AI News Archive: June 3, 2026 — Part 12
Sourced from 500+ daily AI sources, scored by relevance.
- Google Deepmind's Gemma 4 12B squeezes multimodal AI onto a laptop with just 16 GB of RAM
Google Deepmind's Gemma 4 12B is an open-source model that processes text, images, and audio natively and runs on laptops with just 16 GB of RAM. It nearly matches the twice-as-large 26B model in benchmarks and ships under an Apache 2.0 license for commercial use. The article Google Deepmind's Gemma 4 12B squeezes multimodal AI onto a laptop with just 16 GB of RAM appeared first on The Decoder .
- Google DeepMind Releases Gemma 4 12B: An Encoder-Free Multimodal Model with Native audio that runs on a 16 GB laptop
Google DeepMind Releases Gemma 4 12B: An Encoder-Free Multimodal Model with Native audio that runs on a 16 GB laptop MarkTechPost
- This Is How Trump Finally Signed the AI Executive Order
After shelving the original executive order last month, Donald Trump finally got on board Monday night.
- Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models
The order, which signaled a shift from the hands-off approach the White House had previously taken toward A.I., followed debates over how to gain control of A.I. models without disrupting innovation.
- Trump signs executive order seeking oversight of AI models
Trump signs executive order seeking oversight of AI models
- Trump signs looser AI order amid China competition concerns
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) oversight after watering down measures due to concerns about hindering competition with China. AI providers are asked to give the government 30 days to vet new models before their release, down from 90 days in an earlier order that Trump ditched at the last minute two weeks ago. The revised order, signed without fanfare on Tuesday, also creates an “AI cybersecurity clearing house” for companies and the government...
- Trump's new executive order wants AI companies to voluntarily submit models for government safety reviews
The White House has issued an executive order requiring agencies like the Pentagon and CISA to strengthen cyber defense with AI tools within 30 days. AI developers can voluntarily submit models for security testing, but the order explicitly rules out mandatory approval. Given recent government pressure on AI companies, how voluntary this cooperation really is remains an open question. The article Trump's new executive order wants AI companies to voluntarily submit models for government safety reviews appeared first on The Decoder .
- Trump Signs Executive Order For AI Testing Prior To Frontier Model Releases
Last week we were expecting an Executive Order on Thursday. Then Trump cancelled it, and said he wouldn’t sign it because he was worried it would be too burdensome. Then, with one change, he went ahead and signed it on Tuesday anyway. The Overton Window has shifted . Nothing was not really a viable option anymore. The Previously Dead Executive Order For several days, we thought that David Sacks, together with others like Elon Musk, had successfully lobbied to kill the Executive Order. The ‘My Offer Is Nothing’ faction looked to have won. Word on the street was the order was essentially dead. Dean Ball and Daniel Kokotajlo agreed, with the Executive Order looking dead, that the particular regime in the Executive Order is likely worse than nothing. This is plausible, given it did not exactly involve a lot of deliberate thought. Nothing, however, was clearly not going to cut it. We are facing, and will increasingly face, calls for action to regulate AI. Representative Lori Trahan : There’s no federal law on the books governing how the most powerful AI systems in the world are built, tested or deployed. No independent auditors verify their safety claims. No federal agency has clear authority to step in when something goes wrong. Congress must act now on AI. Representative Lori Trahan : First, real accountability at the frontier. The largest AI companies should be required to publish and comply with safety and security frameworks. They should have to submit to third-party audits to show their work, and federal and state regulators should be empowered to enforce and update those requirements as the technology evolves. The most powerful labs also should not be allowed to silence whistleblowers who want to expose wrongdoing. The companies building models that could reshape our future should not be operating on the honor system. Second, independent verification of safety practices. The federal government cannot verify every AI model itself, nor should it try. Instead, it can accredit private organizations to embed within frontier labs, assess their safety practices, and call in federal and state enforcers when the companies fall short. These organizations must be nimble, transparent, and built for the speed of the technology while ensuring Congress, regulators, and the public know whether safety commitments made in press releases are being honored in practice. Third, protect American workers. The lesson from Haverhill is that job training after the fact is not a policy. What workers need is a real-time picture of how AI is reshaping the labor market so Congress can get ahead of disruptions rather than respond years too late. When AI is the reason workers get pink slips, employers should have to say so. Updating WARN Act requirements would mandate disclosures when AI drives a mass layoff, so we stop pretending that decisions like the one Brooks