From Microsoft’s wild discovery to Google’s awkward Flow | 3 Wow and 1 Promise

Summary

In this episode of Turing Post’s “3 Wow and 1 Promise” series, host Ksenia Se shares the most impactful AI news from the week. She begins by explaining the concept of “capabilities overhang” coined by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, which suggests that we’ve barely scratched 1% of what large language models and multimodal AI can do.

The episode covers three major breakthroughs: Microsoft’s AI-discovered PFAS-free coolant that can keep data center hardware running without toxic forever chemicals, Google’s new AI Mode that integrates all Google products into a unified AI search experience, and UBS’s deployment of AI-generated avatars of their analysts to deliver research insights. The “promise” segment focuses on Google Flow, a video generation interface that shows impressive demos but, as Ksenia demonstrates, still produces comically inconsistent results in practice.

A particularly notable moment from Google I/O was the unannounced appearance of Sergey Brin during a fireside chat with Demis Hassabis, signaling Google’s intensified focus on winning the AI race and achieving AGI first.

Highlights

”We’ve barely scratched 1% of what AI can do”

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“Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft, inspired me to do that. He said that we’ve got capabilities overhang. What does it mean? Actually, it’s pretty simple. It means that we barely scratched the surface of what LLMs are capable of. And not only LLMs, large language models, the modality of text, but also video, audio, images, all this multi-model world we’re driving in is immense, but we haven’t even scratched 1% of it.” — Ksenia Se, 0:15

”Microsoft discovered a PFAS-free coolant in 200 hours”

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“John Link revealed a breakthrough cooling discovery via AI in just 200 hours. They not only discover this new coolant in under 200 hours. They also took it and implemented it in the real laboratory. Why this coolant is also so special? Because it’s PFAS free and it means it is free from forever chemicals often used in electronics coolant.” — Ksenia Se, 1:23

”Google AI Mode connects everything together”

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“If you imagine how much you interact with Google, how much you interact with Gmail, how much of our lives are in this browser and all these products. Now the AI mode actually connects everything together that Google provides and also it makes search, it brings search to different level.” — Ksenia Se, 2:55

”UBS frees up analyst time with AI avatars”

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“UBS deploys AI financial avatars. You might think it’s nothing, but they use AI generated avatars of their analysts to deliver research insights via video. And that frees up a lot of time for analysts to do some other substantial work. I think it’s a little thing but actually shows you the huge cut of human time that was spent on sometimes repetitive stuff.” — Ksenia Se, 5:52

”Sergey Brin expects Google to achieve AGI first”

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“The other thing that actually was surprising for me and I think it’s telling a lot was that during the fireside chat at Google IO that was supposed to be between Alex Katz and Demis Hassabis, the third person came to the stage and was Sergey Brin the co-founder of Google. This unannounced appearance and him being on a stage as a boss just shows you how strong he feels about this new AI race. And one thing he said, he expects for Demis Hassabis and Google DeepMind to achieve AGI first.” — Ksenia Se, 7:36

Key Points

• Capabilities Overhang (0:20) - Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott’s concept that we’ve barely scratched 1% of what AI can do
• AI Coolant Discovery (1:23) - Microsoft discovered a PFAS-free coolant using AI in just 200 hours
• Lab Implementation (1:47) - They synthesized and tested the coolant running a PC in it with no fans
• Data Center Impact (2:17) - This could reduce toxic chemical usage in data centers running LLMs
• Google AI Mode (2:55) - New feature connecting all Google products into unified AI experience
• Multi-step Search (3:48) - AI mode kicks off 10+ searches to answer complex queries
• Ads in AI Responses (5:22) - Questions raised about how ads in AI responses will affect information quality
• UBS AI Avatars (5:52) - Bank uses AI avatars of analysts to deliver research insights
• Google Flow (6:28) - New interface combining image and video models with talking characters
• Flow Demo Problems (8:33) - Live demo shows inconsistent results, “big promise but not there yet”
• Sergey Brin Returns (7:36) - Google co-founder makes unannounced appearance at Google I/O
• AGI Race (8:00) - Brin expects Google DeepMind to achieve AGI first

