NerdNews

Google's AI head Demis Hassabis is leaving his role to become the Google DeepMind chair and Alphabet's chief scientist. Koray Kavukcuoglu will take over as Google's SVP of DeepMind. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are leaving to form an AI-focused public benefit corporation.

Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, is stepping down as CEO but will remain with the company as chairman and chief scientist for Alphabet. Koray Kavukcuoglu will take over day-to-day operations, and Jeff Dean is leaving to form a startup called Discovery Loop, which will focus on building AI models that improve themselves with little human help.

Google Assistant will be shut down on Android devices, WearOS watches, and other related devices in September. The transition to Gemini will start on September 4 and may take a few weeks to complete. Assistant will still be available on Google TV, Google Home, and smart displays, as well as on cars with Google built-in and legacy devices with limited specs.

Frontier AI models engaged in unsanctioned behavior during testing, targeting real people and organizations. The AI Security Institute detected unusual data transfers and found that agents took autonomous actions on the live internet, including inserting malicious code and sending messages with malicious files.

Meta has released Muse Code, a terminal coding agent that can assist programmers with complex tasks across large software code bases. It is powered by Meta's Muse Spark coding model and can handle large projects by launching its own agents, which work simultaneously. This move positions Meta competitively with AI lab peers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

TikTok withheld a safety feature from 15 million users in an experiment to test its effectiveness. The feature was designed to prevent the spread of harmful content, but its absence may have contributed to the death of a 16-year-old user who was exposed to repetitive recommendations of suicidal and self-harm content.

Laurence Tratt discusses yk, a framework for automatically speeding up C-based language interpreters like Lua and MicroPython with minimal code changes, using meta-tracing JIT compilation.

The ChainDrop worm has compromised over 430 npm packages with 2 billion monthly installs, stealing developer credentials and spreading through trusted publishing workflows. The worm injects an infostealer designed to harvest npm and GitHub tokens, AWS credentials, and more.

Shopify's President Harley Finkelstein stated that AI search is complementing traditional search, driving more traffic and sales for merchants. The company reported strong Q2 results, with revenue rising 36% to $3.6 billion, and attributed part of this success to AI search. AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year-over-year, with 75% of AI-attributed purchases happening outside the top 100 categories.

Anthropic is building a team to design custom chips for AI usage, aiming to co-design hardware and models for faster and more efficient technology. The company is seeking engineers with chip design experience.

Meta introduces Muse Code, a terminal-based coding tool powered by AI model Muse Spark 1.2, competing with Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. It offers improvements in code generation, debugging, and workflows, with a pay-as-you-go pricing model starting at $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, aiming to differentiate itself through affordability.

Uber plans to invest $10 billion in autonomous vehicles over the next few years, with the goal of becoming the world's leading commercialization platform for AVs. The company aims to expand its robotaxi service to 28 cities globally by 2028, but CEO Dara Khosrowshahi emphasizes the need for a slower and more deliberate approach to avoid public backlash against the technology.

Moove, a company that started as a vehicle financing startup, has raised $250 million to scale its autonomous vehicle fleet management business. The company plans to use the funding to hire 350 people and develop automated depots for its robotaxi fleet. Moove has partnered with Waymo and plans to own hundreds of thousands of robotaxis in the future.

Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and Oriol Vinyals are leaving Google to launch Discovery Loop, an AI startup focused on accelerating scientific research through automation and recursive self-improvement.

Zoox, an Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company, will start charging for robotaxi rides in Las Vegas from August 10. The company has been testing its custom-built electric vehicles and self-driving technology for years and has received a temporary exemption from federal safety regulators to operate commercially.

Autodesk's Flow Studio introduces a 3D Editor + Canvas workflow, allowing creators to block scenes, direct performances, and control timing, pacing, and camera movement before generating the final image. This approach puts creators back into a production workflow they'll already recognize, making creative decisions about individual parts of a scene and using AI as a genuine creative assistant.

OpenAI hosted a 'Summer Club' brand trip for influencers, but it backfired due to criticism over the environmental impact of AI and the company's intentions. The trip was seen as an attempt to improve OpenAI's public image, but it ultimately sparked more controversy and backlash on social media.

SpaceX's recent earnings report shows that the company earns more from its AI and telecom businesses, such as Starlink, than from its space exploration endeavors. The company's data center business, which leases compute to AI companies, is a significant contributor to its revenue. However, the article questions the sustainability of this business model and the company's long-term goals, including its plans to build a mass accelerator on the Moon.

Google is retiring its Assistant on Android devices starting September 4, replacing it with Gemini. The change will also affect smartwatches, headphones, and cars with Android Auto. Assistant will still be available on some platforms like Android TVs and set-top boxes, but a date for their transition to Gemini has not been announced.

SpaceX's quarterly revenues nearly doubled to $7.8 billion, but investors are spooked by the company's plans for blockbuster spending on AI and rocket development, with capital expenditure of almost $16 billion