Autonomous air taxis are revving up in Miami—here's what to know
Here's the flight plan: Wisk and the Miami-Dade Aviation Department signed a deal in June to start prepping for takeoff. That means identifying key locations, including MIA, Opa-locka Executive and Miami Executive Airports, for 'vertiports' where these electric, self-flying aircraft can land, lift off and shuttle passengers across South Florida without the hassle of highways. No county funds are being used to get the project off the ground.
Wisk's sixth-generation model is designed to seat four people (plus luggage), lifts off like a helicopter, cruises like a plane and flies without a pilot. But don't worry—each flight is monitored by a human on the ground from a command center. And while these futuristic rides won't replace your Uber tomorrow, Wisk hopes to earn FAA certification by 2030.
The goal is to make zipping from Miami to Fort Lauderdale as easy (and affordable) as calling a car, minus the bumper-to-bumper crawl on I-95. Each aircraft can fly about 90 miles on a single charge and the company's targeting prices on par with rideshares.
This isn't Miami's first brush with next-gen tech: MIA has also rolled out autonomous wheelchairs and navigation apps for visually impaired travelers. Now, with Wisk on board, the city is leaning all the way into its 'tech hub meets tropical playground' identity.
The University of Miami is also joining the party. Through its Engineering and Aviation Mobility Initiative, the school will work with Wisk on research and development, focusing on operations, regulations, safety and battery technologies.
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Times
2 days ago
- Times
Google has signalled the death of googling. What comes next?
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Last year Alphabet, Google's parent company, brought in $350 billion in sales — more than the gross domestic product of 140 countries, thanks mostly to cash from advertisers who pay to jam their products high up into the results of the 8.5 billion searches that Google runs every day. It is the most elegant of machines. And yet, last month Google rolled out something that gave a glimpse of a very different Google, a new way to search and, long term, potentially an entirely new internet — AI Mode. This is a quantum leap that threatens to radically upend the landscape of the internet. 'Google is disrupting itself,' said Laurence O'Toole, chief executive of Authoritas, a specialist AI search consultancy. The change, he added, was 'seismic'. It arrived for British users on Wednesday, a form of search that allows people to ask any question to what looks like a chatbot and receive a detailed answer — not just a list of blue hyperlinks. And the more complex or detailed the query, the better. 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Farage, the answer read, had, 'tapped into a sense of frustration and disillusionment with the mainstream political establishment in the UK', before offering six bullet points to flesh out its point, from his 'strong stance on immigration' to his 'social media savvy' and shifting demographics. The answers often included small icons, indicating links to third-party sites that were prime sources of AI Mode's musings. But what it did not do was give that familiar list of links to click on. For two decades now we have been a slave to the search engine algorithm — but potentially no more. This is important because those links are not only the fuel of the Google machine, they are the architecture of the web we have come to know and been conditioned to expect. Companies pay top dollar to show up there, and critically, above their rivals. In America, land of the class-action lawsuit, lawyers want to make sure they are first in line when someone goes googling. 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Telegraph
5 days ago
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Google could steal the entire internet
Google has shown us what the end of the internet looks like. It calls it AI Mode. From Tuesday, instead of seeing ten blue links to third party websites when searching Google, users will see digests of information created by AI. Google says this 'lets you ask nuanced questions that would have previously required multiple searches.' Sometimes there is value in these digests – as demonstrated by AI startup Perplexity. However, the change has catastrophic economic consequences because of Google's dominant position over what we see on the web; AI mode removes the need to visit the site that created the original material. Google, it should be remembered, was found guilty of maintaining a monopoly by an American federal court last summer. An analytics study last week suggested that the top ranking site in blue link Google loses 79 per cent of its traffic after AI summaries are introduced. Other surveys suggest even more: as much as 96 per cent. This is not how the web was supposed to end. Sir Tim Berners Lee's original vision was of a rapid publishing technology, a two way conversation much like the telephone. When Google was young, it promised to get out of our way. 'We wanted people to spend a minimum amount of time on Google. The faster they got their results, the more they'd use it,' said founder Larry Page in 2004. But now Google has become like The Eagles' Hotel California – you can check in, but never leave. That's in keeping with an extractive industry which takes much from publishing but gives little back. AI makes this an order of magnitude worse. Generative AI breaks an informal social contract that has existed since the dawn of business: that a buyer should take a keen interest in the health of its suppliers. AI, though, is replacing suppliers entirely: an analogy is eating the seed corn. For having ingested everything from entire research libraries to newspapers, from YouTube to the works of every gallery, AI can create fine tuned pastiches and continue to produce them forever. Google can also punish sites that refuse to be scraped with a kind of corporate death sentence: making them disappear from Google. A former Facebook engineer, Georg Zoeller, who also advises Asian governments on AI, says generative AI is little more than piracy disguised by hype. 'Large language models are just storage, and all they are doing is compressing knowledge,' he says. 'The industry would have been murdered in its crypt if it had told the truth, and people realised that on the other side of the bot is a Napster'. The magic trick is how AI disguises the theft. Google says the old search results will still be available if you want – or can find them. Britain's Competition and Markets Authority has investigated the company's use of generative AI, but its remedies are so far very tentative, and it is soliciting views. The CMA also finds British business paying a very high toll to maintain Google's advertising dominance: UK publicly listed companies spend £10 billion with Google advertising, which the CMA suggests is far higher than it would be in a competitive digital ad market. The CMA can and should do much more to tame this predatory giant, so British internet businesses can survive.
