Scrub out Edge

📞 AI’s on the line, fur real: Google’s Gemini bots can now phone your local pet groomer for you. Ask about prices, availability or just vibe checks, all without saying a word yourself. Only in the U.S., only for certain biz types (pet stuff, dry cleaners, auto shops), and yes, businesses can opt out. Gemini Premium folks get more AI call credits, because obviously money talks, and now so does AI.

That’s how accurately one dog sniffed out Parkinson’s, just from skin oil. Wow, right? In a double-blind trial, a lab-golden mix nailed 32 out of 40 cases of a disease that normally takes years to diagnose. No blood. No scans. Man’s best friend? More like neurology’s new MVP.

That’s the massive chunk of change the former CTO (and briefly CEO) of OpenAI, Mira Murati, raised for her AI startup. Before it’s even shipped a product. The company’s called Thinking Machines, and it’s gunning to build the next-gen AI that can juggle text, images and more. Investors like Nvidia and a16z don’t need a demo, just Murati’s résumé and a good story.

💺 This idea is taking off: Forget flying on Wednesdays to save money on airfare. Delta’s letting AI set airfare based on what you personally might pay, i.e., how likely you are to cough up more money based on past purchases. About 3% of tickets use AI already. By year-end? 20%. 

How many tasks a robot nailed, solo, during a gallbladder surgery. Johns Hopkins’ new AI-powered bot followed instructions, learned from voice commands, adapted mid-op and even corrected itself like a good surgical intern. Only it never gets tired, flustered, needs snacks or even requests a student loan deferment. 

🛻 I think he might be right: Waze’s cofounder thinks Gen Beta (those born from 2025 to around 2039) won’t ever touch a steering wheel. With Tesla and Waymo pushing robotaxis, Uri Levine says the future is all self-driving, and maybe mobile shoe stores. So yeah, traffic might just be a bunch of vans selling Crocs.

The number of AI GPUs Elon’s stuffing into one building. That’s not a typo. It’s a silicon army so power-hungry, xAI is shipping in a literal power plant to feed it. The data center will suck up 2 gigawatts. That’s enough juice to keep the lights on in nearly 2 million households. Forget cloud computing, this is thunderstorm computing.

The number of teachers now getting a crash course in AI. A new $23 million union-backed training academy, funded by Microsoft ($12.5M), OpenAI ($8M plus $2M in tech) and Anthropic ($500K), aims to make every AFT member fluent in AI. It’s like summer school for grown-ups. 

Cold storage, cold betrayal: Say goodbye to the crypto wallet Ledger’s Nano S. No more updates, no help if it breaks. Folks bought it thinking they could just keep their crypto in it, but now are being forcibly nudged to upgrade to the Nano S Plus or Nano X.

This is nuts: Two new AI tools, DAILA and DeepDi, let anyone upload an app file and then it will spit out the source code. Translation: An app will reverse engineer another app in seconds. Companies who thought their proprietary code and tech secrets were safe are screwed.