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Il Volo celebrates nearly 20 years of musical harmony
Longer than many marriages and most rock bands, the Italian singing trio Il Volo have been together for almost 20 years. They’ve gone from teenagers to 30-somethings while selling more
Hegseth staff damaged historic WWII-era Eisenhower globe trying to move it to his office
The globe was especially notable because it had green pen or marker notations where Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower marked areas in Europe, three U.S. officials said.
DHS watchdog refers its Corey Lewandowski investigation to Justice Department for review
Lewandowski, the first manager on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was a top aide to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem before she was fired.
Dak Prescott: Cowboys Media Scrutiny Comes With the Territory
The Cowboys are off to a rocky 2–4 start.
Little Rock Central High science building dedicated to retired principal Nancy Rousseau
Little Rock Central High School's new science building, which opened a year ago, now sports a new name: the Nancy Rousseau Science Building.
Supreme Court says New Hampshire student IDs can’t be used to vote in November
The high court said a federal judge should not have changed the rules so close to the Nov. 3 election by blocking guidance issued by New Hampshire’ secretary of state.
Netflix’s latest cliff-hanger? Where it’s headed as a business.
The streaming giant has shaken up its staffing and is looking to compete in an evolving entertainment landscape.
Netflix’s latest cliff-hanger? Where it’s headed as a business.
The streaming giant has shaken up its staffing and is looking to compete in an evolving entertainment landscape.
Ramaswamy’s ad splits the GOP in Ohio’s closing stretch: From the Politics Desk
Plus, Black voters play a crucial role in the battle for the Senate.
Experience Rockabilly’s roots at Seminole Casino festival
Seminole Casino Hotel Immokalee will run on hot rods, propulsive horn sections, tattoo ink and good old rock ’n’ roll this Nov. 14 as Rockabillaque Florida returns for its sixth
Top adviser to Kennedy resigns from Trump administration
Calley Means, a key advocate for the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, had grown frustrated with a lack of progress on his policy goals, a source familiar with his departure said.
Samsung all but confirms iPhone Duo is goosing Galaxy Z8 sales
Searches for Samsung foldables just happened to skyrocket following iPhone Duo unveiling.
Henry Dorrbaker’s will expand Beloit entertainment complex with new indoor golf
Henry Dorrbaker's is expanding its downtown Beloit entertainment complex with a new 6,000-square-foot indoor golf attraction called The Range, which is scheduled to open in December.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine calls on Vivek Ramaswamy to take down ad featuring opponent’s estranged mother
DeWine, a Republican, said he still endorses Ramaswamy over Democrat Amy Acton in the race to succeed him as Ohio’s governor.
World's first round-trip mission to Mars has launched — why it could be a 'transformative leap' for science
The Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission, which launched from Japan on Oct. 19, is on its way to Mars. When it arrives, the probe will attempt to land on one of the Red Planet's twin moons and scoop up rocks to bring back to Earth. Experts tell Live Science what these "transformative" samples could teach us.
GTA 6 Standard Edition vs. Ultimate Edition: Which Version Is the Better Deal?
Rockstar offers two ways to experience GTA 6; here's how to choose which one is for you.
As Trump's support slips, white evangelicals remain his Republican bedrock
Polling and interviews show they remain his most reliable constituency
Judge directs President Trump to sit for deposition in his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC
Trump had agreed to sit for a deposition on Oct. 16, but it was cancelled for what was described as a “matter of national importance.”
Irondale cuts fire protection water bills after businesses report massive rate increases
IRONDALE, Ala. (WBMA) — After an Irondale business reported its monthly fire protection water bill skyrocketed from $78 to more than $1,700, city leaders have a
Top Weekly Entertainment Picks
Get ready for a full weekend of headline concerts and seasonal fun in South Jersey. Hear Godsmack perform live at Hard Rock, enjoy a seasonal market with
Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas charged in public corruption case
The 82-year-old surrendered to authorities to face charges Thursday, the Justice Department said. She was charged along with a half-dozen others.
Doc Maker Rocky Mudaliar Signs With Verve (Exclusive)
His Abrupt Entertainment produced the celebrity documentary ‘Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story,' about the comedian and his family's stunning financial betrayal.
