Alphabet’s record-breaking $85B raise for Google’s AI business is a helluva good signal

The George Peabody Medal is the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

Google must change AI Overviews after claiming users don't want "lots of sources."

Gemma 4 12B uses a new encoding scheme and token prediction to punch above its weight.

Dreambeans is a curated list of AI-illustrated "stories" culled from the personal data in your Google account.

Alphabet's massive equity raise, backed by Berkshire, signals a strategic pivot towards AI, potentially reshaping tech investment landscapes. The post Google raises $80 billion in equity offering with Berkshire Hathaway’s backing appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Climate & Sustainability

This week we've got tandem hands-ons with Google's new Gemini AI agent - Spark - from my colleagues David Pierce and Jay Peters. Their takeaways are similar: It's so effective that it's scary. Spark knew that David's dog is named Frida and knew the first name of Jay's wife, even though neither of them explicitly provided this information to Google. But what's scary to me is how all of this stuff seems geared toward a future of "productivity" that completely misses what needs to be fixed in our world. "Productivity" is often pitched as a panacea for what befalls us in our personal lives, even going so far as to implicate our moral worthiness … Read the full story at The Verge.

Google has announced five commitments to water stewardship as well as $17 million in support of new projects in Nebraska, Iowa and other states, intended to protect water resources in the areas where it operates.