This week, Google is feeling like a person at a party trying to look like they're having fun after remembering they left their dog outside. Three researchers with links to Google won the Nobel Prize for their work on AI, cementing the company as an unequivocal leader in the technology at the same time that it’s under antitrust scrutiny from the DOJ.

Reasons to celebrate: Two of the three people who won the prize in chemistry—Demis Hassabis and John Jumper—are scientists of Google's AI lab, DeepMind. And Geoffrey Hinton, who was part of a duo that won the Nobel for physics, was a Google VP up until last year.

• Hassabis and Jumper won for their work using AI to decode proteins, enabling scientists to rapidly develop medicines and vaccines.
• Hinton won for his work on neural networks—the bedrock of AI systems like ChatGPT.

But…these big wins prompted big questions about Big Tech’s increasing and potentially untenable role in scientific development.

AI research Big Tech

That some of the world’s most prestigious scientific awards were given to private sector researchers reflects a paradigm shift—both in what the Nobel Prize committee deems important (clearly AI) and what the future of scientific research will look like.

• The research accomplished at DeepMind required unbelievable amounts of computation power and data. Google is one of the only companies that could provide both of those things and bankroll the project.
• In his acceptance speech, Hassabis said he wouldn’t have accomplished what he did without the “patience and a lot of support” that he got from Google.

But for how much longer? Google is only as big and powerful as its most important businesses, and the DOJ said this week that it is considering asking a judge (who agreed that Google was a monopoly in search) to break up the company. The Justice Department also said it would consider Google’s “leverage of its monopoly power to feed AI” in deciding what to request.—CC

Florida is cleaning up from back-to-back hurricanes. With Milton and Helene both having hit Florida hard, its residents have begun to remove debris as rescue teams continue to search for people, millions remain without power, and flood waters are still flowing in some areas. Floridians were warned to steer clear of those waters to not only avoid bacteria, but also stingrays and alligators that might be lurking.

JPMorgan says the soft landing is here. Reporting its first quarterly earnings since the Fed’s big interest rate cut, America’s biggest bank earned more than expected from loans and boosted what it forecasts it’ll earn for the year. Meanwhile, its CFO affirmed that the economy is in good shape, noting, “These results are consistent with a soft landing.” But it wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows at JPMorgan: CEO Jamie Dimon cautioned that geopolitical risks remain a looming threat, saying “conditions are treacherous and getting worse.” In other banking news, Wells Fargo also beat earnings expectations.

AI is taking people’s jobs at TikTok. The video app that taught you how to eat a whole cucumber is laying off hundreds of employees around the world, including ~500 in Malaysia, as it folds AI into its content moderation process, Reuters reports. The turn to AI is part of TikTok’s efforts—which include a $2 billion investment in trust and safety initiatives this year—to improve its moderation and keep content that runs afoul of its rules out of your feed.—AR

TD Bank is expensively apologizing for making itself “convenient” for criminals, federal prosecutors said this week, after the bank agreed to pay authorities $3 billion in a money-laundering-related guilty plea deal.

Unwanted records: TD Bank is the biggest financial institution to cop to conspiracy to commit money laundering in the US, and it got the largest penalty of any bank found to have broken a US anti-laundering law.

According to the Justice Department, TD Bank didn’t monitor at least 90% of transactions between January 2018 and April 2024, which helped criminal networks launder $670 million, mostly in drug money.

• One person bribed TD Bank employees with $57,000 in gift cards so they’d let him deposit and transfer $470 million from fentanyl and other drug sales, sometimes withdrawing 40–50 times more money than daily limits allow.
• The bank didn’t raise flags on multiple accounts opened with the same passports, nor on five shell companies that together moved $100 million through the bank.
• In internal messages, TD employees acknowledged they were “100 percent” aiding money laundering, and one branch manager reportedly told a colleague, “You guys really need to shut this down LOL.”

In timeout: TD Bank was also slapped with the dreaded “asset cap,” which bars growth until the Fed sees TD’s problems fixed. Wells Fargo has been capped since 2018.—ML

If investors had to describe Tesla’s robotaxi reveal this week in two words, they would probably be, “womp womp.” But, luckily for CEO Elon Musk, the company also revealed a shiny new toy that stole the show: Optimus.

Musk has teased the humanoid robots since 2021, but he finally provided some new details during Thursday’s demonstration. Optimus, he claims, will soon be able to do things like mow your lawn or watch your kids. He added that the bot will cost $20,000–$30,000 and will be available to purchase…someday.

The robotics market is hot. Goldman Sachs said in a report earlier this year that it expects the total addressable market, or the maximum potential opportunity of humanoid robotics, to hit $38 billion by 2035—a $32 billion increase over its previous projections. It credits much of that bump to rapid advancements in AI.

That might be lowballing the market if Musk’s prediction that Optimus will be “the biggest product ever of any kind” comes to fruition. But considering how crowded the market already is, and the bot’s current skills of 1) dancing 2) playing rock, paper, scissors and 3) wearing cowboy hats, it might be awhile before that happens. Still, the I, Robot-lookin’ automaton received a more enthusiastic reception from observers than did the product the event was actually supposed to be for.—MM

The Atlantic is embracing a strategy that isn’t new—it goes all the way back to Johannes Gutenberg—but is unusual in the current media landscape: The magazine is putting more resources into print. The 167-year-old periodical is upping its annual output from 10 issues to 12, making it a true monthly again for the first time since 2002, per CNN.

What’s driving the magazine to double down on a format that’s most commonly associated with airports and doctors’ waiting rooms after most media companies pivoted hard to the internet? The Atlantic recently passed 1 million subscribers—and most readers get both a hard copy and a digital version. Plus, the publication, owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, announced in March that it had returned to profitability, bouncing back from a $20 million loss three years before. And it’s not the only one with faith in the power of print: The Onion’s new leadership also recently hatched a plan to bring back its print edition for paying subscribers (that’s not a joke).—AR

Unless you have space tourism cash, you may not see how space exploration benefits Earthlings beyond satellite internet and neat Insta reels from the ISS.

But a novel push to build factories in orbit might change how you think about the billions of dollars being poured into rocket launches. Pioneering scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs hope to harness the zero-gravity environment to produce items that are either extremely impractical or impossible to make on Earth, from cutting-edge cancer drugs to game-changing semiconductors.

Read more about the budding orbital industrial revolution here.