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Today — 31 October 2025Main stream

Salesforce Agentic Commerce: AI Redefines Retail

31 October 2025 at 05:17

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Salesforce Agentic Commerce introduces AI-powered tools and strategic partnerships to redefine retail, enhancing discovery, personalization, and operational efficiency.

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Yesterday — 30 October 2025Main stream

Inside the UW Allen School: Six ‘grand challenges’ shaping the future of computer science

30 October 2025 at 20:42
Magdalena Balazinska, director of the UW Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, opens the school’s annual research showcase Wednesday in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

The University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering is reframing what it means for its research to change the world.

In unveiling six “Grand Challenges” at its annual Research Showcase and Open House in Seattle on Wednesday, the Allen School’s leaders described a blueprint for technology that protects privacy, supports mental health, broadens accessibility, earns public trust, and sustains people and the planet.

The idea is to “organize ourselves into some more specific grand challenges that we can tackle together to have an even greater impact,” said Magdalena Balazinska, director of the Allen School and a UW computer science professor, opening the school’s annual Research Showcase and Open House.

Here are the six grand challenges:

  • Anticipate and address security, privacy, and safety issues as tech permeates society.
  • Make high-quality cognitive and mental health support available to all.
  • Design technology to be accessible at its inception — not as an add-on.
  • Design AI in a way that is transparent and equally beneficial to all.
  • Build systems that can be trusted to do exactly what we want them to do, every time.
  • Create technologies that sustain people and the planet.

Balazinska explained that the list draws on the strengths and interests of its faculty, who now number more than 90, including 74 on the tenure track.

With total enrollment of about 2,900 students, last year the Allen School graduated more than 600 undergrads, 150 master’s students, and 50 Ph.D. students.

The Allen School has grown so large that subfields like systems and NLP (natural language processing) risk becoming isolated “mini departments,” said Shwetak Patel, a University of Washington computer science professor. The Grand Challenges initiative emerged as a bottom-up effort to reconnect these groups around shared, human-centered problems. 

Patel said the initiative also encourages collaborations on campus beyond the computer science school, citing examples like fetal heart rate monitoring with UW Medicine.

A serial entrepreneur and 2011 MacArthur Fellow, Patel recalled that when he joined UW 18 years ago, his applied and entrepreneurial focus was seen as unconventional. Now it’s central to the school’s direction. The grand challenges initiative is “music to my ears,” Patel said.

In tackling these challenges, the Allen School has a unique advantage against many other computer science schools. Eighteen faculty members currently hold what’s known as “concurrent engagements” — formally splitting time between the Allen School and companies and organizations such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2).

University of Washington computer science professor Shwetak Patel at the Paul G. Allen School’s annual research showcase and open house. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)

This is a “superpower” for the Allen School, said Patel, who has a concurrent engagement at Google. These arrangements, he explained, give faculty and students access to data, computing resources, and real-world challenges by working directly with companies developing the most advanced AI systems.

“A lot of the problems we’re trying to solve, you cannot solve them just at the university,” Patel said, pointing to examples such as open-source foundation models and AI for mental-health research that depend on large-scale resources unavailable in academia alone.

These roles can also stretch professors thin. “When somebody’s split, there’s only so much mental energy you can put into the university,” Patel said. Many of those faculty members teach just one or two courses a year, requiring the school to rely more on lecturers and teaching faculty.

Still, he said, the benefits outweigh the costs. “I’d rather have 50% of somebody than 0% of somebody, and we’ll make it work,” he said. “That’s been our strategy.”

The Madrona Prize, an annual award presented at the event by the Seattle-based venture capital firm, went to a project called “Enhancing Personalized Multi-Turn Dialogue with Curiosity Reward.” The system makes AI chatbots more personal by giving them a “curiosity reward,” motivating the AI to actively learn about a user’s traits during a conversation to create more personalized interactions.