NBC News
22-07-2025
- NBC News
Elon Musk devotees camp out for hours to get a glimpse of new Tesla diner
LOS ANGELES — Tesla enthusiasts began lining up outside Elon Musk's long-awaited Tesla Diner & Drive-In in Hollywood early Monday, eager to get their first glimpse of what's inside. But with little clarity about when the gates would open, some of Musk's most ardent fans waited hours before they were finally allowed in at 4:20 p.m., a classic reference Musk often makes to marijuana. Built in the bustling Hollywood location where a Shakey's Pizza used to be, the retro-futuristic diner, which also doubles as a drive-in movie theater, is filled with Tesla technology — including its humanoid robot, Optimus — and merch, such as Cybertruck-themed food containers. The menu, created by chef Eric Greenspan, featured diner staples, such as fried chicken & waffles, grilled cheese and tuna melts, as well as some themed items, such as the "Tesla Burger" with "Electric Sauce." Prices range from $4 for a side of fries to $15 for biscuits & red gravy. As they entered the facility, guests were greeted by servers on roller skates, who rolled up with ice cream samples. The drive-in projector played the 1960s animated sitcom "The Jetsons," which depicted life in the 21st century and featured flying cars and a housekeeper robot. Guests could order items from a kiosk at the counter. 'I saw videos of [Optimus] online and it was more of a linear movement, but it's kind of jittery,' said one attendee, who also got the robot to try to make heart shapes with its hand. Optimus was scooping and handing out popcorn on the second-floor roof deck. The public opening is the culmination of Musk's yearslong ambition to open a Tesla restaurant in Los Angeles, where the automotive and clean energy company has a large presence. The crowd offered an indication of Musk's continued popularity among die-hard Tesla fans, even as his tech mogul persona has taken a hit from his foray into politics. Musk, whose estimated net worth surpassed $400 billion in 2024, was a close ally of President Donald Trump before the two had a public falling-out. His Department of Government Efficiency's seemingly indiscriminate government spending cuts also caused Tesla stock to plummet as he lost public support. Still, dozens of people gathered outside throughout the day, waiting patiently to be among the early patrons. 'I like the retro diner. It's kind of like a Ruby's Diner. ... Putting all this together is just very unique,' said Vera Hammar, who drove 80 miles from Beaumont with her husband, Morgan, and their daughter, Mackenzie Torres, in hope of seeing what the Tesla Diner has to offer. The family, who all identify as Tesla superfans, own a total of four Tesla vehicles, including a Cybertruck. (It used to be five before they recently sold one.) As people stood waiting on the sidewalk for hours, many began to mingle and make friends with other Tesla fans. Some in line were overheard asking one another what kind of Teslas they have. Others interacted with people whose social media presences they recognized. The creator behind the account for Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, who has 1.2 million followers on X, flew in early Monday and had to keep pushing his return flight back. His friend came in a Cybertruck that was decorated with images of 'Doge,' a well-known internet meme that inspired the name of Musk's DOGE. 'It's been fun waiting, just kind of talking to people,' Vera Hammar said. 'It's a very, very friendly crowd. Like, [my husband] has seen a lot of people he follows on X.' A soft launch over the weekend stirred some fanfare online, as invitees showcased the diner's giant movie theater screens and spacecraft-themed bathroom and Optimus' serving popcorn at the counter. Videos of the cafe spread across X, YouTube and Reddit.