Brothers made happen in a vacuum. We need a framework built on the belief that the workers who built this economy deserve to lead in the next one. Finally, shore up our cyber defenses. Dean W. Ball (responding to the Tweet only, up to ‘Congress must act now’): Rep. Trahan is right. Like any general-purpose technology, “AI policy” will ultimately be shared across layers of government. Cities, for example, can license robotaxis. But the development of frontier models is clearly interstate commerce and merits a preemptive federal law. I genuinely don’t understand how anyone could not see this basic point. If “national-security and public-safety risks arising from the development of extremely expensive-to-produce, globally distributed emerging technology” are not a federal government responsibility, I don’t know what is. When the federal government claims domain over a policy area—especially one implicating national security—it usually preempts state law, to avoid confusion and assert direct responsibility for the issue. This is not complicated. People with blanket opposition to preemption remind me of the anti-federalists at the nation’s founding, who wanted America to be an EU-style confederation of nations rather than a union of states. Even Ted Cruz is getting into the act now, this was after the EO was signed: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): AI is developing rapidly. This administration is right to recognize the cybersecurity risks posed by advanced models. Now, it’s Congress’s turn. We must address catastrophic risk without ceding ground to China or restricting Americans’ free expression. The Return Of The Executive Order Then the White House issued their Executive Order after all . It’s back. Brad Smith (President of Microsoft): This executive order is an important step toward advancing innovation while protecting the security of the American public. We welcome this effort by the Administration. Anthropic : This Executive Order is an important step in strengthening America’s leadership in AI. We look forward to collaborating with the White House to support its implementation. Those were the only two corporate statements I saw. What Does The Executive Order Do The Executive Order starts out talking about innovation, in its title and purpose, because a lot of pro-innovation people care deeply about vibes. Section 2 sets a rapid timeline for implementing stronger cyber defenses. That part seems clearly good and I don’t expect any serious objections. Section 4 has the attorney general go after AI-enabled cybercrime, and Section 5 is the disclaimers, Section 1 is vibes. Sure. Section 3, the big one, is called ‘Secure Frontier Model Development.’ It calls for various agency heads to, within 2 months, coordinate on: A classified benchmarking process for cyber capabilities to determine what is a ‘covered frontier model.’ A voluntary framework to let labs get benchmarked, and give the government early confidential and secure model access for ‘up to 30 days’ before release to ‘other trusted partners.’ Definitely not in any way create a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance or permitting requirement, oh no sir, absolutely not. Thirty Days Is a Lot Less Than Ninety Days The big difference between this and the old draft is that ‘up to 90 days’ before release has become up to 30 days. This is probably a good change, especially for a voluntary regime, because 90 days is more than an entire product cycle. Yes Your Frontier Lab Will Be Participating Make no mistake. This is a de facto mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance and permitting requirement. Welcome to The Prior Restraint Era. There is a reason “voluntary framework” gets put in air quotes at this link . Yes, you could choose to not participate in this, but if you know what is good for you and you have relevant frontier models to test, then you will participate. Oh, you will. Jessica Tillipman emphasizes that you’ll need to participate if you want to do business with the Federal Government. That is true enough but the guns will not stop there. The Rules Will Be Classified Why will the rules be classified? Maybe because we are going to have a confidential cyber eval. Or there is another possibility. Dean W. Ball : my bet is they’re classifying the benchmarking process to hide the fact that they’re not going to be able to agree to a regulatory threshold better than 10^26 flop Total Lennart Heim victory. Yes Prior Restraint With Confidential Testing Is Rather Regulatory Dean Ball notices that POTUS said the draft EO was too regulatory , and then went ahead and signed the same thing anyway, except for shrinking the 90 day window to 30. Dean Ball: Wow. This EO is almost exactly similar to the leaked text from the EO POTUS chose not to sign because it was too regulatory. The only major difference is that the “voluntary” pre-deployment review process is now 30 days rather than 90. That is a concession, but a very small one compared to what I would have expected based on the President’s remarks about the earlier draft. This is fairly major win for the safety contingent within the Admin, and a significant loss for the Sacks/accelerationist wing, and is surprising to me. I continue to think this EO is a mistake. This is clearly teeing up the infrastructure for a model licensing regime, and the fact that the administration is classifying the details of how this “voluntary” system will work is egregious. The public and the employees