On the subject of industry collaborations, the lead researcher on the prize-winning project, UW Ph.D. student Yanming Wan, conducted the research while working as an intern at Google DeepMind. (See full list of winners and runners-up below.)

At the evening poster session, graduate students filled the rooms to showcase their latest projects — including new advances in artificial intelligence for speech, language, and accessibility.

DopFone: Doppler-based fetal heart rate monitoring using commodity smartphones

Poojita Garg, a second-year PhD student.

DopFone transforms phones into fetal heart rate monitors. It uses the phone speaker to transmit a continuous sine wave and uses the microphone to record the reflections. It then processes the audio recordings to estimate fetal heart rate. It aims to be an alternative to doppler ultrasounds that require trained staff, which aren’t practical for frequent remote use.

“The major impact would be in the rural, remote and low-resource settings where access to such maternity care is less — also called maternity care deserts,” said Poojita Garg, a second-year PhD student.

CourseSLM: A Chatbot Tool for Supporting Instructors and Classroom Learning

Marquiese Garrett, a sophomore at the UW.

This custom-built chatbot is designed to help students stay focused and build real understanding rather than relying on quick shortcuts. The system uses built-in guardrails to keep learners on task and counter the distractions and over-dependence that can come with general large language models.

Running locally on school devices, the chatbot helps protect student data and ensures access even without Wi-Fi.

“We’re focused on making sure students have access to technology, and know how to use it properly and safely,” said Marquiese Garrett, a sophomore at the UW.

Efficient serving of SpeechLMs with VoxServe

Keisuke Kamahori, a third-year PhD student at the Allen School.

VoxServe makes speech-language models run more efficiently. It uses a standardized abstraction layer and interface that allows many different models to run through a single system. Its key innovation is a custom scheduling algorithm that optimizes performance depending on the use case.

The approach makes speech-based AI systems faster, cheaper, and easier to deploy, paving the way for real-time voice assistants and other next-gen speech applications.

“I thought it would be beneficial if we can provide this sort of open-source system that people can use,” said Keisuke Kamahori, third-year Ph.D. student at the Allen School.

ConvFill: Model collaboration for responsive conversational voice agents

Zachary Englhardt (left), a fourth-year PhD student, and Vidya Srinivas, a third-year PhD student.

ConvFill is a lightweight conversational model designed to reduce the delay in voice-based large language models. The system responds quickly with short, initial answers, then fills in more detailed information as larger models complete their processing.

By combining small and large models in this way, ConvFill delivers faster responses while conserving tokens and improving efficiency — an important step toward more natural, low-latency conversational AI.

“This is an exciting way to think about how we can combine systems together to get the best of both worlds,” said Zachary Englhardt, a third-year Ph.D. student. “It’s an exciting way to look at problems.”

ConsumerBench: Benchmarking generative AI on end-user devices

Yile Gu, a third-year PhD student at the Allen School.

Running generative AI locally — on laptops, phones, or other personal hardware — introduces new system-level challenges in fairness, efficiency, and scheduling.

ConsumerBench is a benchmarking framework that tests how well generative AI applications perform on consumer hardware when multiple AI models run at the same time. The open-source tool helps researchers identify bottlenecks and improve performance on consumer devices.

There are a number of benefits to running models locally: “There are privacy purposes — a user can ask for questions related to email or private content, and they can do it efficiently and accurately,” said Yile Gu, a third-year Ph.D. student at the Allen School.

Designing Chatbots for Sensitive Health Contexts: Lessons from Contraceptive Care in Kenyan Pharmacies

Lisa Orii, a fifth-year Ph.D. student at the Allen School.

A project aimed at improving contraceptive access and guidance for adolescent girls and young women in Kenya by integrating low-fidelity chatbots into healthcare settings. The goal is to understand how chatbots can support private, informed conversations and work effectively within pharmacies.

“The fuel behind this whole project is that my team is really interested in improving health outcomes for vulnerable populations,” said Lisa Orii, a fifth-year Ph.D. student.