On Main Street, Goldman Sachs makes a big bet on AI
The Wall Street giant says it’s teaming up with OpenAI, Google, Meta and Anthropic to help small businesses embrace artificial intelligence.
Proms, parties and gender politics: amazing photos from American dancefloors – and what they tell us about a changing nation
From George Balanchine to the Rockettes, the US magazine regularly ran lavish photo spreads dedicated to dance, with the myriad ways people moved their bodies holding up a mirror to the changing times
The Houston Rockets Defeat the Dallas Mavericks in Opening Game
The Houston Rockets dominated in their season opener, defeating the Dallas Mavericks 128 to 110.
Reviewing Rockies Season: Hunter Goodman
Once Colorado Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman solidified his position as the team's top home run threat, he really thrived throughout a tough season.
Trump’s growing list of campaign pledges: From the Politics Desk
Plus, Witkoff’s praise for Putin draws bipartisan backlash.
ENTERTAINMENT: Zoo hosts Howl-o-Ween; CALS holds Dia de Muertos Festival
Celebrate Halloween early this Saturday with family-friendly fun at Little Rock Zoo's Howl-O-Ween event and the annual Day of the Dead Festival hosted by CALS.
Chickasaw-owned gaming company expands into Wyoming with racing acquisition
Chickasaw Nation-owned Global Gaming Solutions has expanded into Wyoming with the acquisition of Wyoming Horse Racing. The deal adds 13 Horse Palace gaming and off-track betting venues, more than 1,500 historic horse racing machines and live racing operations at Sweetwater Downs in Rock Springs, Wyo. The company announced the completed acquisition Oct. 20, following Wyoming […]
SpaceX offers employees extra pay to help build its data centers
Elon Musk's rocket company is offering employees a 20% pay bump if they volunteer to move, according to an email seen by Business Insider.
Beloved rock musician stepping away due to ‘sudden and fairly serious health issue’
He shared the news on the band's social media pages.
Arkansas State Fair expands on entertainment
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- It’s day 6 of the Arkansas State Fair being open, and tonight is ladies’ night. There will be live performances. The sea lions will have two live performances, along with the lumberjacks. After Dj Deja Blue will hit the stage to get everyone warmed up for a night of line dancing. For […]
Arkansas State Fair expands on entertainment
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- It’s day 6 of the Arkansas State Fair being open, and tonight is ladies’ night. There will be live performances. The sea lions will have two live performances, along …
Arkansas State Fair expands on entertainment
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- It’s day 6 of the Arkansas State Fair being open, and tonight is ladies’ night. There will be live performances. The sea lions will have two live performances, along with the lumber...
How to secure Cyndi Lauper presale tickets today for 2027 ‘Live in Las Vegas’ shows
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer will perform 10 shows at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace across two runs in February and September.
Christina Applegate’s Health Journey, From Early MS Symptoms to Learning She was Misdiagnosed
After years of treatment, hospitalizations and pain, the actor says her misdiagnosis isn’t welcome news.
Watch: The SpaceX rocket science inside Tesla’s new Roadster
Explore the physics and challenges behind Tesla's Roadster stunts, rocket science, thrusters, and road-legal feasibility.
Rock Hill property sale could be tied to Atrium Health, records show
The telecommunications company, Comporium, sold eight Rock Hill properties on Oct. 13 to a Charlotte-based company, possibly affiliated with Atrium Health.
New York congressional candidate Brad Lander says he was detained by IDF in the West Bank
Lander, the former New York City comptroller, wrote in a post on X that he was detained by the Israeli Defense Forces while harvesting olives with other volunteers.
Earth’s Core Has Been Quietly Leaking Water for Billions of Years
A new study offers an explanation for unusual chemical signatures found in some volcanic rocks.
Live updates: Trump to rally for Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina
Live updates and the latest news as Trump rallies for Darline Graham in South Carolina and the candidates for Senate in Michigan and Kansas and governor in Wisconsin debate.
Senate District 8 Candidates Weigh Health Care Costs and Natural Resources
Seasoned legislator Tyson Running Wolf, a Democrat, and health care professional Christopher Paul Buckles, a Republican, are competing to represent Senate District 8. The district covers the Blackfeet Reservation and the east side of the Rocky Mountains, crossing the range into parts of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) Reservation. Running Wolf, 52, grew […]
FACT FOCUS: When it comes to Trump's economy, these are the numbers that matter before Nov. 3
President Donald Trump is trying to convince voters before the Nov. 3 midterm elections that the U.S. economy is rocketing upward.
