How Google, DeepMind View AI, Regulation, Productivity
Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind Technologies, and James Manyika, senior VP for technology and society at Google, speak to Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie from the sidelines of the Paris AI summit at the Grand Palais. They discuss artificial intelligence, the impact of DeepSeek on the broader industry, productivity and regulation in the US and the European Union. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Fast Company
33 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Teaching AI isn't enough—we need to teach wisdom, too
Artificial intelligence is shaking the intellectual, emotional, and economic foundations of the world. A glance at mainstream or social media confirms that the world ahead will look nothing like the one we're leaving behind. Technological disruption is nothing new. From bronze smelting in Benin and steel forging in Japan to Themistocles's naval buildup in ancient Greece, history shows that transformative technologies spark societal shifts and national urgency. Today's urgency is AI. The White House's recent executive order (EO) on AI education echoes past anxieties—this time, about China's rapid advancement. You may have missed this EO amid the recent flood of them. But it's a pivotal moment. Though well-intentioned, the EO lacks the depth needed for a truly informed AI educational policy. The EO defines its mission as providing 'opportunities to cultivate the skills and understanding necessary to use and create the next generation of AI technology.' It outlines three imperatives: 'Expose our students to AI at an early age.' Train teachers to 'effectively incorporate AI into their teaching methods.' Promote AI literacy to 'develop an AI-ready workforce.' These steps are necessary. AI is a profound shift, one that exposes long-standing deficiencies in our educational system—particularly our neglect of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Still, the EO falls short in three key areas. Speaking as president and CEO of the Center of Science and Industry, a board member of the National Academies, and a lifelong STEM advocate, I say this: You cannot teach AI without also teaching critical thinking, ethics, and wisdom. Our national conversation must expand beyond technical training. As AI (and eventually artificial general intelligence) integrates into every part of life, we face a stark choice: Do we become passive consumers of knowledge, or do we intentionally cultivate wisdom? Technical proficiency alone turns us into carbon versions of AI. Instead, we need a cultural shift—one that champions critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and curiosity in classrooms, workplaces, and homes. The goal isn't just to understand AI, but to navigate the world it creates. Techno-optimism must be balanced with rigorous intellectual and moral interrogation—or the 'doomers' may be right. Though the EO doesn't address the human-AI relationship, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt—it's not a full policy, but a starting point. I hope future policy goes further, confronting AI's risks and outlining how education and society should respond—both philosophically and practically. For what it's worth, my ideal AI curriculum would include more than practical skills. It would explore: Martin Heidegger's insights on how technology shapes experience Nick Bostrom's ' paper clip ' thought experiment Shoshana Zuboff's critique of surveillance capitalism Soon, AI won't need to be taught—it will be omnipresent. In the 1990s, we trained students to use a mouse and browse the web. But intuitive design soon made that obsolete. The same is happening with AI—only faster. Rather than focus on today's tools, AI education should teach how to understand technology's evolution. Computer scientist Alan Kay once said, 'Technology is anything that was invented after you were born.' Maintaining global leadership requires more than technical prowess—it demands cultural vision. After Sputnik, America feared falling behind in the space race. In the 1990s, it was Japan. Now, it's China. But the true question is: Which nation will use AI to become the better society? French philosopher and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville once said, 'America is great because it is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.' That quote echoes as I reflect on the EO and our future. To lead in AI, we must prioritize wisdom over raw intelligence. That greatness won't come from executive orders—but from the strength of our social order.
USA Today
43 minutes ago
- USA Today
US, China reach deal to ease export curbs, keep tariff truce alive
US, China reach deal to ease export curbs, keep tariff truce alive Show Caption Hide Caption Commerce Secretary Lutnick optimistic about US-China trade talks As delegations from the US and China begin a second day of trade talks, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said things are "going well." Bloomberg LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S. and Chinese officials said on Tuesday they had agreed on a framework to get their trade truce back on track and remove China's export restrictions on rare earths while offering little sign of a durable resolution to longstanding trade tensions. At the end of two days of intense negotiations in London, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters the framework deal puts "meat on the bones" of an agreement reached last month in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs that had reached crushing triple-digit levels. But the Geneva deal had faltered over China's continued curbs on critical minerals exports, prompting the Trump administration to respond with export controls of its own preventing shipments of semiconductor design software, aircraft and other goods to China. Lutnick said the agreement reached in London would remove restrictions on Chinese exports of rare earth minerals and magnets and some of the recent U.S. export restrictions "in a balanced way", but did not provide details after the talks concluded around midnight London time (2300 GMT). "We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents," Lutnick said, adding that both sides will now return to present the framework to their respective presidents for approvals. "And if that is approved, we will then implement the framework," he said. More: US stocks end up, awaiting China-US trade talk news. S&P 500 scores third straight gain In a separate briefing, China's Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang also said a trade framework had been reached in principle that would be taken back to U.S. and Chinese leaders. U.S. President Donald Trump's shifting tariff policies have roiled global markets, sparked congestion and confusion in major ports, and cost companies tens of billions of dollars in lost sales and higher costs. The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its global growth forecast for 2025 by four-tenths of a percentage point to 2.3%, saying higher tariffs and heightened uncertainty posed a "significant headwind" for nearly all economies. The deal may keep the Geneva agreement from unravelling over duelling export