of the labs have a right to know how this works. Most lab staff don’t have clearances, but if the literal regulatory thresholds that trigger pre-deployment review are classified, researchers themselves won’t know whether what they are training is regulated by this EO. All for a benefit that is barely articulable; what, exactly, is the intelligence community going to do in 30 days to make the models safer? It’s not a huge mistake, but a small-medium sized one. But I am fairly confident this is a mistake nonetheless. Neil Chilson also notes the EO did not change much and refers back to his previous analysis. Neil Chilson : My full hot take: The EO properly rejects any intent to create a mandatory government licensing, preclearance, or permitting regime for AI models, as the previously leaked draft also did. Its reduction of the federal preview period from up to 90 days to up to 30 days also provides increased certainty. Yet significant ambiguities remain. The order sets no firm deadline for the government to determine whether a model is subject to the preview period. It also sets no firm deadline for government input on which trusted partners may receive a frontier model after the 30-day period ends. Those gaps could be used to pick winners and losers, or to give short-term national security concerns excessive weight at the expense of longer-term national security, economic growth, innovation, and other national interests. At the same time, the current informal approach may already be vulnerable to arbitrary application and unpredictable results. So, the EO may improve on the status quo. But it deserves close and ongoing scrutiny, especially from Congress, which bears the ultimate responsibility for writing the rules that govern AI. The flip side, from Dean’s colleague Samuel Hammond: Samuel Hammond : I’m glad this EO exists and am less concerned about predeployment review mutating into a licensing regime than Dean. However, I share his concern about transparency and confidentiality. I’d much rather lean into existing eval expertise at CAISI, which (as a standards org within NIST) is both transparent by design and a guard against the potential for mission creep within our opaque security apparatus. The NSA et al. should still be involved (CAISI already has ways to interface with the IC, and could produce reports with a confidential annex) but it’d ease my mind if the core capacity was anchored in a civilian agency. Confidential benchmarks are also a bad precedent for the reasons Dean gives. They are also not super necessary. Labs routinely publish uplift results on bio and cyber risk without disclosing what’s in the benchmark itself. The NSA should just develop its own confidential benchmark, NSAbench, and create a portal for anyone to submit a model and run it against their private test set. Samuel Hammond : NSA is a *spy agency* not an eval shop. Running a model passed a spy agency before wide release could easily undermine trust in and demand for US AI models in Europe and elsewhere. We need a more durable approach to differential access that’s civilian-led. I agree that the confidentiality aspects here are troublesome and ripe for abuse. I think it is fine for there to be particular cyber or other catastrophic risk evals that are kept confidential, to avoid contamination or gaming, but that only refers to the contents of the benchmark. Keeping its overall structure and the results secret too is a lot more dangerous, for little gain. NSA Bench would be fine, but this should all be administered by CAISI. Spy agencies will think mainly about themselves and their abilities, and prioritize that over everything else, which we want to avoid, and yes this obvious next step would cause some amount of lost trust. The ‘good news’ is that there will be little choice but to trust American models if others do not want to shoot themselves in the foot and be left behind. The bad news is there is a lot of eagerness to shoot selves in the foot. Peter Wildeford has additional thoughts about how to build on the Executive Order and plug its weaknesses. Mark Beall and AIPN issue a statement of support , while calling for further building of situational awareness and paying attention to potential superintelligence. At WSJ, James Freeman is dismayed by Trump turning away from his previous ‘deregulatory zeal,’ warning that regulators might start interfering and doing damage. This seems like a fully general ‘if the US government touches AI then inevitably the whole thing is crippled and all is lost’ argument. Certainly this is a possible road, but I don’t think this EO makes it that much more likely. We Have Concerns The serious concerns with the Executive Order are: This very obviously is a licensing or prior restraint regime, even if it promises to be a harmful one where everyone who needs one can get a de facto license. There are various ways the government could slow walk permission to release a model, including well beyond the indicated 30 day window. Or they could start asking for various other concessions or requirements or otherwise interfering. This looks like it hands a central role to NSA and our spies, rather than CAISI. The 30 day window is ‘prior to other trusted partners’ rather than prior to general release. This could mean shutting out access even to UK AISI or METR, within that window, or to cybersecurity teams at Google or Microsoft. Winners and losers will be picked during the 30 day window as Per 3(iii), with the government