Track 12. Meet the Bullet Train Express

For Google, the verdict is “Do Not Pass Go” 🎩

Neuralink presses on with patient 2 🧠

The future of ethical AI ⚖

Youth mental health is a big deal 🙁

What to know: a judge ruled that Google has actively maintained a monopoly in the general search engine business (and that’s illegal)

Monopolizing moves: Google paid Apple ~$20 billion to be the iPhone maker’s default search engine and shares over a third of Safari search ad revenue with the company — not considered friendly competition

What’s next: Google will appeal this to kingdom come, but the internet giant could be forced to shake up its business practices…

What we’re thinking: anti-trust cases like this have happened before and any changes would take a long time — but we’re wondering, are we finally on the verge of a reckoning for the tech giants?

What to know: a second person has received a brain implant from Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company, Neuralink

Who has Neuralink: patient 1 was 30-year-old Noland Arbaugh, and while not much is known about patient 2, the Neuralink trials are only targeting those with quadriplegia (paralysis of all 4 limbs)

Stretch goals: brain chips allow patients to control computers and even robotic limbs for now, but Musk envisions a future where BCIs could cure paralysis, restore sight to the blind, and even treat dementia

What’s to come: there are concerns with BCIs we could spiral on — but if they can get this technology right and safe, it could be life-changing for those who are paralyzed or facing other “incurable” disabilities

What to know: OpenAI just lost another co-founder, this time to the “safer, steerable AI” hands of Anthropic — further signs of the industry division on how safe we should be keeping AI

Who else to watch: Ilya Sutsekever (another OpenAI cofounder who publicly opposed Altman’s company direction) recently co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. — where AI security is the #1 goal

Is ethical AI possible: AI development costs a lot, and in a for-profit world, these businesses could be forced to make decisions that might not put safety first — so unfortunately money might be what decides the future of ethical AI

What to know: the US Surgeon General called to have a warning label for social media apps, linking them to mental illness — similar to health risks flagged on cigarettes

How we got here: depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders are a leading cause of illness among adolescents — rates are skyrocketing

A contagious trend: a large study from Finland found that teens are more likely to experience mental illness themselves if they’ve had a classmate diagnosed with a mental illness

What we’re thinking: it’s hard to see a social media warning label truly working, and you can’t prevent kids from interacting with peers who have a mental illness — so… are we going to need to wait on the social media platforms themselves to make a meaningful change?

I just visited my 102-year-old Nana this past week and I swear some days she looks better than I do — for all my fellow longevity lovers, check out this more technical read on the secret to living past 120

These generative AI images from a new text-to-image model are insanely good

After watching Mondo light up the pole vault event, we’re now big fans of the sport… which is why this caught our eye: one company is developing technology to build a self-healing pole vault pole, which could also be applied to bike frames and surfboards — pretty cool!