In a Twitter exchange today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will likely add solar charging technology to the roofs of future all-electric cars.
“We will probably offer that as an option,” Musk wrote in the Twitter exchange with Tesla enthusiasts.
In answer to one enthusiast who doubted the value and charging capacity of photovoltaics on a car roof, Musk said the solar technology could come in the form of “a deployable solar shield like a retractable hard top.”
When asked by the Twitter user if a solar rooftop would be expensive, Musk was succinct: “No,” he wrote.
Last Tuesday, Musk announced during a conference call that the company has formed a new technology group to develop a highly durable glass for the Model 3, the company’s first mass-market vehicle due out in 2017.
For an additional $1,500 to $2,000, Model 3 sedans will have the option of an all-glass roof, Musk said.
“I highly recommend the new all glass roof on the Model S. This was very hard to develop, but it makes the interior feel amazing,” Musk wrote in a Nov. 4 tweet.
Tesla Motors’ glass technology announcement came a week after the company unveiled its upcoming line of glass solar rooftop shingles for homeowners.
“It is using a lot of techniques from the automotive glass business and, in case it wasn’t obvious with the announcement, Tesla has created a glass technology group with some really phenomenal people,” Musk said during the conference call.
Tesla is planning to acquire leading rooftop solar installer SolarCity, of which Musk is also chairman. The company’s shareholders are expected to vote on the merger Nov. 17.
Even before the new glass solar shingles were announced, Musk tweeted that the up and coming glass tiles could also “incorporate heating elements, like rear defroster on a car, to clear roof of snow and keep generating energy.”
Hundreds of thousands of potential Model 3 owners have already reserved vehicles through a $1,000 hold fee, which translates into billions of dollars in potential new revenue for Tesla.
If you’ve eaten anything today, chances are you’ve snacked on GMOs. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. Genetically modified (GM) foods are made from soy, corn, or other crops grown from seeds with genetically engineered DNA.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), GM seeds are used to plant more than 90 percent of corn, soybeans, and cotton grown in the United States. Unless you consciously avoid them, GM foods likely find their way into many of your snacks and meals.
Some people believe GM foods are safe, healthy, and sustainable, while others claim the opposite. Read on to learn about the pros and cons — and what the research says.
Pros of GM foods
Scientists genetically engineer seeds for many reasons. For example, they sometimes make changes designed to increase a plant’s:
resistance to insects
tolerance to herbicides
tolerance for heat, cold, or drought
crop yield
They also engineer seeds to give GM foods stronger colors, increase their shelf life, or eliminate seeds. That’s why we can buy seedless watermelons and grapes. Some GM foods also have been engineered to have higher levels of specific nutrients, such as protein, calcium, or folate.
Proponents of GM food contend that genetic engineering can help us find sustainable ways to feed people. Specifically, in countries that lack access to nutrient-rich foods. The heartiness of some GM crops makes it so they can grow in marginal environments. The longer shelf life of some GM foods allows them to be shipped to remote areas.
Potential cons of GM foods
On the other hand, some people wonder if GM foods are safe and healthy to eat. Genetic engineering is a relatively new development. As a result, research on the long-term health effects of GM foods is limited.
GM foods have to meet the same safety requirements as foods grown from non-GM seeds. But critics suggest there’s more to be concerned about. Some people worry that GM foods may be linked to allergies, antibiotic resistance, or cancer. Others suggest these concerns are unfounded. Here’s what the research says.
Allergies
Food allergies are a growing problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), food allergies in children under 18 years of age have increased; from 3.4 percent between 1997 and 1999 to 5.1 percent between 2009 and 2011.
Some people believe that spike is linked to GM foods. But there’s no evidence that GM foods in general are more likely to trigger allergic reactions than non-GM foods, according to a study from Harvard University.
Others raise concerns about the transfer of specific proteins from one plant to another in genetic engineering. Proteins found in a relatively small number of foods cause most allergic reactions. Tree nuts are one of the most common triggers.
In the mid-1990s, researchers examined a strain of GM soybean that was engineered to contain protein from Brazil nuts. According to their report in the New England Journal of Medicine, the soybeans triggered allergic reactions in people with Brazil nut allergy. Those soybeans never entered the market and aren’t sold to consumers.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) have since established protocols for GM foods. They require GM foods to be tested for their ability to cause allergic reactions. According to the Mayo Clinic, none of the GM foods that are currently on the market have been found to have allergenic effects.