deciding who does and does not get early access. Winners and losers could be selected even after the 30 day period, holding back releases indefinitely, although the order does not explicitly grant that power. With Mythos, they have already done some of that picking winners and losers, with the US government vetoing some expansions of access to Project Glasswing. This only covers cyber threats, and ignores all other threats or the possibility of superintelligence, although once this is in place they could do almost anything they want. It also does not cover threats around theft of model weights. If internal use is a lot of your threat model, this doesn’t help with that. We need to base our AI policy on laws passed by Congress, not one man rule. What will the next President do in 2029 if we go in this direction? Anyone reading this the way adversaries tried to read previous proposals like SB 1047 would presumably be rightfully having a conniption fit, as this grants essentially unlimited leverage to the Executive branch. Yes, all of this is ‘voluntary,’ and sufficient abuse of the program could make companies not want to participate, but good luck dealing with the consequences if you tell the President no. My view of the Executive Order’s Section 3 is that this implementation threatens to go in dangerous directions, and I’m sad about some implementation details opening the door to abuse, but if the The Offer Was Nothing as the alternative, yeah, you have to do it. Thus I think we should be happy about this versus the alternatives, even though there are serious issues with details and implementation and there is a substantial chance we look back and regret this, perhaps quite a lot. We should try to turn this into an actual law as soon as possible. We had our opportunity to do ‘this is hard to abuse’ forms of frontier model regulation, to do things the easy and better way, with things like the frontier parts of the Biden EO (it also contained some woke nonsense) and SB 1047, at a time when we carefully debated clauses to deal with worst-case scenario attempts at government abuse. That window is closed now. We have to make policy within the Trump White House, and Dean Ball’s service term is over, so this is as good as we likely are going to get. We should still try and do better, but I am not so optimistic. Yes, this could end up leading down a road of regulation that interferes and does damage, including for little or no safety gain, if the government does not act responsibly. I take that threat seriously. I don’t think this increases the chance of that happening too much, but it is the price, especially given some of the implementation errors, and the alternative is to do nothing. Remember that if the Executive wants to go down such roads, now or a different one, they can always just issues more EOs. Saving Face The Executive Order represents a victory for the safety-oriented faction within the White House, and a stark defeat for David Sacks and the no-regulation-no-matter-what faction. Basically, David Sacks has chosen to lay aside all the concerns he had, and all his attempts to stop the Order (including successfully delaying it) to suddenly say no, it is all fine since we got the window down to 30 days. Shakeel : Sacks briefing journalists in an effort to save face here — this is quite clearly not what happened. Note, of course, how Sacks himself uses the exact same language here , in case you had doubts about Axios’s source David Sacks: First, President Trump is the most pro-innovation president we’ve ever had. … The change in the EO from a 90 day to 30 day period is a game changer because it allows our AI labs to comply with the voluntary framework without delaying new model releases. … We are NOT conducting oversight of all new models, as that level of government overreach would have chilling effects on free speech and innovation. … OSTP’s characterization is completely consistent with the discussions that I have participated in, where it was agreed that the EO is intended to apply only to models that represent a meaningful step-change in cyber capabilities (eg Mythos), not to incremental version numbers of existing models (eg Opus 4.7 -> 4.8). … Finally, I understand the concerns of many that this could morph into an “FDA for AI”. Of course bureaucratic mission creep is always a danger and this should be closely monitored. But the EO expressly forbids the creation of a new licensing, preclearance, or permitting regime. Most importantly, I do not believe that President Trump would allow this to happen. I find the ‘we are not conducting oversight of all new models’ point true but also especially rich coming from David Sacks. Time and again him and his allies have insisted that other laws that apply only to the biggest of tech would somehow cripple ‘little tech’ without having any impact on little tech whatsoever. So yes, you finally admit you noticed this contrast, great. Similarly, suddenly ‘this could lead to an FDA for AI’ is fine because Trump would never allow that? How is this different from all the other proposals you warned about using the same logic? And even if Trump is vigilant and responsible, what happens in 2029, since Sacks does not expect a singularity? The richest of all, of course, was to say that the EO ‘explicitly forbids’ exactly the thing it does, the creation of a new licensing, preclearance or permitting regime. Once again, there is no reason to say you’re totally not doing that and you forbid