Mentions

Companies

• Microsoft (0:15) - Source of capabilities overhang concept and AI coolant discovery
• Google (2:55) - Introduced AI Mode and Google Flow at Google I/O
• UBS (5:52) - Deploying AI avatars of financial analysts

Products & Technologies

• Google AI Mode (2:55) - New unified AI search experience
• Google Flow (6:28) - Video generation interface with talking characters
• Veo 2/3 (7:15) - Google’s video generation model powering Flow

People

• Kevin Scott (0:15) - Microsoft CTO who coined “capabilities overhang”
• John Link (1:23) - Microsoft chemistry lead who revealed the coolant discovery
• Demis Hassabis (7:48) - Google DeepMind CEO
• Sergey Brin (7:53) - Google co-founder who made surprise appearance at Google I/O

Surprising Quotes

“Though I read about 150 newsletters each week, I still need more AI news.” — 0:09

“We haven’t even scratched 1% of it.” — 0:49

“It did sound like some science fiction stuff, but the excitement of John Link was palpable.” — 2:46

“Will this enhance user experience or compromise the purity of information?” — 5:25

“So we can tell it sucks.” — 9:35

Transcript

0:00 Who needs more AI news? It’s unbelievable. But I do. Though I read about 150 newsletters each week, I still need more AI news. And you know why? Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft, inspired me to do that. He said that we’ve got capabilities overhang.

0:23 What does it mean? Actually, it’s pretty simple. It means that we barely scratched the surface of what LMS are capable of. And not only LMS, large language models, the modality of text, but also video, audio, images, all this multi-model world we’re driving in is immense, but we haven’t even scratched 1% of it.

0:52 So, with this news, I want to share with you the wow moments that I had reading AI news last week. What is AI in our real life? What it helps with? What actually is AI in our real world? How do we use it? To inspire you, to give you an understanding and to make it more visible how AI changes our world.

1:21 Let’s start. The first news is also from Microsoft. And I think that this session led by John Link, chemistry lead in Microsoft was highly underappreciated. You know what they did? John Link revealed a breakthrough cooling discovery via AI in just 200 hours. They not only discover this new coolant in under 200 hours. They also took it and implemented it in the real laboratory.

1:49 Why this coolant is also so special? Because it’s PFAS free and it means it is free from forever chemicals often used in electronics coolant. We took one of the most promising candidates and synthesized it. So we can see there my coolant and we dropped a standard PC in it and it’s running Forza Motorsport and it is keeping the temperature stable with no fans.

2:17 When do you need coolants? When you run your compute in any data center. So if you can imagine the amount of compute we’re running right now with LLMs and how much toxic stuff is getting with it into our earth. This discovery is a breakthrough that will help our earth and our data centers allowing us use more AI for better stuff.

2:41 This innovation reduces environment risks while boosting efficiency. It did sound like some science fiction stuff, but the excitement of John Link was palpable and by that I understood that thing.

2:55 Now to Google which also had a conference last week, Google IO. So they introduced AI mode and if you imagine how much you interact with Google, how much you interact with Gmail, how much of our lives are in this browser and all these products. Now the AI mode actually connects everything together that Google provides and also it makes search, it brings search to different level. Let me show you.

3:28 So AI mode, ask anything. Turn this experiment on off. Yeah, it’s on. Okay, try AI mode. So, if I plan a trip to Massachusetts somewhere around Green Mountain with my five kids and my husband for a soccer tournament, what should we do and see around considering that I have four active boys and one toddler to go, right?

3:51 Yeah. So, here it is kicking off 10 searches. It sounds like you have an exciting trip planned to Massachusetts. Is that right? And it gives me a few suggestions where to go. Kid friendly attractions, family-friendly restaurants. Perfect. And the farms with you pick fruit. Okay, that’s actually worked was good.