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can resist antibiotics, making them hard to kill. According to the CDC, antibiotic-resistant germs infect two million people each year. Those infections kill at least 23,000 people per year.
Scientists often modify seeds using antibiotic-resistant genes in the genetic engineering process. Some people wonder if there’s a link between these GM foods and rising rates of antibiotic resistant bacteria. No studies have confirmed this claim, but more research is needed.
Cancer
In 2013, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted a paper that linked the herbicide Roundup and Roundup-tolerant GM corn to cancer and premature death in rats. Due to concerns about the paper, the journal’s editor reviewed the researchers’ raw data and the peer-review process. They found the researchers had used too few rats, the specific strain of rats was prone to cancer, and the results were inconclusive.
Since then, the paper has been republished in another journal, Environmental Sciences Europe. The controversy surrounding the study’s findings has continued.
According to the American Cancer Society, more research is needed to assess the potential long-term health effects of GM foods.
How can you tell if you’re buying GM food?
The European Commission requires GM food products in Europe to be labeled as such. But in the United States, no federal mandate exists for labeling GM foods. As a result, it can be hard to know if you’re buying and eating GM foods.
If you decide to avoid GM foods, look for products that are USDA certified organic. Certified organic foods are grown and handled without the use of GMOs.
On Friday evening as the sun descended over the old Hollywood set of “Desperate Housewives,” Elon Musk took to a stage and fired up his presentation about climate change. It was a strange scene, with hundreds of people crowded into the middle of a subtly artificial suburban neighborhood.
It wasn’t until about a minute into the speech that Musk casually let the crowd in on Tesla’s big secret. “The interesting thing is that the houses you see around you are all solar houses,” Musk said. “Did you notice?”
The answer, in short, was no. Like everyone else, I knew we were there to see Musk’s new “solar roof,” whatever that was supposed to mean. But try as I could as we walked in, I didn’t see anything that looked like it could carry an electric current. If anything, the slate and Spanish clay roofs looked a bit too nice for a television set. This is the future of solar, Musk proclaimed. “You’ll want to call your neighbors over and say ‘check out the sweet roof.’ It’s not a phrase you hear often.”
The roof tiles are actually made of textured glass. From most viewing angles, they look just like ordinary shingles, but they allow light to pass through from above onto a standard flat solar cell. The plan is for Panasonic to produce the solar cells and for Tesla to put together the glass tiles and everything that goes along with them. That’s all predicated on shareholders approving the $2.2 billion acquisition of SolarCity, the biggest U.S. rooftop installer, on Nov. 17.
Tesla says the tempered glass is “tough as steel,” and can weather a lifetime of abuse from the elements. It can also be fitted with heating elements to melt snow in colder climates. “It’s never going to wear out,” Musk said, “It’s made of quartz. It has a quasi-infinite lifetime.”
In a Q&A with reporters after the presentation, Musk said the tiles are comparable to competing high-efficiency solar panels. The current prototypes that Tesla engineers are working with reduce the efficiency of the underlying solar cell by just 2 percent. With further refinement, Musk said he hopes the microscopic louvers responsible for making the tiles appear opaque can be used to actually boost the efficiency of standard photovoltaic cells.
Putting the pieces together
The vision presented at Universal Studios in Los Angeles is the grand unification of Musk’s clean-energy ambitions. The audience was able to step into a future powered entirely by Tesla: a house topped with sculpted Tuscan solar tiles, where night-time electricity is stored in two sleek wall-hung Powerwall batteries, and where a Model 3 prototype electric car sits parked out front within reach of the home’s car charger.
Attracting less attention on Wisteria Lane was Tesla’s Powerwall 2, a major upgrade of its home battery for electricity storage. When the original Powerwall was released last year, I was skeptical. Mostly, it was just too pricey for the amount of power it provided, especially in the U.S. where electricity is cheap and most people can sell their excess solar power back to the grid. Version 2 is a much different product. It packs more than twice the capacity—14 kilowatt hours versus 6.4 kilowatt hours—for a cheaper price after installation. 1 It includes a built-in Tesla-brand inverter and comes with a ten year, infinite-cycle warranty.
Electricity storage is crucial for future uptake of solar power. Already in some solar-heavy regions, more electricity is being produced during the middle of the day than people can consume, and utility prices spike in the evening hours when the sun goes down. In the U.S., some states are abandoning payments for daytime rooftop solar, undermining huge investments that families have made in their solar systems. The only recourse is for customers to use that electricity themselves, at night.