See more about the research showcase here. Here’s the list of winning projects.

Madrona Prize Winner: “Enhancing Personalized Multi-Turn Dialogue with Curiosity Reward” Yanming Wan, Jiaxing Wu, Marwa Abdulhai, Lior Shani, Natasha Jaques

Runner up: “VAMOS: A Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Model for Capability-Modulated and Steerable Navigation” Mateo Guaman Castro, Sidharth Rajagopal, Daniel Gorbatov, Matt Schmittle, Rohan Baijal, Octi Zhang, Rosario Scalise, Sidharth Talia, Emma Romig, Celso de Melo, Byron Boots, Abhishek Gupta

Runner up: “Dynamic 6DOF VR reconstruction from monocular videos” Baback Elmieh, Steve Seitz, Ira-Kemelmacher, Brian Curless

People’s Choice: “MolmoAct” Jason Lee, Jiafei Duan, Haoquan Fang, Yuquan Deng, Shuo Liu, Boyang Li, Bohan Fang, Jieyu Zhang, Yi Ru Wang, Sangho Lee, Winson Han, Wilbert Pumacay, Angelica Wu, Rose Hendrix, Karen Farley, Eli VanderBilt, Ali Farhadi, Dieter Fox, Ranjay Krishna

Editor’s Note: The University of Washington underwrites GeekWire’s coverage of artificial intelligence. Content is under the sole discretion of the GeekWire editorial team. Learn more about underwritten content on GeekWire.

AI Breast Cancer Screening Transforms Rural India Access

30 October 2025 at 20:18

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AI breast cancer screening, powered by MedCognetics and NVIDIA, is bringing critical early detection capabilities to rural India via mobile clinics.

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Google’s AI Carbon Removal Strategy Takes Shape in Brazil

30 October 2025 at 17:17

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Google's new initiative in Brazil demonstrates how AI is becoming indispensable for scaling diverse carbon removal technologies, from methane capture to reforestation.

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SWE-1.5 model ends the AI speed vs. smarts tradeoff

30 October 2025 at 12:46

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The SWE-1.5 model's performance comes from co-designing the AI model, agent harness, and inference stack as one unified system, not just from training a better model.

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Google AI Revenue Growth Fuels Record Quarter

30 October 2025 at 02:17

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Google's Q3 2025 earnings mark a record $100 billion quarter, with AI driving unprecedented Google AI revenue growth across its entire ecosystem.

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OpenAI’s Audacious AGI Timeline: A Leap Towards Self-Improving Intelligence

29 October 2025 at 23:17

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The artificial intelligence community received a jolt of precision when Sam Altman and Jakub Pachocki of OpenAI, during a recent livestream, laid out an ambitious, almost startlingly specific timeline for the emergence of advanced AI capabilities. Far from vague predictions, they articulated a vision where an “Automated AI research intern” could be a reality by […]

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NotebookLM Chat Goals Redefine AI Research

29 October 2025 at 21:18

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NotebookLM's new chat goals feature, combined with a 1 million token context window, transforms AI into a highly personalized and adaptive research partner.

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Before yesterdayMain stream

AI for Math Initiative: DeepMind’s Bold Research Play

29 October 2025 at 18:18

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Google DeepMind's AI for Math Initiative unites top research institutions to pioneer AI in mathematical discovery, promising significant breakthroughs and accelerated scientific progress.

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Salesforce Agentic AI: The Enterprise Evolution

29 October 2025 at 11:18

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Salesforce's 'Agentic AI' strategy, featuring Agentforce 360 and Forward Deployed Engineers, aims to fundamentally redefine enterprise operations with unified, workflow-spanning AI agents.

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NVIDIA BlueField-4 Powers AI Factory OS

29 October 2025 at 10:17

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NVIDIA BlueField-4 is poised to redefine AI infrastructure, offering unprecedented compute power, 800Gb/s throughput, and advanced security for gigascale AI factories.