4:11 Okay, let’s start the new one. How about hey, I’m writing about how we use AI in real life. Can you give me three Wow AI news from the last week, May 18, May 23, right? That’s right. So, okay. Here are three WOW AI news from the past week. Microsoft envisions AI agents working together. Great. They actually suggested an agentic web which was very good narrative. I loved it.

4:33 Second one, AI powered autonomous weapons development. Palmer Luckey the founder of Oculus is now developing AI powered autonomous weapons with the US military. I don’t really like such news because like we haven’t yet seen the actual built stuff, right? It’s just that it’s under development.

4:53 When I’m thinking about wow news in terms of implementation of AI I want to see how it works now today. And the first one is a Grok chatbot spreads misinformation. I think this is actually news from last week so it gives us something but knowing much more about AI I would say this is not really the most wow news from the last week.

5:14 Users can now engage in multi-step queries with contextual answers however with ads being integrated into AI responses. Questions, I have questions. Will this enhance user experience or compromise the purity of information? Recently, before AI, we’ve seen that Google search because of ads became not really unusable, but a lot of people started using it less.

5:44 With AI mode, with the capabilities of AI, you can receive all the information possible. So, how will they deal with that question.

5:52 UBS deploys AI financial avatars. You might think it’s nothing, but they use AI generated avatars of their analysts to deliver research insights via video. And that frees up a lot of time for analysts to do some other substantial work. I think it’s a little thing but actually shows you the huge cut of human time that was spent on sometimes repetitive stuff.

6:24 You know, Google also introduced Flow, an interface where you can use their image model and their video model to create cool videos. One special thing about it is that the characters, the people that you created with this tool can talk. And when you watch demos, this is pretty incredible. Isn’t this just crazy? What’s crazy? People think we’re fake.

6:53 I would still call it a big promise because what we have now if you use Flow and I’ll show you in a second it’s not that much you can do. On the paid version which I will also show you, you can do a little more but still it’s more of a promise than a real thing. So let me show you how that works. Create with Flow. Let’s do that. I have a pro account. I think I can use only V2 not 3. But let’s start.

7:17 This is my first project that I made. It’s okay, but the flow didn’t work. So, let’s try something new. Let’s take one of the videos. Let’s try this prompt created from one of the Veo 3 videos. It will start working. We need to wait.

7:36 The other thing that actually was surprising for me and I think it’s telling a lot was that during the fireside chat at Google IO that was supposed to be between Alex Katz and Demis Hassabis the third person came to the stage and was Sergey Brin the co-founder of Google. We all heard that he started to work much more again because of AI he is much more involved.

8:07 But this unannounced appearance and him being on a stage as a boss that just shows you how strong he feels about this new AI race. And one thing he said he expects for Demis Hassabis and Google DeepMind to achieve AGI first. I think this is his objective and he’s super strict about it.

8:29 Okay, let’s see what V2 Flow showed us. Let’s see. That’s actually funny. The funniest part is that the pilot seats with her back to the window. Okay, let’s try this one. I don’t know if it can have, I think V3 only can have voice. Let’s choose this one. Extend a bird. Bird crashes into the plane window, breaking it. Okay, let’s see. Let’s see what we have now.

8:57 Very intense. Very intense. Where’s… Ooh. Okay, let’s extend this one. Right. That’s the weirdest part about this. So, it’s extending the first video, not the second one. And the bird that crushed the window lands on the female pilot’s lap. Something is happening. They were intense. They completely off. Oh wow. Oh wow. That’s not what I expected.

9:35 Yeah. So we can tell it sucks. We can probably take this video and arrange. Here is the bird that didn’t exist and then suddenly bird exists and on his shoulder as a colorful crow. Flow from Google is a big promise but it’s not there yet. At least on the pro subscription. Maybe next week I’ll make a demo from the ultra subscription that costs $249 a month I think. Everything for my readers and viewers. Tell me what you think and what you are excited about.