The Quiet Deadline Addition for the Rockies
The Colorado Rockies made several moves at the trade deadline as their rebuild continues. The pitching prospects the Rockies received in return rightfully got most of the headlines, as several of them landed in the Rockies' top 30. But a quiet addition to the Victor Vodnik trade with the Miami Marlins, infielder Connor Norby, became …
Eagle Scout nominated for Service Award
Eagle Scout John Casper of Round Rock Troop 157 has been nominated for a Distinguished Conservation Service Award by the Capitol Area Council. DCSA is Scouting America’s highest conservation honor.
SpaceX’s Musk Lauds Its Soaring Cloud Business and Possible Tesla Merger
SpaceX put on a bit of a show for shareholders today—and I’m not referring to the sizzle reel of rocket and space videos it showed on its earnings call. No, the big attention grabber was the update from CEO Elon Musk on the progress of SpaceX’s contemplated merger with Tesla and just how ...
A massive asteroid slammed into the North Sea and unleashed a 330-foot tsunami
A decades-long mystery beneath the North Sea has finally been solved. Scientists have confirmed that the Silverpit Crater, buried 700 meters below the seabed, was created when a 160-meter-wide asteroid struck Earth roughly 43 to 46 million years ago. The violent collision blasted a towering curtain of rock and water 1.5 kilometers into the air and triggered a tsunami more than 100 meters high.
Justice Elena Kagan accuses Supreme Court’s conservative majority of undermining democracy
The liberal justice took aim at various recent rulings, including one that paved the way for rampant partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts.
SpaceX touts possible Tesla merger after profits soar
After a stellar SpaceX earnings announcement, chief executive Elon Musk said the rocket company is considering a merger with Tesla, the electric car company he also helms.
GTA 6 Fans Think Rockstar Games Is Shooting an Elaborate and Expensive Live-Action Trailer in Miami
Eagle-eyed Rockstar fans have noticed camera crews recording convoys of flashy GTA-themed cars in Miami, creating speculation over a new live-action trailer.
Bank OZK posts quarterly declines in income and revenue
Little Rock-based Bank OZK on Tuesday (Oct. 20) announced declines in quarterly net income and revenue, and in its management comments noted that some of the bank’s commercial real estate...
It Looks Like GTA 6's Beer Brands Are About to Become Real
It appears that Rockstar may be preparing to sell beer brands from GTA 6 in real life.
Round Rock City Council to consider incentive for semiconductor industry business
City of Round Rock officials will vote on an economic development agreement supporting an expansion of PulseForge during their Oct. 22 meeting.
The Senate map expands (again): From the Politics Desk
Plus, the secretary of state races to watch.
SpaceX Swings to a Profit, Even as A.I. Spending Soars
Elon Musk’s rocket company also said its revenue had more than doubled, driven by its Starlink internet satellite service and artificial intelligence products.
Kansas to ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ at Hard Rock Feb. 4
With a music catalog that continues to resonate with generations of fans, classic rock band Kansas is making its return to the Hard Rock Live stage inside Hard Rock Hotel
The Secret to Life on Earth Was What Made It Stop Being a Poisonous Ice Ball
Ancient South African rocks expose the chain reaction behind life’s first real growth spurt.
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
Pennsylvania warns of rise in congenital measles and infection during pregnancy
State health officials said that 66 pregnant women have gotten measles since the outbreak began in April.