Like previous attempts at solar shingles, the solar-plus-battery package hasn’t really caught on yet. SolarCity’s total bundled sales thus far number in just the hundreds. But an argument can be made that the products just weren’t compelling enough yet and the prices were still too high.
The Powerwall 2 may be the cheapest lithium ion battery for the home ever made when deliveries start in January. Tesla is selling the batteries at retail prices that are cheaper than the average manufacturing cost at most companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. We “certainly expect it will move the market prices downwards as we saw last year with the first Powerwall,” said Yayoi Sekine, a BNEF analyst who covers battery technology.
“The future is going to overwhelmingly be solar plus battery,” Musk said. “They go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
Let’s wait and see
Powerwall 2 looks ready for primetime. The new solar shingles? Let’s wait until more details emerge. Tesla says we should expect a slow initial rollout beginning in about nine months. Within two years of production, the shingles could account for five percent of the five million roofs installed in the U.S. every year, said Peter Rive, SolarCity’s co-founder and chief technology officer. SolarCity, under the Tesla brand, would also manufacture and sell surface-mounted solar panels for homeowners who have no plans for replacing their existing roofs.
The pricing on the new solar roof is a bit—squishy. Musk said that someone who buys a Tesla roof will save money compared with someone who buys a comparable traditional roof plus electricity from the grid. But make no mistake: This will be a premium product, at least when it first rolls out. The terra cotta and slate roofs Tesla mimicked are among the most expensive roofing materials on the market. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive noted that the price of a conventional roof can vary widely, from $7,000 to $70,000—based on materials, size, complexity, location—so giving out firm prices of a solar roof at this point would be difficult.
“It is the metaphoric ‘super-car’ of residential solar,” said BNEF solar analyst Hugh Bromley. “It portrays cutting-edge technology with broad appeal, but … it competes in a solar market where most customers are comfortable in a family sedan.”
Telsa will release more financial information about the SolarCity deal this week before it goes to shareholders for a vote. If all of Musk’s plans come true, by the end of next year you’ll be able to walk into a Tesla store, buy a Model 3 electric car, a slate-glass solar roof, and a Powerwall 2 to manage the flow of all those electrons in your life. There are a lot of details to be hammered out until we know for certain whether Musk’s vision for a grand unification will become more than just a great television backdrop. But these tiles, viewed up close, are definitely worth tuning in for.
Congratulations to Nwafor Ekene James on winning the employee of the year award for 2016.
Mr Nwafor exhibited exemplary skills in team work, budget oversight, project management and overall leadership in the various projects and tasks he handled.
The management of Burton Tech uses this medium to again congratulate him and wish him Godspeed in all his endeavours – professional and personal.
If the next version of Android Wear does its job, you’ll be futzing with your smartwatch a lot less.
Google on Wednesday unveiled Android Wear 2.0, an update to its wearable software that promises a streamlined experience focused on what it believes watch users really need. That means smarter messaging, apps that anticipate your needs and better compatibility with iPhones. The update is expected to roll out in the fall.
The update to Android Wear comes as Google attempts to play catch-up with the Apple Watch, which leads the market for smartwatches, according to IDC. A majority of the watches sold by No. 2 Samsungrun on Samsung’s own operating system. Google is hoping that the combination of a smarter interface and compatibility with rival Apple’s iPhone will help it regain some momentum.
At the crux of that is Google’s concept of “complications,” or watch-speak for widgets that show your current step count, your stock prices, your next appointment, or any other data you choose. “You can have data from any app on any watch face,” Android Wear team leader David Singleton said in an interview.
Complications are now going to be a standard part of Android Wear watch faces, and app developers barely need to be involved to make them work, Singleton said. As long as they include data that might be useful at a glance, users will soon be able to make that data appear on the face of their watch, no matter which face it might be.
Apps will also work to anticipate your needs better with Android Wear 2.0. Before, if you went on a run, you’d have to launch an app and select an activity before you start. But Android Wear 2.0 can automatically launch apps like Strava as soon as it detects that you’re exercising, and you may not even need to hit the Run button. “I literally just get up and start running,” said Singleton.
Once you’re done, a revamped Google Fit fitness platform will tally up your burned calories and share them with any other fitness apps running on your device.