doing that, unless you are doing it. Sacks claims that he pushed for the language forbidding the thing. Well, okay, but that language does exactly nothing. I think the Sacks faction literally does not understand the difference between actual rules and actions versus meaningless vibes and gestures, or does not care. He also claims he got other concessions, which might be true. How Frontier Or Different Are We Talking Here The interesting real content here is the claim that this applies only to a ‘meaningful step-up in Cyber capabilities’ a la Mythos. That is not how I read the Executive Order, and also 4.8 does represent a substantial increase in cyber capabilities over 4.7, if nothing like Mythos-level. Nor would Sacks have ever, ever have accepted that kind of argument from advocates of other regulations. I wonder how this will actually play out. What To Watch For We should expect every plausibly frontier lab to participate. If any decline, that will be a big deal, but this is a given. Thus, here are some questions to track. How much will they tell us about which models count, and what the tests look like? Will they publish any of the results? The more secretive the tests and determinations, the more concerning. The more open they are, the better. Ideally the test itself will be confidential, but not the results. If the results are hidden even from the labs, oh no. Which models will be deemed relevant, and how much of an upgrade will be necessary before concern is raised? Would they have covered Opus 4.7 or Opus 4.8, despite Mythos? What if Mythos didn’t exist? If this only applies in practice to major leaps forward like Mythos, there is a lot less to worry about. Will they actually hold up Mythos or other models byond the 30 day window, or continue dictating who gets access, or both, especially if models that are less of a leap forward? Or will this in practice mean mostly you get waived on through? Will this be expanded to check for other catastrophic risks, including biological threats, or only stick to cyber? Will this otherwise be used as a stepping stone? Will there be any attempt to codify any of this with Congress? Will there be any further requirements placed upon the labs? Politico frames this as a victory for safety advocates and a way for them to keep pushing forward. Will we give CAISI the funding it needs? Who ends up actually running this operation and administering the tests and deciding how to handle the models? Abundance Institute focuses on the role of the NSA as the benchmarker . The more the NSA runs the show, the more concerned we should get. On a different note, who is reacting to this in a way consistent with their stated principles and arguments, and who is suddenly changing their tune or staying strangely silent? Watch, and remember, and remember which aspects still are raised as objections and which ones aren’t. Discuss
- Trump signs AI executive order seeking 30-day government access to frontier models before release — voluntary framework will include classified benchmark to determine which models qualify
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that asks AI companies to give the federal government early access to their most capable models.
- Trump orders federal oversight of new AI models
Trump orders federal oversight of new AI models verdict.co.uk
- Trump signs AI order that asks companies to give government early access
Trump signs AI order that asks companies to give government early access USA Today
- President Trump signs executive order on AI. Here’s what to know
President Trump signs executive order on AI. Here’s what to know Dallas News
- Trump signs order requesting AI companies submit products for government review
President Trump is asking artificial intelligence firms to submit new models for government review. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to Alondra Nelson, who worked on AI policy in the Biden administration.
- Trump's Executive Order on AI Risks Gives AI Companies a Free Pass
The order, intended to review artificial intelligence models that could pose risks to the US, is strictly voluntary.
- Trump signs an executive order that invites vetting of top AI models for national security risks
Trump signs an executive order that invites vetting of top AI models for national security risks Austin American-Statesman
- Trump signs AI order giving government access to powerful models
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order creating a voluntary framework under which AI developers will share advanced models with the government before public release.
- Sam Altman goes to the Hill as OpenAI preps policy framework
Altman plans to meet with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and others.
- Microsoft unveils new AI models to lessen reliance on OpenAI and lower costs for developers
At its Build developer conference, Microsoft announced a series of generative AI models to try and crack a market controlled by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
- Microsoft launches its own AI models to take on OpenAI and Anthropic
Seven in-house models unveiled at Build 2026 signal Microsoft's push to cut costs and compete directly on the AI frontier as its biggest investees plan to launch record-breaking IPOs.
- Microsoft Launches 7 AI Models Across Coding, Voice and Reasoning
Microsoft also introduced Frontier Tuning, a reinforcement learning system that lets organisations customise AI models using their own workflows and data.