Democrats jump into Mississippi Sente race
Senate Majority PAC announced it is launching a new ad campaign in Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom is challenging GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Ice Cream Shop Owner Brought Her Kids to Work. Then the Health Department Arrived
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Ranking the Rockies, 2026: No. 39, Blake Adams
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Christina Applegate Tearfully Shares She Was Misdiagnosed With MS: ‘Back at Square One’
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GTA 6 is so detailed no single Rockstar employee has seen it all - which is exactly how we got shrinking horse testicles in Red Dead Redemption 2
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A note to readers: Science, accountability and elections
Dear readers, As early voting begins, I wanted to share some news — and why it connects to the decisions we make at the ballot box. I’ve been selected for the inaugural cohort of the South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub mentorship program, hosted by Covering Climate Now. I’m excited to join this group, learn from scientists and fellow journalists, and expand my science reporting. Science directly ties to governance. Local officials make decisions about where development goes, how infrastructure is maintained, what emergency preparations receive funding, and how communities rebuild after disasters. Understanding the evidence behind those decisions helps us evaluate whether our government is serving us well. Here in western North Carolina, those connections are all around us, in Lake Lure and beyond. Flood maps inform decisions about property and development. Engineering assessments help identify risks at dams and bridges. Rainfall forecasts guide emergency preparations. Geological information helps explain landslide hazards. Water testing gives communities information they need to assess conditions. Meteorologists’ knowledge and public perception of weather events shape public safety. Each involves scientific or technical knowledge. Each also raises questions about public responsibility: What did officials know? How did they use that information? What did they tell the public? What did taxpayers receive for their money? A study can identify a problem. Elected officials still have to decide what to do about it, how to pay for it, and how to explain their choices. Reporting should examine both the evidence and the response. That is where I want to strengthen my work. My reporting on Helene recovery, infrastructure, flooding, public safety, and public spending has repeatedly brought me to questions that require scientific expertise alongside public records. This mentorship may help me better understand the research, ask more precise questions, and explain the answers clearly. I also bring the perspective of someone living with these concerns. I live downstream of Lake Lure Dam, and landslides affected my property during Helene. Those experiences bring urgency to my questions. Careful reporting helps establish the answers. Readers deserve to know what the evidence shows, where uncertainty remains, and whether officials accurately describe the information guiding their decisions. You also deserve scrutiny of proposed solutions: what they cost, what they are expected to accomplish, and what risks remain. Access to that information matters. As a mostly deaf journalist who relies on written communication, I will continue pressing for written public warnings, records, and explanations that people can read and use in real time. As you consider the candidates seeking your vote, consider how they approach evidence, preparedness, and transparency. Do they support local journalism, even when it’s not parroting a press release? Do they explain weather events clearly in plain English and explain their decisions after them? Make supporting records available? Acknowledge uncertainty? Follow through when a report identifies a risk? Those are practical questions about governing. Thank you for supporting Cops & Congress and the work that makes these questions part of the public conversation. I’m grateful to David Dickson and the CC Now team for this opportunity, and I look forward to bringing what I learn back to you. Annie DanceEditor & Publisher, Cops & Congress — Learn more about this newsletter, ethics policy, how you can help shape this work, and support it. Follow on X and Facebook. Send constructive criticism, fan mail, and tips with public documents for future stories: CopsandCongress@gmail.com ICYMI: View the Cops & Congress archive — Annie Dance is the publisher of Cops & Congress, a newsletter that analyzes what happens when crime, courts, disaster, democracy, and small-town policies collide. Views expressed here are covered by the First Amendment. Dance has a Bachelor of Arts from Manhattan University in Communication with a focus in Journalism and Government. She has been a journalist for over 20 years. Share Upgrade now or give a gift subscription
Sensor Tower data shows the yawning gap between GTA 6 and everything else
In terms of preorder numbers, Rockstar's game is 148% head of 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at this point from launch
Griffin William Sherry to bring folk, country, rock to The Grand
Join Maine-born singer-songwriter Griffin William Sherry and friends for an evening of powerful songwriting and live music at The Grand on Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. Experience Sherry's unique blend of folk, country, and rock and roll, rooted in his rural Maine upbringing. Get your tickets now for this unforgettable musical event.
The Data Dive: Steve Kornacki on how Susan Collins could transcend Trump in Maine
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Middling production from Brock Purdy in Week 6
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Trump uses antisemitic slur in defending Sen. Roger Marshall at rally in Kansas
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Adam Levine recounts ‘really uncomfortable’ performance for rock legend on ‘The Voice’
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Nearly $1M in sports, Pokémon cards stolen from FedEx truck in California
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Charisse Childers joins Halsey Real Estate team
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Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory open house returns with record turnout as it navigates rocky funding future
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Covenant Health helicopters take flight to speed up medical transport in East Tennessee
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Texas Democratic candidate for governor sues to review emails between Elon Musk and Greg Abbott
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa alleged in her lawsuit that Gov. Greg Abbott is “unlawfully withholding communications” between his office and tech CEO Elon Musk.