Don’t want to carry a phone on your run? If you buy an Android Wear watch with built-in LTE, the new software will allow watch apps to directly access the internet. You’ll be able to download apps from a store on the watch itself, reply to text messages and make calls, stream Spotify music directly to the watch or pass it to a set of Bluetooth headphones.
It should also mean you’ll have a much easier time using an Android watch with an iPhone. The direct internet access means developers don’t need to build a companion iPhone app or wait for Apple to approve. They can simply built an Android watch app that works identically on both platforms, according to Singleton.
Messaging also got a revamp. If you want to reply to a text message or email while you’re on on that run, you’ll have a couple new ways to do it. There’s a new swipe-friendly touchscreen keyboard with autocomplete options, and a handwriting option that’ll let you trace letters one at a time, each letter making way for the next. In a demo, product lead Jeff Chang only had to type “do” and “dinn” to say “do you want to get dinner?” Autocomplete took care of the rest.
Other additions to Android Wear 2.0 include a new way to scroll through apps by circling the edge of the display with your finger (which could cut down on fingerprint smudges) and a darker themed user interface to help save on battery. But the big changes to Android Wear are all about improving things people already did on their wrists. They don’t necessarily attract new people to smartwatches in the first place.
To do that, there will need to be “a diversity of sizes, shapes and styles” of watches in the market, because with fashion, choice is key, Singleton said. He’s hoping that new hardware partners such as Casio, Fossil, Michael Kors and Nixon will bring Android smartwatches to new and different audiences.
Android Wear 2.0 will first be available as a developer preview this week. Google says it will be up to hardware partners which watches will receive the update this fall, but Singleton believes there’s no technical reason why they couldn’t all get the new software.
Sundar Pichai, who takes the I/O stage for the first time since becoming CEO in October, says he’s on a “journey” from mobile to AI. Good thing he has an assistant.
From the windows lining the wall of Sundar Pichai’s light-filled office in the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, you can see the twin spires of Shoreline Amphitheatre, just a short walk away.
The outdoor arena is where Pichai is hosting, for his first time as Google’s CEO, over 2,000 Googlers and 7,000 developers at the company’s I/O conference. After holding the confab inside a San Francisco convention center for the past seven years, Pichai wanted to bring the gathering back to Google’s backyard on I/O’s 10th anniversary. He’s keen to celebrate the community around the company’s Android software, Chrome browser and search engine, and introduce the next chapter of Google’s vision for artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
But right now, Pichai is peeved.
After a week of getting a first look at the products being unveiled at I/O, which starts Wednesday, we couldn’t help but notice a lot of new takes on existing products. There’s a messaging app (which suggests comparisons to Facebook Messenger), a voice-activated speaker and smart home control hub (sort of like Amazon’s Echo), a video chat app (think Apple’s Facetime) and a new hardware and software system for VR built around a smartphone (shades of Samsung Gear VR).
To be sure, Google’s executives described interesting new ideas and technologies behind each product. But there’s no entirely new product that someone else hasn’t done already.
The famously mild-mannered Pichai — his Businessweek cover in 2014 was captioned “Google’s Soft Power” — bristles at the idea Google is somehow “following” its tech brethren. He takes a few minutes to tamp down his annoyance, and then calmly explains the “journey” he started taking Google on since becoming CEO of the most important division of parent company Alphabet.
“It’s important to understand we weren’t the first company in search,” says Pichai, 43, tall and wiry, whose salt-and-pepper beard adds a touch of gravitas to his boyish smile. “Larry and Sergey did search because they saw a chance to do something different.”
It was the same for email, online maps and Web browsers. The different take worked, with Gmail, Google Maps and Chrome each boasting a billion users. “There are areas where we will be ahead, and there will be areas where someone points a way and we do it,” Pichai says, crediting the Amazon Echo for generating interest in smart home hubs. “That’s how it works.
But Google isn’t just creating a slew of new products. It’s how they’ll riff off each other that gets Pichai animated during our hour-long conversation. Each new thing — from the Allo chat app to a smart home speaker code-named Chirp — boasts artificial intelligence and machine learning that allows it to serve as a playground for Pichai’s new “Google assistant.”
It’s as if Google is transferring its very essence from that sparse white homepage into every piece of tech you own (your phone, car, smartwatch) and online service you use. Unlike today’s search box, this assistant will learn about you from your behavior. It will know you’re a vegetarian, so won’t recommend steakhouses for dinner. It will understand context: If you’ve just bought Golden State Warriors tickets, the next time you mention Curry, it will know you’re talking about Steph and not Thai curry.
