Google’s building A.I. into robots to teach them to throw out the trash
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet Inc., during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google announced a new artificial intelligence model on Friday that can help it train robots to understand tasks like throwing out trash.
The Robotics Transformer 2 (RT-2) is a vision-language-action model trained on information and images on the internet that can be translated into actions for the robot, Google said in a blog post.
While a task like picking up the trash sounds simple to humans, it requires an understanding of a series of tasks for a robot to learn. For example, the robot must first be able to recognize what items constitute trash, then know to pick it up and throw it away. Rather than program a robot to do those specific tasks, RT-2 allows the robot to use knowledge from around the web to help it understand how to complete the task, even if it hasn’t been explicitly trained on the exact steps.
The new model nearly doubled the robots’ performance on previously-unseen scenarios, compared to the earlier version of the model, Google said. The new version can use rudimentary reasoning to respond to user commands, Google added.
The company doesn’t have imminent plans to widely release or sell robots with the new technology, The New York Times reported. But eventually, they could be used in warehouses or as home assistants, the Times added.
WATCH: How autonomous inventory robots could save retailers billions
Technology
Trump approves TikTok deal through executive order, Vance says business valued at $14 billion
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order approving a proposal that would keep TikTok alive in the U.S. in a transaction that Vice President JD Vance said values the business at $14 billion.
The deal satisfies the requirements of a national security law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country, according to the executive order. Under the terms, which China must still approve, a new joint-venture company will oversee TikTok’s U.S. business, with ByteDance retaining less than a 20% stake.
Enterprise tech giant Oracle, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi-based MGX investment fund will be main investors in TikTok’s U.S. business, controlling a roughly 45% stake in the entity, while ByteDance investors and new holders will own 35%, CNBC’s David Faber reported earlier Thursday.
No representatives from ByteDance were present at the signing, and the company hasn’t acknowledged that a transaction is taking place. No purchase price was mentioned, and there’s no indication that the Chinese government has made changes to laws that would be necessary for a deal to take place.
President Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the deal the go ahead. Vance said the Chinese government put up some resistance before the agreement.
Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the app’s security operations and continue providing cloud computing services for the new TikTok U.S. firm, Faber reported, citing sources familiar with the deal. Trump said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is involved in the ownership group and that his company is “playing a very big part.”
“It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” Trump said at the signing. “This is going to be American operated all the way.”
ByteDance investors like General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia, are expected to contribute equity in the new TikTok U.S. entity, sources told Faber. ByteDance was reportedly valued at $330 billion last month. Analysts have previously estimated TikTok’s U.S. operations could be worth between $30 billion to $35 billion.
The deal does not involve the federal government taking an equity stake or a so-called golden share in TikTok’s U.S. operations, CNBC reported Monday.
Trump said over the weekend that conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch could be involved in the TikTok deal as well as Ellison and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.
The president last week signed an executive order that extended ByteDance’s deadline to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or be subject to a national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden. The order prevents the Department of Justice from enforcing the national security law that would penalize app store operators like Apple and Google and internet service providers for providing services to TikTok’s U.S. operations.
WATCH: White House Press Secretary says Trump will sign TikTok deal.
Technology
Microsoft cuts off cloud services to Israeli military unit after report of storing Palestinians’ phone calls
Microsoft President Brad Smith, left, speaks at a press conference on future visions for the development and application of artificial intelligence in education in North Rhine-Westphalia at the Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Berlin on June 4, 2025. To his right is Hendrik Wüst (CDU), Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, in front of the sign “From coal to AI.”
Soeren Stache | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it has stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The company did not say which specific services it had stopped providing.
The decision comes after the software company investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.
“While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, wrote in an email to employees. “This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.”
Microsoft’s decision to stop providing those services follows pressure from employees who have protested Israel’s use of the company’s software as part of its invasion of Gaza. Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has fired five employees who participated in protests at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
The move comes a week after a United Nations commission said that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians with its invasion of Gaza.
Microsoft told Israeli defense officials that it had decided to disable cloud-based storage an artificial intelligence subscriptions the agency was using, Smith wrote. He said Microsoft does not look at customer data for the type of review it conducted, and he thanked the British newspaper for its reporting on the development.
“As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust,” Smith wrote.
On Thursday The Guardian reported that unnamed intelligence sources had said Unit 8200 was planning to migrate its supply of the phone calls to Amazon Web Services, the market-leading public cloud. AWS did not immediately comment.
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