If the hype around AI is indeed petering out, you wouldn’t know it from the earnings calls of two of the technology’s chief peddlers this week—though a frontrunner may be emerging.

Microsoft and Google once again leaned heavily into their respective generative AI pushes as they delivered overall strong results in reports this week. Executives and analysts peppered Alphabet’s call with 74 mentions of “AI” this quarter (down from 90 last quarter), as Microsoft racked up 58 name-checks (down from around 70).

While both companies affirmed their abiding enthusiasm for AI, Microsoft seemed to be the clear winner of the day in the eyes of Wall Street. The tech giant posted better-than-expected earnings, with a bright spot being a 24% YoY jump in its cloud business, which includes Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI services.

Meanwhile, clouds hung over Google parent Alphabet’s strong core advertising revenue posting in the form of, well, the cloud. The company’s stock took a significant dive in the hours after the call as its cloud business, which includes many of its AI services, logged its slowest growth in 11 quarters, according to Reuters.

Keep reading here.—PK

Wanna make next-level content, automate tasks, aaand transform ideas into beautiful, tangible designs, all in the blink of an eye? Then it’s time to say hi to AI. Luckily for you, we’ve got something on our radar that’ll help you get started.

We’re talkin’ about Canva’s Magic Studio. This collection of super easy-to-use features leverages AI to help you enhance your creativity, streamline workflows, and save time in the process. Whether you’re an aspiring wizard of design or a seasoned sorcerer, Magic Studio is your go-to.

Wanna know more? With Magic Studio, you can:

• craft on-brand copy with the Magic Write feature
• add to, replace, or edit your images with a simple text prompt
• make any image editable with Magic Grab

Step into the future of creativity.

San Francisco is about to have fewer robotaxis roaming its hilly streets.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s operating permits, forcing the GM-owned service to pull all cars from the road immediately after a spate of accidents involving its autonomous vehicles. The department claimed Cruise has “misrepresented” the safety of its autonomous technology.

The move isn’t coming out of nowhere; in August, the DMV ordered Cruise to cut its fleet in half as it investigated “recent concerning incidents,” which at the time included a collision between a fire truck and a Cruise car. Then, earlier this month, a hit-and-run collision pushed a pedestrian into the path of a Cruise vehicle, which ran over her and left her in critical condition.

Still, the suspension is obviously a huge blow to Cruise, which won a major expansion in San Francisco from the California Public Utilities Commission in August, along with Google-owned Waymo. The DMV said in its statement that it will not reinstate permits for Cruise until it proves that it can meet safety requirements “to the department’s satisfaction,” concluding that the cars currently pose an “unreasonable risk to the public.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Hospital ICUs. Lack of sleep. Mood swings.

Researchers found that these keywords helped artificial intelligence effectively detect distress during healthcare workers’ therapy sessions in the earliest months of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research AI on October 17.

The findings, from researchers at New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine, could potentially help healthcare workers address burnout before it reaches critical levels.

“Finally we have a thermometer for anxiety and depression,” Matteo Malgaroli, the study’s lead author and a research assistant professor at NYU Langone Health’s psychiatry department, told Healthcare Brew.

Keep reading here.—AE

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Is social media bad for us? Let’s count the ways: There’s no shortage of discussion about the ways in which social media is detrimental to our mental health and society, and those failures have been put under a microscope since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, fanned by the flames of AI-fueled mis- and disinformation.

At its worst, social media is responsible for actively spreading fake news. At its best, it’s giving users whiplash by wedging cooking demonstrations and clips of otters being super cute amid dubious information about a devastating humanitarian crisis.

The best: Not great. And that’s for full-fledged adults! That’s to say nothing of how social media affects children and teens.

According to a New York Times report, nearly all US states and Washington, DC, filed a lawsuit against Facebook/Instagram parent Meta earlier this week, “contending that the company knowingly used features on its platforms to cause children to use them compulsively, even as the company said that its social media sites were safe for young people.”

What’s a parent to do right now, though? We often turn to Sean Herman, aka That Digital Dad, who authors a Substack newsletter offering actionable advice for parents trying to raise digitally savvy (and healthy) kids.

Now that you’ve gotten to the bottom of this newsletter, we have zero reservations about encouraging you to get offline. Get outside and have a great weekend!