All that, says Pichai, signals profound changes in the way we use information.
Think of it this way: For pretty much the entire time people have been online, the Internet has been a tool, like a hammer or a library card. You use them when you need them. But a hammer will never automatically build you a house — let alone one with a Craftsman exterior because you’ve been reading up on early 20th century architecture. Google wants to be that overachieving hammer.
“It’s Google asking users, ‘Hi. How can I help?’” Pichai says. “Think of it as building your own individual Google.”
The idea of a digital assistant isn’t new. Apple teased the world with an online concierge named “Phil” almost three decades ago as part of its vision for a “Knowledge Navigator. ” Today, Apple has Siri, Microsoft has Cortana and Amazon has Alexa. And in the movies, Tony Stark has Jarvis.
Google has been doing this for years, too.
Google Now pops things up on your phone when the service thinks they’re relevant, thanks in part to Google’s Knowledge Graph, which understands a billion entities — people, places and things — and the relationships among them. Pichai now wants that know-how in even more places. He also thinks Google has the competition beat because of its heritage as a search company that’s been “organizing the world’s information.”
“There is no better engine of answering any question that you have,” says Rishi Chandra, vice president of product management for Google’s line of devices for the living room, including the Chromecast audio and video streaming stick. “We fundamentally believe that.”
So does the rest of the world, which queries Google more than a trillion times a year. That’s about 3 billion searches a day. A decade ago, Google translated two languages. Today, it’s talking to folks in over 100 languages and translating more than 140 billion words every day.
Here to serve
While Pichai has been talking up AI and machine learning for a while, I/O 2016 is Google’s first showcase for products with the assistant baked into their DNA.
Chirp, the smart home speaker now officially called Google Home, will likely get outsized attention. Unlike Amazon’s Echo, Google Home’s physical design can be customized so it blends in with your furniture. Its interchangeable parts means you can pick, say, different colored fabrics if you want it in your bedroom or metallic finishes if it’s going to live in your kitchen.
You’ll be able to ask it anything using the trigger words, “OK Google,” Pichai explains. One of the phones in his office, hearing him say that phrase, dings and leaps into action. But the company may add more code words in the future, like “Hey Google.” (In the Google app on Android devices in the US, 20 percent of searches are now by voice, he adds.)
Google Home lets you request anything you’d type into the search box. It will also tell you if your flight’s delayed, your package has arrived and what’s next on your calendar. It can dim your lights, put on a movie, and work with other gadgets, like Google’s $35 Chromecast. That means you can sync up music to speakers in different rooms or queue up “Broad City” on your TV.
A glimpse inside Google’s VR Daydream
Cardboard, Google’s cheap virtual reality headset, provided a peek into the future. Google’s VR chief Clay Bavor is now touting Daydream, the next step in the company’s VR plan. The thing is, Daydream is only a sketch on paper — at least until the fall.
It will also understand different accents as well as commands from kids, whose precocious questions aren’t so easy to follow. “I can’t train my kid to talk to a device,” says Chandra, laughing. “My kids are going to say what they want to say. It really has to feel like a natural, two-way conversation.”
And Google Home will offer the same privacy preferences people already have with old-fashioned Google Web search. “It’s all the same rules, privacy and control,” says Scott Huffman, Google’s vice president of engineering for search. So you can do things like clear your search history.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has another unit that’s building smart home products. Nest, which was acquired in 2014 for $3 billion, makes Web-connected thermostats, smoke detectors and security cameras under the guidance of former Apple iPod chief, Tony Fadell. So it begs the question why Google Home, which is compatible with Nest’s products, isn’t made by Nest.
The reason, Pichai says, is because Google is interested in bringing computing to several distinct contexts. “Your phone, your wearables, your car, and your home,” he says. Google Home is more about that than anything else.
Google’s big challenge with Home isn’t the tech, says Gartner analyst Brian Blau. It’s getting the device on customers’ radars. One reason for the Amazon Echo’s success is the fact that Amazon can prominently promote the $179 smart speaker on its site. And when people visit Amazon’s homepage, they’re already jonesing to spend.
“You have your pocketbook out when you go there,” Blau says. Google just doesn’t have that captive audience when it comes to selling devices.
Allo there!
The messaging app, Allo, also features AI smarts. It joins the next-gen chat service scrum that’s already being fought by Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Kik.
