{"id":252383,"date":"2026-05-22T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-driven-science-is-shifting\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:00:00","slug":"google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-driven-science-is-shifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-driven-science-is-shifting\/","title":{"rendered":"Google I\/O showed how the path for AI-driven science is shifting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/05\/22\/1137813\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-science-is-shifting\/amp\/\">Google I\/O showed how the path for AI-driven science is shifting<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/05\/22\/1137813\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-science-is-shifting\/amp\/\">https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/05\/22\/1137813\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-science-is-shifting\/amp\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-22 06:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.technologyreview.com\">www.technologyreview.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>During Tuesday\u2019s Google I\/O keynote, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, proclaimed that we are currently \u201cstanding in the foothills of the singularity.\u201d It was a striking statement\u2014the singularity is the theoretical future moment when AI rapidly exceeds human intelligence and dramatically transforms the world. But what struck me as I listened in the audience was the context in which he said those words.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He was on stage to close out the session with a segment on scientific AI, the centerpiece of which was a video detailing how the company\u2019s weather prediction software provided an advance alert about Hurricane Melissa\u2019s catastrophic landfall in Jamaica last year\u2014and potentially saved lives. If that software, called WeatherNext, helped anyone escape the storm or better fortify their home, that\u2019s an enormous and meaningful achievement. But it\u2019s hardly evidence of an impending singularity.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>The juxtaposition of Hassabis\u2019 lofty rhetoric with the real-world results of WeatherNext highlighted the tension between two very different approaches to AI for science. The first focuses on AI tools, like WeatherNext, that are designed and trained to solve specific scientific problems. The second is agentic, LLM-based systems that could one day execute cutting-edge research projects without human involvement. \t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<span>This story is only available to subscribers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t settle for half the story.<br \/>Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\tSubscribe now<br \/>\n\t\t<span>Already a subscriber?<br \/>\n\t\t\tSign in<br \/>\n\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This second vision powers a great deal of AI enthusiasm right now, including recent excitement around recursive self-improvement, or the idea that AI systems could eventually become the primary drivers of AI advancement\u2014a process that would get faster and faster as the AI systems grow smarter. And agentic systems are now making real research contributions, sometimes with limited human&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/05\/22\/1137813\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-science-is-shifting\/amp\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google I\/O showed how the path for AI-driven science is shifting https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/05\/22\/1137813\/google-i-o-showed-how-the-path-for-ai-science-is-shifting\/amp\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-22&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-252383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-llm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}