The CEO of Google DeepMind tells WIRED that companies should use the productivity gains of AI to do more, not lay people off.

Google’s overhaul of its AI creation software, Flow, includes a new video model and a tool for generating selfie videos called avatars.

The tech giant says it's designed the app to be accessible to everyone, from teachers to small business owners.

The updates signal Google’s push to turn its Gemini Gemini app into an all-purpose AI hub rather than a standalone chatbot.

For a quarter century, the Google search box has been one of the most recognizable interfaces in computing: a thin white rectangle, a blinking cursor, a few typed words, and a list of blue links. On Tuesday, Google will formally retire that paradigm. At its annual I/O developer conference, Google announced a sweeping redesign of the search box itself — the literal text field where billions of queries begin every day — transforming it from a simple keyword input into a dynamic, AI-driven conversation starter that can accept text, images, PDFs, videos, and even open Chrome tabs as inputs. The company is also merging its AI Overviews and AI Mode features into a single, seamless search flow, eliminating the friction that previously forced users to choose between a traditional results page and an AI-forward experience. Liz Reid, Google's vice president and head of Search, called it "the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago" during a press briefing on Monday. The announcement arrived alongside a blizzard of other news — new Gemini models, a personal AI agent called Spark, an intelligent shopping cart, a reimagined developer platform — but the search box redesign may prove to be the most consequential. It is the clearest signal yet that Google views the future of its flagship product not as a place where users type fragmented keywords, but as an interface where they hold open-ended, multimodal conversations with an AI system backed by the entire web. The new search box expands, accepts files, and coaches you on what to ask The changes show a fundamental shift in how Google expects people to interact with the product that generates the vast majority of Alphabet's revenue. The box itself now dynamically expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries. Where the old interface subtly encouraged brevity — a narrow field suited to two- or three-word keyword strings — the new design invites users to fully articulate complex questions in granular detail. It also now supports multimodal inputs directly. Users can upload images, PDFs, files, and videos, or drag in content from Chrome tabs, right from the main search interface. Previously, some of these capabilities existed in AI Mode, but reaching them required extra steps. Now they sit at the primary entry point. Google is also deploying what it describes as an AI-powered query suggestion system that "goes beyond autocomplete." Rather than simply predicting the next word a user might type based on popular searches, the system helps users formulate complex, nuanced queries — essentially coaching them toward the kind of detailed questions that AI Mode handles best. The new search box is starting to roll out immediately in all countries and languages where AI Mode is available. Google is merging AI overviews and AI mode into one seamless experience Perhaps more significant than the box itself is the architectural change happening behind it. Google is unifying AI Overviews — the AI-generated summary panels that appear atop traditional search results — with AI Mode, the more immersive conversational search experience the company launched at I/O one year ago. Starting Tuesday, this merged experience will be live across mobile and desktop worldwide. A user can type a question, receive an AI Overview alongside traditional results, and then continue directly into a back-and-forth AI Mode conversation to ask follow-up questions — all without navigating to a separate interface. Reid explained the logic during the press briefing: the new AI search box is "an upgrade of our traditional search box, and so the results take you directly to main search rather than AI mode." She noted that while some power users actively sought out AI Mode, "for most users, they don't actually want to have to think about, do they want more of a traditional page or an AI-forward search experience." The goal, she said, was to ensure that "for most users, they don't have to think about where to go, they can just go to the search box they're familiar with, and it feels like they get the best experience afterwards." One billion users and doubling queries reveal how fast search behavior is shifting Google's decision to redesign the foundational interface of its most important product did not happen in a vacuum. The company shared a set of usage statistics during the briefing that reveal just how rapidly user behavior is already changing. AI Mode, which launched in the United States at I/O 2025, has surpassed one billion monthly users in its first year. AI Mode queries have been doubling every quarter since launch. AI Overviews, the lighter-weight AI summaries, now reach more than 2.5 billion monthly users. And overall search query volume hit an all-time high last quarter — a data point the company had previously disclosed on its earnings call. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, framed these figures as evidence that AI features are additive, not cannibalistic, to search usage. "When people use our AI-powered features in search, they use search more," he said. He added that he loves "how search has become less about individual queries and feels more like an ongoing conversation, giving users deeper insights and connecting you with the vastness of the web." Reid reinforced the point: "It's not just that people are searching more, it's that they're searching differently. They're fully expressing their questions in granular detail, asking those follow-up questions and searching across modalities." Gemini 3.5 Flash gives Google's AI search the speed it needs to work at scale Under the hood, the new search experience runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google's newest AI model, which the company also introduced at I/O. Google upgraded AI Mode's underlying model to 3.5 Flash to deliver what Reid described as "an even more powerful AI search experience." Gemini 3.5 Flash is the workhorse of this year's announcements. Google claims it outperforms its previous frontier model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, on nearly all benchmarks while running four times faster in output tokens per second than comparable frontier models. Pichai described it as being "in a league of its own in the top right quadrant" of the Artificial Analysis index, which plots intelligence against speed — meaning it delivers