You can still get into Macklemore’s sold-out Red Rocks Amphitheatre show for under $100
The Seattle rapper plays a sold-out show in Morrison on Oct. 22.
'There's No One Person That Has This Whole Thing in Their Head' — GTA 6 Devs Had Freedom to Add Cool Features Just Like RDR2's Horse Balls
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How the midterms will shape 2028 and beyond: From the Politics Desk
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Top business leaders sound the alarm over skilled worker shortage
From the people who keep us safe on the roads to those who wire our homes and are building the infrastructure powering the AI boom, America needs skilled workers. But a new report finds that the nation isn’t doing enough to keep up with demand. NBC’s Christine Romans sits down exclusively with BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Ford’s Jim Farley, Google’s Ruth Porat and Carhartt’s Linda Hubbard, who have come together with an urgent message.
A blue-collar bellwether weighs ousting longtime GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine
Voters in Lewiston helped propel Collins to victory in her last election. Some are ready for a change, but others are wary of losing Collins’ sway in the Senate.
Tatum O'Neal shares rare photo amid stroke recovery
After a rocky few years, Tatum O'Neal is looking on the bright side.
Health and Human Services nurses win Public Health Award
Two Gunnison County Health and Human Services public health nurses, Shonna Gray and Amelia Meyer, were awarded the Exemplary Public Health Nurse Award at the recent Public Health in the Rockies …
Richie Owens' releases new book Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines & the Long Journey Home Vol 2
NASHVILLE — Richie Owens, Nashville-based musician, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for his work fusing his East Tennessee country roots with punk and alternative rock, has released Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines &
Researchers Discover a Blood-Pressure Drug May Stimulate “Healthy” Brown Fat
Losartan, a drug commonly prescribed for high blood pressure, boosts brown adipose tissue or “brown fat” activity and enhances its metabolism, according to a preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers.
Japan's sample return mission to Phobos may also collect some Mars dust
Japan’s MMX mission will be the first to the moons of Mars and it aims to bring back precious rock samples — perhaps even indirectly from Mars.
Go Your Own Way to the Niswonger This Saturday for Rumours of Fleetwood Mac
Van Wert, OH [Oct 19, 2026] -Your Saturday night plans are calling, and they come with a legendary soundtrack! Rumours of Fleetwood Mac brings the music of one of rock’s
Add a Handful of This Fall Food to Boost Fiber and Antioxidants, Dietitian Says
In TODAY.com’s Expert Tip of the Day, a dietitian shares her favorite fall food to add a sprinkle of nutrients to meals.
RCPS seeks funds to expand science labs, STEAM education
CONYERS — Rockdale County Public Schools could receive up to $1 million to expand elementary science labs and arts education through a state tax credit initiative, as district officials work
The Brockman Gallery is celebrated in new LACMA exhibition
The Brockman Gallery, founded by brothers Alonzo and Dale Brockman Davis after the Watts rebellion, became a community hub for multicultural experimentation in art. That legacy is explored in a new exhibition at LACMA.
Elbit adds $235 million deal to growing European rocket business
The contract covers PULS artillery systems, EXTRA-MR rockets and logistical support. It follows a series of European rocket artillery deals worth more than $1.2 billion combined, according to estimates.
Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools
U.S. consumers are uneasy about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting prices. Digital price tags are replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. AI tools
LIVE: Avenged Sevenfold at Brisbane Entertainment Centre -
18 October 2026 - Brisbane Entertainment Centre - words by Lucas Bell - pictures by Isis Totora It’s been 4621 days since the California rockers Avenged Sevenfold have graced a stage in Brisbane. Off the back of Soundwave 2014, no one anticipated the second billed band of the festival would take over 12 years to
Faith and fury: Texas Senate rivals offer contrasting visions
One preaches love and reconciliation.He defeated the more combative congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary, promising a "politics of love."
Massachusetts GOP ticket rocked by alleged drunken crash as candidate abruptly halts campaign
Massachusetts Republican Shawn Oliver suspended his lieutenant governor campaign after a DUI arrest following a rollover crash in New Bedford.