controls, but does little to resolve deep differences over Trump's unilateral tariffs and longstanding U.S. complaints about China's state-led, export-driven economic model. The two sides left Geneva with fundamentally different views of the terms of that agreement and needed to be more specific on required actions, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center in Washington. "They are back to square one but that's much better than square zero," Lipsky added. The two sides have until August 10 to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement to ease trade tensions, or tariff rates will snap back from about 30% to 145% on the U.S. side and from 10% to 125% on the Chinese side. MARKETS CAUTIOUS Global stocks have recovered their hefty losses after Trump's April "Liberation Day" tariff announcement and are now near record highs. Investors burned by earlier turmoil offered a cautious response to the deal and MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.57%. "The devil will be in the details, but the lack of reaction suggests this outcome was fully expected," said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone in Melbourne. "The details matter, especially around the degree of rare earths bound for the U.S., and the subsequent freedom for U.S.-produced chips to head east, but for now as long as the headlines of talks between the two parties remain constructive, risk assets should remain supported." More: Trump and China's Xi break the ice with first phone call since launch of trade war Signs of the curbs loosening surfaced in China, as several Shenzhen-listed rare earth magnet firms, including JL MAG Innuovo Technology and Beijing Zhong Ke San Huan said they have obtained export licenses from Chinese authorities. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors, and its decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets upended global supply chains. In May, the U.S. responded by halting shipments of semiconductor design software and chemicals and aviation equipment, revoking export licences that had been previously issued. CHINA EXPORTS PLUNGED A resolution to the trade war may require policy adjustments from all countries to treat financial imbalances or otherwise greatly risk mutual economic damage, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on a rare visit to Beijing on Wednesday. Customs data published on Monday showed that China's overall exports to the U.S. plunged 34.5% in May, the sharpest drop since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. While the impact on U.S. inflation and its jobs market has so far been muted, tariffs have hammered U.S. business and household confidence and the dollar remains under pressure. Beijing-based lawyer Peter Wu, 28, saw the talks as "a good signal" even if details were not fully negotiated. "I feel that fighting a trade war in the context of global integration is a lose-lose situation for both sides. I naturally hope that my motherland will be better," he said. China, Mexico, the European Union, Japan, Canada and many airlines and aerospace companies worldwide urged the Trump administration not to impose new national security tariffs on imported commercial planes and parts, according to documents released Tuesday. Just after the framework deal was announced, a U.S. appeals court allowed Trump's most sweeping tariffs to stay in effect while it reviews a lower court decision blocking them on grounds that they exceeded Trump's legal authority by imposing them. The decision keeps alive a key pressure point on China, Trump's currently suspended 34% "reciprocal" duties that had prompted swift tariff escalation. (Additional reporting by David Milliken and William James in London and Sachin Ravikumar; Ethan Wang, Shi Bu, Yuhan Lin and Alessandro Diviggiano in Beijing; Writing by David Lawder, Kate Holton and Liz Lee; Editing by David Evans, Mark Potter, Nick Zieminski and Lincoln Feast.)
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
OpenAI Seems to Be Making a Very Familiar, Very Cynical Choice
Last spring, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sat in the chancel of Harvard Memorial Church, sermonizing against advertising. 'I will disclose, just as a personal bias, that I hate ads,' he began in his usual calm cadence, one sneakered foot crossed onto his lap. He said that ads 'fundamentally misalign a user's incentives with the company providing the service,' adding that he found the notion of mixing advertising with artificial intelligence — the product his company is built on — 'uniquely unsettling.' The comment reminded me immediately of something I'd heard before, from around the time I was first getting online. It came from a seminal paper that Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote in 1998, when they were at Stanford developing Google. They argued that advertising often made search engines less useful, and that companies that relied on it would 'be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.' I showed up at Stanford as a freshman in 2000, not long after Mr. Brin and Mr. Page had accepted a $25 million round of venture capital funding to turn their academic project into a business. My best friend there persuaded me to try Google, describing it as more ethical than the search engines that had come before. What we didn't realize was that in the midst of the dot-com crash, which coincided with our arrival, Google's investors were pressuring the co-founders to hire a more experienced chief executive. Mr. Brin and Mr. Page brought in Eric Schmidt, who in turn hired Sheryl Sandberg, the chief of staff to Lawrence H. Summers when he was Treasury secretary, to build an advertising program. Filing for Google to go public a couple of years later, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page explained away the reversal of their anti-advertising stance by telling shareholders that ads made Google more useful because they provided what the founders called 'great commercial information.' My senior year, news filtered into The Stanford Daily, where I worked, that Facebook — which some of us had heard about from friends at Harvard, where it had started — was coming to our campus. 'I know it sounds corny, but I'd love to improve people's lives, especially socially,' Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder, told The Daily's reporter. He added, 'In the future we may sell ads to get the money back, but since providing the service is so cheap, we may choose not to do that for a while.' Mr. Zuckerberg went on to quit Harvard and move to Palo Alto, Calif. I went on to The Wall Street Journal. Covering Facebook in 2007, I got a scoop that Facebook — which had in fact introduced ads — would begin using data from individual users and their 'friends' on the site to sharpen how ads were targeted to them. Like Google before it, Facebook positioned this as being good for users. Mr. Zuckerberg even brought Ms. Sandberg over from Google to help. When an economic downturn, followed by an I.P.O., later put pressure on Facebook, it followed Google's playbook: doubling down on advertising. In this case, it did so by collecting and monetizing even more personal information about its users. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