near-frontier quality at dramatically lower latency. That speed matters enormously for search. A conversational AI search experience that feels sluggish would be dead on arrival for a product that serves billions of queries daily. By coupling the redesigned interface with a model optimized for both quality and throughput, Google is attempting to make AI-powered search feel as instantaneous as the old keyword experience — while being dramatically more capable. Search can now build interactive visuals and custom mini apps on the fly The redesigned search box is also the gateway to a set of new capabilities that push search far beyond text-based answers. Google announced what it calls "generative UI" — the ability for search to dynamically build custom widgets, interactive visualizations, and even mini applications in real time, tailored to a user's specific question. Reid offered a concrete example during the briefing: a user could ask "How do black holes affect space time?" and receive an interactive visual in an AI Overview that brings the concept to life. Follow-up questions would trigger the system to dynamically generate entirely new visuals in real time. This is possible, she explained, because of "a novel real-time code generation system we built in partnership with the Google DeepMind team" that runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash. Generative UI capabilities will roll out to everyone this summer, free of charge. But Google is going further still. For ongoing tasks — planning a wedding, organizing a move, tracking a fitness routine — users will be able to build what the company describes as customizable, stateful experiences within search, powered by its Antigravity development platform. These require no coding expertise. Users simply describe what they want in natural language, and search builds it. Those experiences will be available in coming months, starting with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States. AI agents that monitor the web around the clock are coming to search results The redesign also opens the door to what Google calls "information agents" — AI agents that users can configure directly within search to monitor the web 24/7 for specific conditions and deliver synthesized updates when those conditions are met. A user could, for example, set up an agent to track market movements in a particular sector with specific parameters. The agent would create a monitoring plan, tap into real-time finance data, and proactively notify the user when conditions are met — complete with links and context for further research. Other use cases include apartment hunting, tracking sneaker drops, or monitoring any topic a user cares about. Information agents will launch first for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers this summer. These agents sit within a much larger strategic pivot that Google articulated throughout the briefing: the company is going all-in on AI systems that don't just answer questions but proactively take actions on users' behalf. Beyond search, Google introduced Gemini Spark, a 24/7 personal AI agent that runs on dedicated virtual machines in Google Cloud. It unveiled the Universal Cart, an intelligent cross-merchant shopping cart. It announced the Agent Payments Protocol for agents to make secure purchases. And it expanded its Antigravity developer platform into a full ecosystem for building autonomous AI agents. Publishers, advertisers, and SEO professionals face a new reality The redesign raises profound questions for the sprawling ecosystem — publishers, advertisers, SEO professionals — that has been built around the old model of keyword search and blue links. If users increasingly express their needs as full, conversational sentences rather than fragmented keywords, the entire discipline of search engine optimization will need to evolve. Keyword-density strategies become less relevant when the AI is parsing natural language intent rather than matching strings. Content that answers deep, nuanced questions in authoritative ways becomes more valuable; content engineered to rank for two-word keyword fragments becomes less so. For publishers, the stakes are existential. AI Overviews already synthesize information from across the web and present it directly in search results, reducing the need for users to click through to source material. The new seamless AI Mode integration deepens that dynamic: users can now get an AI-generated answer and ask multiple follow-up questions without ever leaving the search page. Google has consistently maintained that its AI features drive more traffic to publishers, but the redesign puts that claim under renewed scrutiny as the search results page becomes more self-contained. For advertisers — who fund the vast majority of Google's revenue — the shift from keywords to conversations changes the calculus of ad targeting. Conversational queries contain richer intent signals, which could make ad targeting more precise and valuable. But they also create new ambiguities: when a user is in the middle of a multi-turn conversation with AI Mode, where does an ad naturally fit? Google did not detail changes to its advertising model during the briefing, but the structural shift in the interface will inevitably reshape how ads are surfaced and measured. The search box was always more than a product — it was a habit for billions of people There is a reason Google chose to redesign the search box rather than simply adding new features behind it. The search box is not just a product element at this point; it is a cultural artifact — one of the few pieces of digital infrastructure used by essentially the entire internet-connected world. Changing it sends an unmistakable message about where the company believes computing is headed. For 25 years, the search box trained billions of people to think in keywords — to compress their curiosity into the shortest possible string of words. The new box invites them to do the opposite: to think out loud, to upload what they're looking at, to ask follow-up questions, to let an AI system handle the compression. Pichai tied the company's broader ambitions to a striking statistic: Google's surfaces now process over 3.2 quadrillion tokens per month, up seven-fold from a year ago. The company expects capital expenditures of approximately $180 to $190 billion in 2026 — roughly six times the $31 billion it spent four years ago — largely to support the infrastructure required for this AI transformation. When asked about the future of traditional search, he was direct. "Search is the most used AI product in the world," he said. The blinking cursor in Google's search box still invites you to type. But after 25 years of teaching the world to speak in keywords, Google is now asking it to speak in sentences — and betting roughly $190 billion that it will.