When you’re chatting with a friend on Allo — it culls your phone’s contacts list so you have people to talk to — the software automatically recommends “Smart Replies.” If a friend asks you to dinner, one of Allo’s suggested responses is “What time?” The more you use Allo, the more Smart Replies will start to sound like you. So if you have a favorite emoji, you can bet it will start to show up for you.
Like Facebook, which has a chatbot assistant it’s been testing called M, Google’s virtual helper will be front and center in Allo. There are a few key differences. Facebook’s M, which is being tested with “a few thousand” people in California right now, is overseen by a team of human workers who step in if a task is too complicated for the bot, like ordering food from a restaurant without an online ordering system. The assistant in Allo is entirely machine operated and is open to everyone.
Pichai says these AI steps are just the first in a long process because the computing challenges are so difficult. There are privacy concerns that need to be balanced, and questions answered about the cultural and societal impact of all this mind-reading tech.
“There are areas where we will be ahead, and there will be areas where someone points a way and we do it,” says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “That’s how it works.”
Google is showing more future vision at this year’s I/O than it has before because it wants developers and users to understand what it aims to deliver — and to get them to buy into its ecosystem.
“Just like we’ve built search for a while, this is something we’re looking at building for many years,” Pichai says. “It’s a broad journey.”
What would Sundar do?
Alphabet’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin continue to show confidence in Pichai’s leadership. Last month, the duo let him write the company’s annual founders’ letter, marking the first time in Google’s 17-year history that someone other than Brin or Page, who was CEO before Pichai, has penned it.
Right outside of Pichai’s fishbowl office, a T-shirt hangs on the back of a chair that conjures up Apple’s visionary co-founder Steve Jobs. The shirt has a drawing of Pichai soulfully looking off in the distance, shielding his eyes, presumably, from the sun’s rays. It says “WWSD?” for “What would Sundar do?”
While he’s been considered Page’s heir apparent for years, Pichai doesn’t remember the exact moment when he knew he’d take over. There wasn’t a conversation where Page handed him the proverbial keys to the kingdom, he jokes. “It only happens like that in movies.”
Instead, his rise has been gradual. Born in Chennai, India, Pichai attended the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur before earning master’s degrees from Stanford and Wharton. He first interviewed for Google on April 1, 2004 — the same day it launched Gmail, which Pichai thought was an April Fools’ joke.
The view outside Sundar Pichai’s office shows the twin spires of Shoreline Amphitheatre, where Google I/O returns for its 10th anniversary.
He served as a product manager in charge of the browser search bar before initiating development of Chrome. His successes started to stack up and, in 2013, he took over Android from its dynamic but polarizing founder, Andy Rubin. He got oversight of the rest of Google’s Web products two years later, and was tapped as CEO last year.
His team credits his intimate knowledge of Google’s products as a key reason he’s been able to make formerly siloed projects work together. “He deeply understands platforms,” says Hiroshi Lockheimer, who took over as Android chief. “He’s always been the leader that I’ve looked to get guidance from.”
Outside of Pichai’s office, a complex art installation features twinkling lights overhead, like an artist’s interpretation of neurons speeding around the brain. It kind of looks like a starfield. We ask Pichai to pose for a portrait beneath it. The setting seems fitting because, with Page and Brin off contemplating the future of Alphabet, Pichai is now Google’s north star.
AI-first
Pichai now faces attacks on multiple fronts. Regulators in the European Union allege that Google abuses its dominance to keep competitors down. When asked about it, Google points to a blog post from its general counsel, Kent Walker, who wrote that Google “takes these concerns seriously,” but also believes its model helps phone makers keep costs low.
And Google’s rivals are circling. Regina Dugan, the former DARPA chief who led Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), left the company in April to lead a similar effort building experimental hardware for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Pichai insists ATAP is alive and thriving. All the group’s projects continue, including Ara, a fan favorite that lets people build smartphones from components that snap together like Legos. ATAP is hosting a session at I/O this week to share other news.
As he deals with those external forces, Pichai is also focused on shifting Google’s journey from “mobile-first to AI-first.” That will mean changing the very soul of the operation: Google.com.
Google’s homepage, the cash cow that accounts for the majority of Alphabet’s $74 billion in sales, isn’t going anywhere, at least anytime soon. But expect Google.com to get more personalized. One early sign of change: After Amit Singhal, Google’s longtime search chief, retired in February, John Giannandrea, the company’s AI boss, took over.
