Sure, Android ships with a default AI, but you have several smart alternatives - and they're all free.

An ex-Concord developer has posted thoughts sympathizing with Bungie and its Marathon reveal online, based on the current discourse.

Why it matters: In what could be the best use of AI to date, Google is using a new AI model and Pixel phones to try to understand dolphins and eventually communicate with the mammals. The aptly named DolphinGemma large language model could interpret whistles, clicks, squawks, and other noises made by everyone's favorite sea creature. Google has announced a collaboration with researchers at Georgia Tech and the field research of the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), the latter of which has been collecting data on the noises dolphins make and their relationship to dolphin behavior for over 40 years. Researchers previously correlated sound types with behavioral contexts. Dolphins have signature whistles that are used like names, allowing mothers to find their calves. They often use click "buzzes" during courtship or chasing sharks, while burst-pulse "squarks" are often seen during fights. DolphinGemma, based on Google's Gemma AI models, has been trained on WDP's vast dataset of dolphin sounds and the accompanying notes. It's not just Google's AI that's being used by the project. Field researchers are using Pixel phones to record the sounds of the dolphins. The Pixels run the sound through Google's SoundStream tokenizer, allowing the noises to be fed into the model as they're being recorded. Google notes that the 400 million-parameter DolphinGemma model is optimally sized to run directly on the Pixel phones WDP uses in the field. // Related Stories Using Pixel phones can also significantly reduce the need for expensive hardware and lower costs, writes Google. DolphinGemma works much in the same way as other large language models. It processes sequences of dolphin sounds to identify patterns, structure, and ultimately predict the likely subsequent sounds in a sequence. WDP has also partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology on CHAT (Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry), which is based on the Pixel 6. It creates synthetic whistles and attempts to associate them with specific objects the dolphins enjoy, like sargassum, seagrass or scarves the researchers use. It's hoped the dolphins will mimic the sounds they hear to request these items. The ultimate goal of CHAT is to eventually enable basic two-way interaction with the dolphins. Google says a new Pixel 9-based CHAT will be ready for the 2025 summer research season. CHAT works alongside DolphinGemma. The LLM uses its "predictive power [to] help CHAT anticipate and identify potential mimics earlier in the vocalization sequence, increasing the speed at which researchers can react to the dolphins and [make] interactions more fluid and reinforcing." Hopefully, Google's technology will help avoid this potential scenario:

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Related Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. New York Times Across Say whether you’ll go – RSVP Fitting game for Chip, Jack and Betty to play? – POKER ___ acid – AMINO Beginning of a joke – SETUP Mix, as a salad – TOSS Down Doomed Shakespearean lover – ROMEO Short comedic performances – SKITS Planet shrouded in toxic clouds that smell like rotten eggs – VENUS Support, with “up” – PROP “I’m never going back, the ___ is in the ___” (lyric from “Let It Go”) – PAST Editors’ Recommendations

Japan’s antitrust regulator instructed Alphabet’s Google to stop what it said are anticompetitive practices involving mobile search services, its first order against a U.S. technology giant.

Coming into focus Tuesday Telescope: Is the James Webb Space Telescope worth $10 billion? The rings are real, and they're spectacular. Eric Berger – Apr 15, 2025 8:00 am | 10 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken the most detailed image of planetary nebula NGC 1514 to date. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken the most detailed image of planetary nebula NGC 1514 to date. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC) Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. Was the James Webb Space Telescope worth it? Well, $10 billion is a lot of money. Even when spread over a couple of decades, that's still a huge chunk of NASA's annual science budget. (And given the recent Trump administration attack on NASA's science budget, money is about to get a whole lot tighter.) However, it is difficult to put a price on advancing our species' understanding of the natural world and the wide Universe we're swimming in. And Webb is doing an amazing job of that. In 2009, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission to make infrared observations. This was the latest in a line of space-based infrared observatories, and it cost about 3 percent as much as the Webb telescope. Two infrared views of NGC 1514. At left is an observation from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC) Two infrared views of NGC 1514. At left is an observation from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC) Today's photo concerns the planetary nebula NGC 1514. In 2010, using the WISE telescope, NASA project scientist Mike Ressler discovered "rings" around the planetary nebula. Now, thanks to Webb, the rings—which are likely composed of small dust grains, heated by ultraviolet light from a white dwarf star—can be seen clearly. And, oh my, they're spectacular. The clarity in the Webb photo, compared to what came before, is remarkable. So, is seeing the Universe in a new light worth $10 billion? I certainly think so, but I'm writing a weekly story called the Tuesday Telescope, so it's safe to say I am biased. Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC) Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello. Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 10 Comments