The syntax and semantics of mathematics The post Introduction to Lean for Programmers appeared first on Towards Data Science.

The shift from fee-for-service to value-based care reimbursement is well underway. Health systems with significant ACO...

Dr. Florence Comite specializes in precision medicine, a tailored approach to healthy aging. Her own habits include regular workouts with rowing for cardio and weights for strength training. Dr. Florence Comite/svetikd via Getty Images A top longevity doctor said you have more control over healthy aging than you think. She recommends simple lifestyle changes to boost sleep and metabolism for a longer life. Invest in your health with small tweaks like not eating before bed and optimizing your workout. Good genes are one of the biggest factors in living a long, healthy life: up to 50% of longevity is inherited, new research suggests. Still, DNA doesn't have to be your destiny when it comes to aging and illness. Take Dr. Florence Comite. As an identical twin, she's seen firsthand how our unique life experiences can shape our health and, more importantly, what we can do about it. "If we're identical twins, why do I love sushi and sashimi, and she doesn't really eat fish? I murder plants, and she's an amazing gardener," Comite quipped to Business Insider. "By understanding all the factors that make up who we are and thinking of it as a proactive approach, you identify risk before symptoms, and you can stop it in its tracks and even reverse it," she said of aging. A top longevity doctor, Comite is an expert in epigenetics, the study of chemical changes that influence gene activity, including those that may affect the aging process. "Being able to turn switches on and off by the choices we make is the way we can give the control back to ourselves, she said. Comite said that today's decisions can make a huge difference in our ability to thrive for decades to come. "We begin to show changes of aging below the surface at the cellular level in the 30s. And we can do something about it to really protect our health for life because the earlier we do it, the better off we're going to be," she said. Comite shared some of the best health changes she's made to her own routine that you can add to your own "health portfolio" for a longer, healthier life. Ditch the bedtime snacks Comite said she saw major benefits after triumphing over her own personal health nemesis: the late-night snack. "I'm a grazer. At night, I would just sit and snack on fruit, chocolate, ice cream, whatever. When I gave that up, and I made myself aware of the fact that I just have to stop eating an hour or two before bed, it was a world of difference," she said. Nighttime snacks may disrupt your sleep. SimpleImages/Getty Images Cutting out nighttime eating may support digestion and sleep quality, including deep sleep, the time when your body can repair cellular damage to support your metabolism, immune system, and other essential functions. That's why quality sleep is essential for long-term health, helping stave off age-related decline. "In your 20s, you can sort of burn the candle at both ends, and your body can compensate. That's no longer possible in your 30s," Comite said. Cut your alcohol intake in half If you're winding down for the night with wine, whiskey, or beer, you may be doing more harm than good. Alcohol has increasingly been tied to serious health risks like cancer, heart disease, and dementia. Recent evidence suggests there may be no safe amount of alcohol. To minimize the risk of drinking, stick to no more than one serving per day for women and two for men, according to the CDC. Comite said a simple way to cut back is to swap in a glass of plain water between boozy beverages, halving the amount of alcohol you consume. If you enjoy a drink, consume in moderation and stay hydrated with plenty of water to protect your health. Maria Korneeva/Getty Images "If you like alcohol, cut it back. If you drink two glasses, have one glass and a glass of water because alcohol will cause your blood sugar to go up and then go down while you sleep," Comite said. For more precise insights on your blood sugar, Comite recommends wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), which can give real-time data on your body's unique response to different types of food and beverages. Combine cardio and strength training Another way to optimize your longevity routine is to diversify your fitness, Comite said. "I make time for exercise. Three days a week, I'm in the gym for an hour, and I mainly do weights. There's a little bit of high intensity and aerobic," she said. Between sets of weighted exercises, Comite said she'll spend some time on the rower for longevity-boosting cardio. Comite said she also prioritizes high-intensity interval training (HIIT), such as sprint sessions. The right HIIT workout can maximize your time by tapping into key fitness metrics like VO2 max to make the most of every minute you spend exercising. Read the original article on Business Insider