- Microsoft unveils AI models in push for independence from OpenAI
Microsoft unveils AI models in push for independence from OpenAI
- Microsoft teases new era of AI-driven devices
Microsoft yesterday announced a sweeping slate of AI initiatives, from autonomous workplace assistants and gadgets to Nvidia-powered PCs and a new in-house reasoning model, in a push to move beyond apps and remake computing around AI.
- Microsoft Unveils AI-Powered Windows Features for Developers
Microsoft’s Build 2026 Windows updates add developer setup tools, local AI models, Linux workflows, and agent security controls. The post Microsoft Unveils AI-Powered Windows Features for Developers appeared first on TechRepublic .
- Microsoft Positions Windows as an Operating Environment for AI Agents
The recent Microsoft Build 2026 developer conference highlighted a significant shift in the company's Windows strategy. Rather than presenting artificial intelligence as a collection of standalone features, Microsoft is increasingly positioning Windows as a platform for AI agents.
- Mark Zuckerberg Wants Meta’s New AI Agents to Run Your Whole Business
The new agent is part of the company’s effort to broaden beyond its core consumer business as it spends aggressively on artificial intelligence.
- Hasbro’s New AI Studio Looks to Bring Its Iconic Characters to Next-Generation Experiences
Hasbro launched Sixth Wall, a new artificial-intelligence studio aiming to bring the toymaker’s cast of characters into the new technological era.
- Anthropic Bulks Up Its Enterprise Partner Program Amid IPO Plans
AI giant is solidifying its Claude Partner Network to help demonstrate ‘durability of revenue’ as it nears going public.
- A new AI-powered computer worm could prove to be the stuff of cybersecurity nightmares
A new AI-powered computer worm could prove to be the stuff of cybersecurity nightmares Fortune
- U of T researchers discover method of using AI to create more dangerous computer worms
Any device connected to the internet is at risk, researchers say
- Researchers show how AI-powered worms could wreak havoc on the internet
Researchers created an AI-powered worm that that can spread through networks with no human intervention.
- AI-powered computer worms herald ‘new era’ of cybersecurity threats
Worms with access to AI chatbots can adapt and gather information and then use that against further targets – without the need for human intervention
- Exclusive: Nvidia snaps up Kumo AI in latest acquisition
Exclusive: Nvidia snaps up Kumo AI in latest acquisition Fortune
- GitHub Copilot users get a rude awakening as new AI pricing goes into effect
GitHub Copilot users get a rude awakening as new AI pricing goes into effect Business Insider
- GitHub Copilot Costs Skyrocket As Users Are Pushed to Per-Token Billing
GitHub Copilot Costs Skyrocket As Users Are Pushed to Per-Token Billing PCMag
- Broadcom betting on strong AI chip demand forecasts quarterly revenue above estimates
Broadcom has cemented its position as a key beneficiary of the AI race
- Google pushes water standards amid data center backlash
Facing mounting scrutiny over data center water consumption, Google on Wednesday released a set of guidelines it says should become the industry standard. Why it matters: Communities across the U.S. are increasingly pushing back against new data centers, often citing concerns about water use alongside rising power prices, local air pollution and noise. Google argues that better practices — and more transparency — can help ease those fears. Driving the news: Google's framework calls for: Returning more water to local watersheds than its data centers consume by 2030. Avoiding water-intensive cooling in more water-stressed regions. Helping fund local water infrastructure upgrades. Pursuing alternatives such as reclaimed wastewater. Disclosing water use annually. Reality check: None of these commitments are new on their own. The announcement largely packages together practices Google says it increasingly follows already — while turning them into a formal framework the company hopes others also adopt. By the numbers: In 2024, Google consumed 7.2 billion gallons of freshwater and replenished approximately 4.5 billion gallons of water, which is roughly 64%. What they're saying: "There's so many data center developers, and many of them are not doing it the right way, so people's concerns are legitimate," said Bikash Koley, vice president of global infrastructure at Google. "But there is also a lack of information, and water is one of those where lack of information always breeds distrust." Zoom out: Google joins other tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, which have over the past several years announced goals to better manage their water consumption at their data center operations. While those efforts have largely focused on company-specific targets, Google is positioning its guidelines as a framework it hopes the broader industry will adopt. How it works: Data centers need cooling because the chips running AI generate enormous heat. That cooling happens in two main places: first, close to the chips themselves; and second, across the broader building. For the hottest AI chips, companies