What will $500 billion poured into AI infrastructure over the next four years in the United States accomplish? CIOs and CTOs will have to watch the Stargate Project to find out. The initiative -- a collaboration between several high-profile players in the AI space -- has been plugged by President Trump. Billions are already being invested, and construction on several data centers has already begun, AP news reports.  With competition for AI dominance at a fever pitch, how much of a role could Stargate have in tipping the scales in favor of the US?  Stargate Partners  Stargate has a lot of AI star power behind it.  “The players that are part of the project are all people who are very invested in building out a computing infrastructure for AI already and building frontier AI systems,” says Peter N. Salib, law and policy advisor to the nonprofit Center for AI Safety and codirector of the Center for Law & AI Risk, an organization focused on establishing law and AI safety as a scholarly field.  OpenAI, software company Oracle, AI investment firm MGX, and investment holding company SoftBank are the four initial equity funders powering the project. SoftBank is taking the lead on financial responsibility, while OpenAI is tackling operations.  Related:The project has also attracted technology partners, including semiconductor company Arm, tech giant Microsoft, and chip company Nvidia  That is a lot of cooks in the kitchen, all very motivated to push the field of AI forward, ultimately achieving AGI.  “What I hope is that this becomes a model or an example of how titans of industry and government and ultimately and eventually the community are able to work together for the benefit of mankind,” says Jason Hardy, CTO for AI at data infrastructure company Hitachi Vantara. Time will tell if each partner delivers on their promises and ultimately plays well with others. “I would effectively call this a moonshot. So, it'll be interesting to see over the next year or so how it progresses,” Hardy adds.  The Goals The Stargate Project is focused on the “development and construction of large-scale AI data centers,” according to its request for proposals. And there is no doubt about AI’s voracious appetites. Advances in the field -- feeding those appetites -- will require more infrastructure, but is that alone the answer to capturing the lead? Randall Hunt, CTO at Caylent, an AWS cloud consulting and engineering company, thinks not. “Infrastructure alone is a very brute force approach to solving artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence,” he says.  Related:He goes on to voice some additional goals that could be beneficial in the pursuit of AI advancements.  “I think that we need significant efficiency and architectural improvements in the underlying implementation of these networks,” Hunt argues. “And I think a broader initiative that focuses not just on pure infrastructure but also investment in theoretical work and investment in academia and investment and the software side would be pretty valuable.” Funding In January, Elon Musk took to X, claiming Stargate lacked the funding. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman refuted the claim, and a source told Forbes that the initial $100 billion in equity is “ready to go.” That still leaves $400 billion to be gathered over the next four years.  “Sometimes … in these large agreements, you'll have pledges of capital and then you have investor underperformance. They don't ever actually send the desired capital,” Hunt points out.  Stargate is in its early days, and while a shortfall in funding for this project is possible, overall spending on AI and its requisite infrastructure is likely to soar well beyond the $500 billion point in the coming years.  “I will never underestimate the private sector’s ability and desire to put up money towards this race,” says Caroline Winnett, executive director of startup accelerator Berkeley SkyDeck.  Related:Apple, for example, is pumping $500 billion into US facilities, including a server production facility for its AI products, CNN reports.  Performance Metrics The initiative already has data centers under construction in Texas and several other states lined up as possibilities for its campuses, Reuters reports. How will we know if Stargate is delivering on its goals and putting those billions to good use?  