Why production LLM systems need live web search to overcome knowledge cutoffs and stale training data The post Grounding LLMs with Fresh Web Data to Reduce Hallucinations appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Kimberly Wilson is an Orangetheory enthusiast. Still, when she switched Kimberly Wilson Author Kimberly Wilson thought she was fit as an avid Orangetheory member. So when she wanted a new challenge, she tried Barry's, a high-intense, high-energy fitness studio. When she tried her first class, though, she realized that fitness can happen at different levels. "They are training for war in there." That was the text I sent to my friend when I walked out of Barry's fitness studio in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, DC, for the first time. And several weeks later, I still stand by that. As someone who trains about 5 to 6 times a week in group fitness settings, this class format was more intense, more high-energy, and more adrenaline-boosting than any other workout I've ever experienced. And I've tried a lot. For me, someone who recently surpassed 550 Orangetheory classes, I was ready for my next challenge and felt like Barry's was the most natural progression toward the type of training I wanted to do. Still, I was completely wrong in my thinking that just because I'd done one, I was fit enough for the other. Barry's vs. Orangetheory Barry's, originally Barry's Bootcamp, started in West Hollywood in 1998. The fitness brand built a following thanks to pairing treadmill-based intervals with floor-based strength work, turning the lights down low and the music up loud — really loud. It all happened inside its trademark "Red Room." Today, Barry's has 89 studios across 15 countries. Orangetheory, which also splits class time between treadmill work and the floor, adds rowers to its cardio split and centers everything around your heart rate. Every member can opt to wear a monitor —for an additional fee — and your stats show up in real time on screens around the studio. Coaches encourage you to spend at least 12 minutes in the "orange zone" (hence the name Orangetheory), which is roughly 84-91% of your maximum heart rate. Hit this each class, and they say you'll reap the benefits of what the brand calls the "afterburn" effect, to continue burning calories long after you leave class. Coaches cue you into "base," "push," and "all out" paces, with each person running at whatever speed gets them into the right zone. Inside the Red Room at Barry's. Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images I walked into the Red Room, where I started off on the treadmill, and I'll say: prepare to run for your life. At Orangetheory, I ran between 4.5 and 7 mph. At Barry's, the recommended speeds are 7, 8, and 9 mph, and sometimes higher. The starting speed at Barry's is roughly where I was maxing out at Orangetheory, so safe to say, I was humbled before the first interval even ended. This is the "training for war" element that I referenced earlier because my first thought was "Who is chasing us, and how close are they?" The floor exercises moved at the same speed. Where Orangetheory coaches spend a significant amount of time making sure I have the movement down before I attempt it, Barry's gave me a brief demo and expected me to jump in. During the first class, I was a half step behind my classmates the whole time, particularly because of my view of the instructor and the loud music. However, by the third class, I was up to speed. Why Barry's fans are obsessed Jorge Cardozo, who recently celebrated his five-year anniversary as a Barry's instructor, said, "Even though it may be hard, and you can modify however you want, I think the instructors and the culture that we're trained under is let's train grand." "Let's make sure that we push everyone the same amount, and beyond that, make sure that we're pushing everyone to the level that they can get to," he told me after class. Cardozo himself started as a client about eight years ago, already in the fitness industry, teaching for other studios before he fell in love with the brand. He was drawn to the club-like atmosphere and the community the studio seemed to attract. And it's not just the instructors who feel that way. My fellow classmate, Grace Koetje, told me she found her way to Barry's the same way a lot of first-timers do, through word of mouth and curiosity. A Georgetown University student athlete, she's no stranger to boutique fitness, having tried CrossFit, CorePower Yoga, and Orangetheory, but said Barry's has stood out for its level of intensity and the environment it creates. "I liked that you could set your own pace, but you were also encouraged to go faster," she said. The author inside Barry's infamous Red Room. Kimberly Wilson Final verdict for me: Being humbled by a workout will either scare you off or pull you back in. For me, it was the latter. I've now taken five Barry's classes since that first one, and the progress has been noticeable in a short amount of time. My endurance is building, I'm hitting speeds I wouldn't have attempted on that first day, and I'm pushing past limits I didn't know I had. More than anything, it's given me a training foundation I've needed, because my next challenge is HYROX, a competitive fitness race that combines running with functional workout stations. Still, I haven't given up on Orangetheory. With that said, here's to the next 500. Read the original article on Business Insider

