/7 carbon free energy around the clock everywhere we operate at all times.' Google has some work to do. Worldwide, the company has about 66% of its data center consumption, matched to the hour, powered by carbon-free electricity. But that average papers over some regional challenges. While its Latin American data centers hit 92% last year, its Middle East and Africa facilities are only at 5%. Those hurdles are part of why Google is investing in stable, carbon-free sources like fission and fusion, Terrell said. 'In order for us to eventually reach this goal, we are going to have to have these technologies,' he said. Sign in to access your portfolio