At the most basic level, we can look at data center capacity. How many megawatts have resulted from the buildout of Stargate’s data centers? There are, of course, more nuanced questions about efficiency and energy usage.  “Does putting more data through more compute continue to get you ever more capable systems? All the … evidence we have seems to point towards the prediction that it will, and if that turns out not to be true, that will be a big surprise and a big knock against this Stargate approach of doing extremely large-scale compute and power clusters,” says Salib. The ultimate goal of AGI looms large. Will Stargate and its participants be the first to achieve it? Tracking the Global AI Race The emergence of DeepSeek from a Chinese startup threw fuel on the competitive fires. And OpenAI is certainly cognizant of the flames. "As news emerged about DeepSeek, it makes it clear this is a very real competition and the stakes could not be bigger,” said Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Reuters reports.  Among the slew of executive orders Trump signed upon taking offices is one aimed at American leadership in AI.  “I think it's true to say that the US and China do understand themselves as racing towards something like artificial general intelligence and that this project might make help them to race faster,” says Salib.  Stargate could propel the US forward in this breakneck sprint, but it needn’t be the initiative on which the country pins all of its hopes. Moonshots like this are not guaranteed successes. But it is hardly a solo shot.  “Stargate is emblematic of the scale of which frontier AI is going to be developed in the next two to five years, but it's not the only project that is going to look the way that Stargate looks,” says Salib.  Even if Stargate fizzles out for one reason or another, it is highly unlikely that the US will find itself falling completely behind. There will still likely be plenty to learn from the endeavor, and there will be other projects and players with skin in the game.  “Whether this initiative moves forward or not, no matter what happens with it, everybody's going after this golden carrot known as AGI,” Winnett points out.  Predictions on the arrival of AGI vary, but it seems all but certain that it is coming. And the road there is hardly written in the stars. There is still plenty of room for surprises and disruption.  “People think these entrenched players like OpenAI and Anthropic and AWS, that they've got a moat that can't be overcome, but we're still in the wild west days,” says Hunt. “The model that's winning today is not necessarily the model that's winning tomorrow. As tech companies and governments pound the pavement in this ongoing race, there are some big, open questions.  “A lot of regulation is going to need to be looked at and evaluated to see how we can improve on power generation. Does nuclear need to be a part of it, for example?” says Hardy.  And then, there are other thorny concepts to grapple with: What is the cost of racing in the first place? Is the world ready for what it means when we reach a point where a winner can be declared?  “As with say the missile gap of the Cold War era, racing has its own dangers,” Salib points out. “Both sides would really like to have the most powerful systems as quickly as possible and seem willing to risk losing control of their own systems for the sake of winning that capabilities race.” Along the way, the environmental strain and energy usage associated with AI has costs.  “We're hoping that AI can produce solutions that will actually make very significant progress [on] how these tools end up interacting with the environment [and] solve their own issues,” says Winnett.  For now, it seems that the race is still on, whether or not those solutions materialize.  As AGI grows closers, Salib hopes we will spend more time thinking not only about its value but its risks. “The risks of misuse of these extremely powerful systems, arms races around these extremely powerful systems, and also loss of control the systems themselves as they become very capable. It is time for all of us to take all of that very seriously in a way that I think most of the policy world is not yet,” he urges.  