are increasingly using liquid cooling, which moves heat away from the chips through sealed pipes. Google says its closed-loop systems use very little water because it's continuously recirculated. Yes, but: That heat still has to leave the building. The main tradeoff is between water and power. Evaporative cooling uses water to carry heat away and can require less electricity, while air cooling uses little or no water onsite but can require more electricity. Air cooling consumes on average 10% more energy than evaporative cooling, and roughly twice that on a hot day, said Koley. "It becomes a tradeoff between reducing stress on the grid versus reducing stress on the watershed," Koley said. State of play: Roughly two-thirds of Google's data centers use evaporative cooling, while the remaining third is a combination of air-cooled or using recycled, non-conventional water resources , said Ben Townsend, head of infrastructure and sustainability at Google. Between the lines: Google is making a more nuanced argument than many data center critics. The company argues evaporative cooling can be the better environmental choice in places where water supplies aren't under stress because it reduces electricity demand. Case in point: Google officials pointed to a new data center in India using air-cooling technologies, and the American Southwest generally as examples of where their due diligence into the local water supplies compelled them to use less-water intensive cooling methods. What we're watching: Google executives declined to predict the company's future water use, saying local conditions heavily influence what cooling methods are deployed. Its 2025 numbers are coming out in a few weeks. The bottom line: Google says that the share of its data centers using air cooling is rising, a sign that water concerns are increasingly shaping how companies design the infrastructure behind the AI boom.
- Google says it will replenish more water than it uses at data centers amid public pushback
There’s been a lot of pushback in recent months around the impact of AI data centers on local communities, with the use of water being a key issue for many. Google, in an expension of its “water stewardship” programs, is making commitments that include replenishing more water than it uses at its data center sites. more…
- Google Commits to Water Conservation Around Its Data Centers
Google has announced five commitments to water stewardship as well as $17 million in support of new projects in Nebraska, Iowa and other states, intended to protect water resources in the areas where it operates.
- Microsoft launches AI assistant powered by OpenClaw
The tool could give businesses a taste of what agentic AI looks like at scale.
- Microsoft Launches Scout, an Autonomous AI Agent Built on OpenClaw for Microsoft 365
Microsoft Scout is integrated with Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
- Microsoft launches 'Scout' AI assistant that works like executive assistant
While AI bots like ChatGPT or Copilot are only visible to the user, the new tool, dubbed Scout, will appear on internal email and calendar systems as if it were just another helpful employee
- Microsoft launches Scout, an AI agent that works for you even when you’re offline
Microsoft launches Scout, an AI agent that works for you even when you’re offline
- Microsoft reveals OpenClaw-style agent
Microsoft unveils an OpenClaw-style agent, enabling automation and AI capabilities.
- Google says Nest cameras now knows your dog by name
The new Pet Memory feature, powered by Gemini, turns generic motion alerts into named pet notifications for indoor Nest camera owners
- Introducing the Services Track and Partner Hub of the Claude Partner Network
Introducing the Services Track and Partner Hub of the Claude Partner Network
- Labour MP sues Elon Musk’s xAI company over fake sexualised images
Jess Asato was portrayed wearing a bikini in Grok-generated images after she criticised creation of such non-consensual pictures A Labour MP has taken legal action against Elon Musk’s xAI company after saying its Grok tool helped a user produce fake sexualised pictures of her, part of a wave of such images that flooded the social media platform X earlier this year. Jess Asato, the MP for Lowestoft, said in January that seeing herself portrayed by the AI tool as wearing a bikini without her consent was “violating”. Continue reading...
- MP sues Musk’s xAI in UK test case over fake sexual images
Legal claim by Jess Asato challenges whether AI model-makers are liable for what their systems produce
- MP sues Musk's xAI after deepfake bikini picture
Suffolk MP Jess Asato claims the firm's tool Grok was used to create fake images of her in a bikini.
- EU wants households to cut peak time energy use as demand from industry and AI soars
A new law will aim to use artificial intelligence to boost efficient use of power as electricity demand threatens to overwhelm Europe's grids.
- INXM raises €5.7M to tackle enterprise AI execution challenges
INXM, aBerlin-based startup developing AI-powered process automation technology forenterprise and industrial operations, has raised €5.7 million in a pre-seedfunding round as it emerges from stealth. ...