Kelly Burch My dad was diagnosed with dementia in his early 50s. Caring for him while raising a toddler was incredibly stressful. When he entered long-term care, we were both happier and healthier. When I found myself on a first-name basis with the local paramedics, I knew I needed to face the truth: my dad couldn't continue living at home. It was only a matter of time before the minor emergencies that the EMTs were responding to became something major. That's how I found myself trudging toward an old brick nursing home with my toddler on my hip and my dad reluctantly shuffling behind me. The notorious nursing home smell greeted us as soon as we walked in, and I almost turned around then and there. Instead, I shook hands with the administrator who was giving us a tour. For years, I had made institutions like this the worst-case scenario. And yet, while I noticed the antiseptic smell and dated decor, I also saw that people were happy and engaged. Soon, my daughter was crawling up the staircase, playing peek-a-boo with residents, and I was thinking maybe, just maybe, this was the right choice for everyone. I struggled to keep my dad in his home while raising a toddler My dad was only in his 40s when he became unable to take care of himself due to a severe depression: the type that makes it impossible to shower or feed yourself. The author felt like moving her dad to a long-term care facility was not a good option. Courtesy of the author He'd moved in with his mother, but in his early 50s suffered a series of small strokes that led to vascular dementia. Coupled with my grandma's own health concerns, that meant my dad needed more and more hands-on care. I lived about two hours away from them, but became the de facto caregiver. That meant driving down weekly, or more often, tossing french fries at my baby as I strapped her in for yet another long ride. It was physically and emotionally exhausting, but it felt like my only choice. Sending him to a nursing home would be giving up, I thought. Our state's Medicaid program alleviated a lot of worry Even when my stress was nearing a boiling point, I knew we had one major asset on our side: I wasn't worried about the cost of long-term care. My dad had been on disability for years, and he lived in Massachusetts, which has a robust Medicaid program that covers nursing homes and other supported living. Medicaid covered the author's dad's stay at a long-term care facility. Courtesy of the author All of my dad's income — his disability payment — went to paying for his housing before Medicaid would cover costs. He was only allowed to keep a small personal needs allowance of $72 a month. He was often frustrated by how quickly that money went, but to me, this seemed like great value. All of his essential costs, like food, were covered by the facility, and he had a bit of money to spend on a pizza or a pack of cigarettes. Having adequate care restored my dad's dignity I moved my dad into the rest home portion of the facility, which provided daily needs, but at a lower level of care than a nursing home (which he didn't yet need). I knew he would be safer in the home than he had been living on his own. But I had no idea how much the facility would restore his dignity. He no longer needed to worry about medication mixups or his mother hassling him to take a shower. Living in community meant he had accountability in a way he hadn't in a long time. He became the big man on campus among the other residents, and I saw parts of his personality I hadn't seen in years. He even found love at the rest home. About 18 months after he moved in, he had a commitment ceremony with another resident. They shared a room and later moved into a nursing home, where they lived together until my dad died two years ago. My dad lived in nursing homes for 10 years — and that was a good thing Of course, there was sadness: I knew once my dad went into the rest home, he was never going to live independently again. He had his own hangups: more than once, I got a call that he had snuck my grandmother's car onto campus. I had to grieve for the life I thought he'd have, and acknowledge we had stepped on the road to increasing levels of care. And yet, that was going to happen whether he was living in the rest home or with his mother — but only one of those options provided safety. Once I saw how much my life and my dad's improved when he moved into the rest home, I wondered why we had waited so long. My dad spent his last 10 years in long-term care facilities. While that might sound like a nightmare to some, it was the best possible decision for our family, and gave us all the space we needed to enjoy our time together. Read the original article on Business Insider

The joint venture marks a new business for the tech giant as it enters the neocloud market.