A Windracers ULTRA drone during a test flight in AntarcticaBRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY Next year, scientists will deploy a swarm of aerial drones, autonomous submarines and ice sensors in a major coordinated effort to better understand how and why icebergs break off from the Greenland ice sheet. The GRAIL project, which is backed by £16 million of funding from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), aims to improve estimates of how much fresh water is entering the North Atlantic from Greenland ice melt.

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. How the federal government is tracking changes in the supply of street drugs In 2021, the Maryland Department of Health and the state police were confronting a crisis: Fatal drug overdoses in the state were at an all-time high, and authorities didn’t know why. Seeking answers, Maryland officials turned to scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the national metrology institute for the United States, which defines and maintains standards of measurement essential to a wide range of industrial sectors and health and security applications.There, a research chemist named Ed Sisco and his team had developed methods for detecting trace amounts of drugs, explosives, and other dangerous materials—techniques that could protect law enforcement officials and others who had to collect these samples. And a pilot uncovered new, critical information almost immediately. Read the full story.—Adam Bluestein This story is from the next edition of our print magazine. Subscribe now to read it and get a copy of the magazine when it lands! Phase two of military AI has arrived —James O’Donnell Last week, I spoke with two US Marines who spent much of last year deployed in the Pacific, conducting training exercises from South Korea to the Philippines. Both were responsible for analyzing surveillance to warn their superiors about possible threats to the unit. But this deployment was unique: For the first time, they were using generative AI to scour intelligence, through a chatbot interface similar to ChatGPT.  As I wrote in my new story, this experiment is the latest evidence of the Pentagon’s push to use generative AI—tools that can engage in humanlike conversation—throughout its ranks, for tasks including surveillance. This push raises alarms from some AI safety experts about whether large language models are fit to analyze subtle pieces of intelligence in situations with high geopolitical stakes. Here are three open questions to keep your eye on as the US military, and others around the world, bring generative AI to more parts of the so-called “kill chain.” Read the full story. This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The FCC wants Europe to choose between US and Chinese technology Trump official Brendan Carr has urged Western allies to pick Elon Musk’s Starlink over rival Chinese satellite firms. (FT $)+ China may look like a less erratic choice right now. (NY Mag $)2 Nvidia wants to build its AI supercomputers entirely in the US It’s a decision the Trump administration has claimed credit for. (WP $)+ That said, Nvidia hasn’t said how much gear it plans to make in America. (WSJ $)+ Production of its latest chip has already begun in Arizona. (Bloomberg $) 3 Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta in the first day of its antitrust trialHe downplayed the company’s decision to purchase Instagram and WhatsApp. (Politico)+ The government claims he bought the firms to stifle competition. (The Verge)+ Zuckerberg has previously denied that his purchases had hurt competition. (NYT $)4 OpenAI’s new models are designed to excel at coding The three models have been optimized to follow complex instructions. (Wired $)+ We’re still waiting for confirmation of GPT-5. (The Verge)+ The second wave of AI coding is here. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Apple has increased its iPhone shipments by 10%It’s part of a pre-emptive plan to mitigate tariff disruptions. (Bloomberg $) + The tariff chaos has played havoc with Apple stocks. (Insider $)6 We’re learning more about the link between long covid and cognitive impairment Studies suggest that a patient’s age when they contracted covid may be a key factor. (WSJ $)7 Can’t be bothered to call your elderly parents? Get AI to do it 📞404 Media) 8 This video app hopes to capitalize on TikTok’s uncertain futureBut unlike TikTok, Neptune allows creators to hide their likes. (TechCrunch) 9 Meet the tech bros who want to live underwaterColonizing the sea is one of the final frontiers. (NYT $) + Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go. (MIT Technology Review)10 Google’s new AI model can decipher dolphin sounds🐬 If they’re squawking, back away. (Ars Technica)+ The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day "If you don't like an ad, you scroll past it. It takes about a second." —Mark Hansen, Meta’s lead lawyer, makes light of the Federal Trade Commission’s assertion that users of its platforms are inundated with ads during the first day of Meta’s monopoly trial, Ars Technica reports. The big story Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences. There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls of text on a colored background. In the 2000s, before Squarespace and social media, websites were manifestations of individuality—built from scratch using HTML, by users who had some knowledge of code.Scattered across the web are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated approach. And the movement is anything but a superficial appeal to retro aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human touch in digital experiences. Read the full story.  —Tiffany Ng We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Who doesn’t love a good stroll?+ All hail Shenmue, the recently-crowned most influential game of all time.+ This Wikipedia-powered museum is really quite something (thanks Amy!)+ This spring’s hottest accessory is a conical princess crown. No, really.

President Donald Trump has a controlling stake in the owner of Truth Social. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images 2025-04-15T12:28:21Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? A hedge fund disclosed a net short position in Trump Media & Technology Group. QRT's bet represents 2.5% of the Truth Social owner's outstanding shares, valued at $105 million. TMTG shares plunged this month after a filing signaled that President Donald Trump could cash out. A hedge fund has revealed it's betting against President Donald Trump's media company.Qube Research & Technologies disclosed a net short position in Trump Media & Technology Group — representing 2.5% of the Truth Social owner's outstanding shares — in Germany's Federal Gazette on Monday. The wager is valued at about $105 million, based on TMTG's market value of about $4.2 billion.Breakout Point, the research firm that first spotted the filing, said in a note emailed to Business Insider that this was the first short wager against TMTG to be disclosed to regulators, and QRT's second-biggest short in percentage terms. Other short sellers have targeted the stock in the past.This filing was likely made to comply with Germany's short-selling regulations, intended to increase market transparency.TMTG shares tumbled to a six-month low this month after the company registered for sale shares belonging to Trump — who owns 53% of the business — and several other shareholders.TMTG and QRT didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.Usually, an investor who is "long" on a stock has bought it expecting it to rise, while one who is "short" is betting that it will fall.Short sellers borrow shares of their target company and then sell them, hoping they can buy back the shares at a lower price, return them to the lender, and pocket the difference as profit.TMTG went public in March last year via a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. The meme stock has tanked 44% this year and trades more than 80% below its peak price. Total short interest was 4.9% on Monday, Nasdaq data shows. Recommended video