“Apple’s presentation ventured into what was once sci-fi territory with live translation via Apple Intelligence, which is basically Star Trek’s universal translator—just a little bit clunkier. When you turn it on, the AirPods will listen to people around you speaking a different language, and a synthesized voice will translate the phrases they’re saying as they come in.”
From Ars Technica.
“Ramp AI Index shows business AI adoption crossed 50% for the first time in March, reaching 50.4% of businesses. A year ago, it was 35%. Half of businesses on Ramp now pay for AI.
Anthropic continued its surge, growing from 24.4% to 30.6% of businesses — a 6.3-percentage-point gain, surpassing last month’s record monthly gain.”
From Ramp.
“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Thursday [4/30/26] to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules, which could increase capacity for space-based broadband services by up to sevenfold…
The recent announcement comes as a revamp of the Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) framework, developed in the late 1990s. The original framework was designed to prevent radio signal interference caused by satellites in low-Earth orbit, or non-geostationary orbit (NGSO), from affecting higher-orbiting geostationary satellites (GSO). As a result, it limited the amount of energy transmitted by satellites in low-Earth orbit to ground-based equipment, thereby slowing broadband speeds for consumers.”
From Gizmodo.
Journal of Regional Science | Motor Vehicles
“Recent advances in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies promise substantial cost savings for goods shipped by truck. In this study, we quantify the impacts of these transport cost reductions on the US interstate trade using a structural gravity model of domestic trade. Based on projected cost savings from the widespread adoption of self-driving technologies, we estimate significant increases in total interstate trade value. State-level impacts vary from 40.3% of GDP in Mississippi to 5.9% in Florida, while the largest impacts in dollar value are observed in Texas and New York. The sectoral analysis highlights motorized vehicles, mixed freight, and electronics as the industries experiencing the largest trade value growth. Additionally, goods with low value-to-weight ratios—where shipping costs represent a large share of the delivered value—are expected to benefit most in relative terms. These findings underscore the transformative potential of autonomous vehicle technologies in reshaping US trade patterns and sectoral dynamics.”
“I’m writing this post because when I look at all the publicly available information I reluctantly come to the view that there’s a likely chance (60%+) that no-human-involved AI R&D – an AI system powerful enough that it could plausibly autonomously build its own successor – happens by the end of 2028.
This is a big deal.
I don’t know how to wrap my head around it.
It’s a reluctant view because the implications are so large that I feel dwarfed by them, and I’m not sure society is ready for the kinds of changes implied by achieving automated AI R&D.
I now believe we are living in the time that AI research will be end-to-end automated. If that happens, we will cross a Rubicon into a nearly-impossible-to-forecast future. More on this later.
The purpose of this essay is to enumerate why I think the takeoff towards fully automated AI R&D is happening.”
From Import AI.