LG's latest hits one frame per millisecond at a full 1080p resolution.

Politicians say they want EVs to pay "their fair share for the use of our roads."

Discussion | Link

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The author wanted to be a chill mom. Courtesy of the author I expected to be a laid-back parent before my son was born. Raising a neurodivergent child changed how I think about parenting. I learned to focus less on philosophy and more on his actual needs. I really want to be a chill mom. I don't want to be a helicopter parent. I don't want to hover. I don't want to be one of those moms whose whole identity is consumed by watching out for their child, who stops being an independent person and becomes a soft, pillowy shield between their child and the outside world. I want to be one of those cool moms who sit on the porch with a beer and let their child figure things out for themselves. But I've learned from experience that this isn't always what's best for my son. He wouldn't sleep anywhere but his crib Before he was born, I figured his dad and I would take him everywhere. He'd sleep when he needed to sleep, and he'd learn to be flexible. One of my friends had done that; her baby daughter fell asleep in all kinds of places — including the middle of the floor at a crowded party — and she and her husband continued to enjoy their social lives, albeit with an infant strapped to their chests. But when my son was small, he refused to fall asleep anywhere but in his crib. I figured he'd sleep if he got tired enough, but what actually happened when he got tired enough was that he screamed for hours. We soon figured out that we needed to be very strict about being home at naptimes and at bedtime, not because we wanted to, but because it was what worked for him. Independence is important to him As my son has grown, the distance between the "chill mom" I want to be and the mom I actually am has grown wider. I want to give him "90s kid summers," playing outside for long, unstructured afternoons, but I've learned that he thrives on structure and predictability. The author wanted to be a chill mom. Courtesy of the author I want to sit and gossip with my friends while he plays in another room with their kids, but I've learned that this often ends in fights and tears. Like many neurodivergent kids, he has a hard time with emotional regulation, and if there's not an adult keeping an eye on him, things can go south very fast. On the other hand, independence is very important to him. His nervous system is constantly on high alert, and this means control is a very big deal. He wants to brush his own teeth, choose his own clothes, and make his own decisions. I can't just give him a cookie for dessert; he has to choose one from the box. As he gets older, I want to respect and foster his desire for autonomy, while also providing enough structure and guidance to support him. It can be hard to parent a neurodivergent kid This is a balancing act for every parent, of course. But it's more challenging as a parent of a neurodivergent kid, because the things that work for other kids don't always work for mine. Sometimes choices are essential; other times choices lead to meltdowns. Sometimes letting him run around with his friends at an outdoor concert turns into a magical night catching fireflies; other times it ends with him screaming and me dragging him back to the car. Of course, there are also things that are easy for him, things that are a challenge for other kids and their parents. He can sit through a three-hour musical (and discuss the characters' backstories and motivations in great detail afterward). He can carry on a genuinely interesting conversation with a table full of adults about anything from reincarnation ("I think I will come back as a kitten") to where the Easter Bunny lives ("the East pole"). He's very popular at my parents' retirement home. When he was in kindergarten, he got suspended for kicking the principal in the head and then, later the same afternoon, he astonished a group of my colleagues by sitting perfectly still and paying close attention to a new play reading. I felt like I had emotional whiplash, going from feeling like a terrible mom to an amazing mom so quickly. My child is his very own person I don't think either my son's strengths or his challenges have much to do with anything I've done. It's easy to think of our children as reflections of ourselves, but my son is very much his own independent person. Before I had him, I spent a lot of time thinking about my "parenting philosophy," reading books, and talking to friends about different approaches. I thought it was something you decided on in the abstract: this is the kind of person I am, and so this is the kind of parent I'm going to be. But since having an actual child, I've realized that my parenting philosophy can't come from books or friends or even who I am. It has to come from who my child is, and what he needs, and it has to be constantly evolving and changing. I feel like I'm doing it all wrong most of the time. It would be easier if I had a clear set of guidelines. But even though I doubt almost everything about my parenting, the one thing I never doubt is how much I love my son. So all I can do is keep paying attention and trust that even if my parenting journey looks very different from what I once imagined, this love will be enough to guide us. Read the original article on Business Insider