One Android to rule them all?
With Android N, Google steps up efforts to convince device makers to adopt the latest generation of its mobile software. Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer shares his take on what’s new — and how Google is trying to solve an old problem he calls the “F word.”
More than 7,000 people attend Google I/O, outdoors at Shoreline Amphitheatre, not far from the Googleplex.
And consider this: When you Google “Sundar Pichai,” the results show his Wikipedia entry, his Twitter feed (@sundarpichai) and then recent news about him. We ask him stuff you wouldn’t get at first glance in a standard Google search.
His favorite emoji: the simple, classic smiley face.
He’s Team Hard ‘G’ in the great GIF pronunciation debate.
He thinks the most impactful Alphabet moon shot is the self-driving car project.
Nuclear fusion is the most fascinating technology Google isn’t working on. (We double-checked: Google isn’t working on nuclear fusion, but he’s open to helping others who are by offering things like cloud-based computational services.)
He no longer memorizes phone numbers, as he did when he was a kid, because they’re stored in the many (he doesn’t know the exact number) phones he uses at any given time.
If the journey goes as planned and the assistant is really as “assistive” (Pichai’s word) as Google wants it to be, you could find answers like that in the not-too-distant future. What would a “Sundar Pichai” Google search look like in his AI-first world?
Pichai flashes his boyish grin. “It would depend on who’s searching.”
It’s any phone-obsessed person’s nightmare: you’re out, your phone’s battery is depleted down into the red zone, and there’s not an electrical plug in sight. But one day, mobile and wearable devices could engage in “power-sharing,” by wirelessly charging each other on the go, researchers say.
This innovative solution could help people easily recharge mobile or wearable gadgets, particularly for tasks such as emergency phone calls, the scientists added.
Mobile and wearable devices are now virtually everywhere, but their battery lives remain limited, with many lasting for less than a day.
A number of devices now exist to provide extra power to mobiles and wearables, such as power packs, mobile hand generators and solar cells. But although external power packs have become popular, they add size and weight, and mobile hand generators and solar cells produce only limited amounts of power.
Instead, an invention called PowerShake allows mobile and wearable devices to wirelessly charge other mobile and wearable devices on the go, even when those devices are being held or worn. Wireless-charging technologies are becoming more prevalent, but many of these stations are fixed, and do not account for devices near or in contact with skin.
“When mobile phones first came out, people really found them liberating because they didn’t have to be attached to a wire, but they actually still do have to be attached to a wire when they recharge,” said study co-authorMike Fraser, a computer scientist at the University of Bristol in England. “So now we’re seeking to liberate mobile phones again, to help them manage power without plugging in.”
Wireless charging involves at least two coils — one in the power transmitter, and one in the power receiver. When an electric current passes through the power transmitter coil, it creates an electromagnetic field that can transfer charge to another coil. Power transmission is best at close distances, the scientists said.
The researchers experimented with a variety of power transmitter and receiver coils. They also devised electromagnetic shielding made of ferrite plates and copper tape on the back of coils in order to prevent any transmitted energy from reaching human tissue. They noted flexible coils were also possible, and potentially embeddable in watch straps.
In experiments, PowerShake fit into small devices, met wireless power transfer safety guidelines, and performed about as well at power transmission as commercial alternatives, such as the Qi wireless charging pad, transferring about 3.1 watts of power, the researchers said. They estimated that about 12 seconds of charging would support 1 minute of additional talk time, while 2 minutes of charging would support about 4 minutes of video watching.
One drawback of PowerShake is that twice as much energy needs to be transmitted as is received.
“The power transfer is not ever going to be cost-free,” Fraser told Live Science. “That’s just the intrinsic power cost of wireless charging in general — wireless charging is always going to consume more power than wired charging.”
In workshops, the researchers found that volunteers exploring the potential usefulness of PowerShake liked the idea of sharing power with their friends or family. However, due to the power costs of PowerShake, volunteers noted that if they needed to make an emergency call, they would probably just ask to borrow a phone instead of asking for power. Still, “if one needs to complete something on a particular device, and have already started but are running out of power halfway through and can’t switch devices, this could help people,” Fraser said.
The researchers now seek to have volunteers test PowerShake in real environments, “to see if it actually works, and if people do find it useful,” Fraser said.
The scientists detailed their findings May 11 at the annual CHI conference on human-computer interactions in San Jose, California.
