What you need to know from today's Google IO: PaLM 2, Pixel Fold, AI everywhere

At its downsized developer conference on Wednesday, Google showed off present and planned Pixel hardware – a foldable Pixel among them – and PaLM 2, a large language model that follows in the footsteps of last year's initial Pathways Language Model (PaLM) and now whispers to various Google products. There was more, too, …

[Anonymous Coward]

They also mentioned RCS, the "new" thing for SMS, with some not-at-all subtle digs at Apple who's refusing to let iMessage interoperate with anything.

[diodesign]

RCS

Yeah, it didn't make it into our stories but I'm told this happened:

A Google exec said: "We hope every mobile operating system gets the message and adopts RCS," and the crowd cheered.

Everyone wants Apple to join, and Apple continues to say no. There'll be 1bn people using RCS by the end of the year, it's estimated.

C.

[NoneSuch]

Re: RCS

"Everyone wants Apple to join, and Apple continues to say no. There'll be 1bn people using RCS by the end of the year, it's estimated."

Yes, but none of those people are paying Apple any money so they do not exist in their eyes.

[that one in the corner]

Hsiao demonstrated by...

Yes, but did it actually *work* and return back an accurate and complete dataset? Did anyone bother to check?

[Mage]

Oh dear.

Turns out Skynet isn't at all as the film series envisaged it, nor are replicants as Philip K. Dick imagined.

I don't want any new gadget with this built-in garbage unless it can be turned off, or ideally removed.

[f01re]

According to what I can see, the tablet is $499 / £599

I do understand US taxless pricing and VAT etc and have got used to consoles etc being $499 / £499 over the years

Is $499 / £599 going to be our new Brexit reality? I bet Apple and Microsoft etc will be watching with interest

[katrinab]

And the phone is $499/£450. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to me.

[tip pc]

am i the only one?

While i think AI may have its uses am i the only one who wants it to be separate and distinct instead of rolled & baked into everything?

I don't need AI to make a call

I don't want AI listening to my call to put a message on screen that i'm 51st in the queue ( i can see how that is handy for some)

I'd like AI to ask my permission to do stuff instead of it doing stuff by default.