Walking the dog: a US service member patrols with a Ghost Robotics Vision 60 prototype at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Tech. Sgt. Cory Payne / US Air Force The third in a series of military AI summits was held in La Coruña, Spain in February 2026. The aim of the meeting was to convert previously agreed principles on the military use of AI into action. The summit was attended by government officials, military personnel, representatives from industry and researchers from thinktanks. The goal of many experts and policymakers in this area is to usher countries towards a regulatory framework on using machine intelligence in warfare. To this end, the latest Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit presented a non-binding commitment for countries to sign. The REAIM agreement affirmed the need for human oversight of military AI systems, called for countries to carry out risk assessments and robust testing, and committed to transparency on how decisions are made when using AI in conflicts. The reasoning behind such recommendations is sound. However, translating such a framework from plan to action faces multiple hurdles. Ultimately, less than half of the countries represented at this year’s REAIM summit signed the non-binding commitment. To understand why, it’s instructive to look at what happened at the 80th UN General Assembly held in New York in December 2025. At the meeting, members of the assembly’s first committee voted overwhelmingly to approve two resolutions calling for greater international scrutiny of the risks from military uses of AI. However, the US and Russia notably opposed the resolutions. The US had been a signatory to earlier REAIM summit commitments. But this year, the US and China both declined to sign it. There seems little doubt that this helped fuel the hesitancy of other countries. The Netherlands’ defence minister Ruben Brekelmans put it succinctly when he said that governments face a “prisoner’s dilemma”. This is a concept in game theory where two rational individuals face competing incentives to cooperate with or betray one other. Countries are effectively having to implement responsible restrictions on military AI without subjecting their armed forces to limitations that could be exploited by a less conscientious enemy. Battlefield robots are being used in Ukraine, but they remain firmly under human control. Devdroid, CC BY-SA An important sticking point is the deployment of autonomous AI systems in warfare. The idea of autonomous weapons systems, which make decisions without input from a human, remains a grave concern for many interested parties on this issue. There continues to be a consensus against using such weapons. But countries can’t reach a common position over how to define them, particularly so-called lethal autonomous weapons systems – or Laws for short. These are often characterised as “killer robots”, though a more detailed description remains elusive. A uniform definition for such systems could be an important first step towards a discussion on regulation. But, despite efforts by academic experts to draft and amend flexible definitions, countries remain too far apart on the characteristics they ascribe to these weapons. The impasse is informed by a fear that accepting a definition could restrict countries’ militaries on the battlefield – threatening national security. Testing grounds for tech Existing legal mechanisms, such as international humanitarian laws, already prohibit the irresponsible and unethical use of military AI – in theory, at least. But how these laws would function in practice when applied to real world scenarios is uncertain. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the war in Gaza and the more recent escalation in Iran are being used by militaries as testing grounds for such technology. The Lavender intelligence gathering and targeting software, used by Israel in Gaza, and Anthropic’s AI Model Claude, used by the US in Iran, demonstrate the rapid pace of advancement in AI-powered data gathering and analysis. This can help military planners make quicker decisions. Drone warfare – AI assisted, autonomous and semi-autonomous – has grown at an equally rapid rate. This emerging technology is evolving significantly faster than the potential rules that could govern its use. Drone warfare has been evolving rapidly, while efforts to regulate it are playing catch-up. US Army / Staff Sgt Thomas Moeger There’s a recurring argument that humans in the loop can operate as effective safeguards against the misuse of military AI systems. But as human overseers become familiar with the AI systems they use, their engagement may slip, causing them to become detached from the process. As this happens, they may start to view real people as mere objects on a screen. This effect is known as automation bias. In such instances, human oversight could cease to be meaningful and instead lead to the simple rubber stamping of recommendations made by AI. Additionally, the downsides of AI technology, such as bias, misinformation and disinformation generated by the systems themselves, and the erosion of human judgement resulting from overreliance on these systems, are not easy to solve after they enter use. This is why the REAIM summit commitment recommended risk assessments and robust testing before AI systems are adopted by militaries. Without regulation, the risk of harm caused by AI systems remains significant. The severity of such risks balloons in magnitude when they are applied to military contexts. Miscalculations can lead to unintended escalation, as well as civilian deaths. Mark Tsagas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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