What Caught My Eye This Week - #3
Google Tests AI-Powered Search Mode
Each week, I'll bring you the most relevant and insightful tech stories, saving you time and keeping you informed.
Google Tests AI-Powered Search Mode
You know how sometimes when you search, Google gives you a quick summary at the top? That's called an AI Overview.
For those who really want to dive deep, Google is testing something called "AI Mode." It's like having a super smart research assistant right in your search bar. You can ask complex questions, get detailed answers, and even have a back-and-forth conversation with Google to explore a topic.
It's like Google searches through tons of information from the web, its own knowledge base, and even real-time data to give you the best answer.
It’s kind of like a upgraded version for AI Overview.
Things I read this week…
Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it
The Big Question:
Everyone thought your brain skills (like reading and math) start getting worse around age 30. That's a problem, especially since we're living longer.
What They Did:
Researchers tracked a bunch of German adults for 3.5 years, testing their reading and math skills twice. This way, they could see how those skills changed over time.
What They Found (The Cool Stuff):
Your brain gets better, not worse (at first): Turns out, your brain skills actually improve until you're in your 40s. Then, they might start to decline a little.
"Use it or lose it" is real: If you stop using your reading and math skills, they'll go downhill faster as you get older.
Jobs and education matter: People with white-collar jobs and higher education, who use their brains a lot, keep improving their skills even after 40.
Gender differences: Women tend to see a bigger drop in math skills as they age compared to men.
How to read research papers
Read things which are more fundamental rather than incremental. A lot of new papers are incremental.
First pass: Read the big picture
Second pass: Deep dive
Background: Building Context
Third pass: Connecting dots
Final: Explain to others
AI
Mistral's new OCR API can parses 1000-2000 pages for $1
https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ocr
Small Models are powerful
Alibaba Qwen released QwQ-32B, a reasoning model that beats DeepSeek-R1 (671B) and OpenAI o1-mini!
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/QwQ-32B
New products & Tools ...
MGX
MGX (MetaGPT X) is a multi-agent AI platform based on real software SOPs. Chat with the AI team leader, product manager, architect, engineer, and data analyst 24/7 to create websites, blogs, shops, analytics, games, or anything else you want to try.
This tool is to help quickly generate a decent website for deploying.