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NVIDIA Tackles AI Energy Consumption with Gigawatt Blueprint

29 October 2025 at 09:17

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NVIDIA's Omniverse DSX blueprint provides a standardized, energy-efficient framework for designing and operating gigawatt-scale AI factories, directly addressing AI energy consumption.

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NVIDIA Open Models Broaden AI Innovation Access

29 October 2025 at 08:17

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NVIDIA's new open models and data across language, robotics, and biology are set to democratize advanced AI and accelerate innovation.

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NVIDIA IGX Thor Powers Real-Time AI at the Industrial Edge

29 October 2025 at 06:17

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NVIDIA IGX Thor is an industrial-grade platform delivering 8x the AI compute of its predecessor, enabling real-time physical AI for critical industrial and medical applications.

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Lilly Blackwell Drug Discovery: A New Era

29 October 2025 at 05:17

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Lilly's new AI factory, powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, marks a pivotal shift in drug discovery, promising unprecedented speed and scale in pharmaceutical innovation.

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NVIDIA AI-RAN: Open Source Rewrites Wireless Innovation

29 October 2025 at 04:17

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NVIDIA's open-sourcing of Aerial software, coupled with DGX Spark, is democratizing AI-native 5G and 6G development, accelerating wireless innovation at an unprecedented pace.

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AI Fusion Energy: NVIDIA, GA Unveil Digital Twin Breakthrough

29 October 2025 at 03:17

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NVIDIA and General Atomics have launched an AI-enabled digital twin for fusion reactors, dramatically accelerating the path to commercial AI fusion energy.

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NVIDIA Boosts Navy AI Training with DGX GB300

29 October 2025 at 02:18

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NVIDIA's DGX GB300 system is empowering the Naval Postgraduate School with advanced NVIDIA Navy AI training, enabling secure, on-premises generative AI and high-fidelity digital twin simulations for critical defense applications.

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NVIDIA AI Fuels US Economic Development

29 October 2025 at 00:17

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NVIDIA is driving significant AI economic development across the US by partnering with states, cities, and universities to democratize AI access and foster innovation.

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NVIDIA AI Physics Simulation Reshapes Engineering

28 October 2025 at 23:18

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NVIDIA AI physics simulation, powered by the PhysicsNeMo framework, is accelerating engineering design by up to 500x in aerospace and automotive.

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Google Gemini for Home: The AI Assistant’s Next Evolution

28 October 2025 at 21:18

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Google Gemini for Home is rolling out in early access, upgrading smart assistants with advanced conversational AI and introducing a premium subscription for enhanced features.

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Pomelli AI: Google’s Play for SMB Marketing

28 October 2025 at 20:17

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Google Labs' new Pomelli AI aims to democratize on-brand social media campaign generation for SMBs by leveraging AI to understand and replicate brand identity.

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Gemini for Education: Google’s AI Dominates Higher Ed

28 October 2025 at 17:17

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Google's Gemini for Education is rapidly integrating into higher education, offering no-cost AI tools to over 1000 institutions and 10 million students.

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Google Arts & Culture Elevates Virtual Travel with AI Tours

28 October 2025 at 14:17

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Google Arts & Culture is redefining virtual exploration with new AI tours for North Gyeongsang, South Korea, featuring interactive, Gemini-powered commentary.

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Edge AI: The Key to Sustainable AI Energy Efficiency

28 October 2025 at 00:17

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Arm and SCSP's new paper highlights edge computing as the strategic imperative for achieving AI energy efficiency and securing U.S. competitiveness.

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Fitbit Gemini Coach Redefines Digital Health

27 October 2025 at 22:17

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Fitbit's Gemini coach, now in public preview, leverages advanced AI to provide personalized fitness, sleep, and health coaching, redefining digital wellness.

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Mercor Hits $10B Valuation, Fueling Human-in-the-Loop AI

27 October 2025 at 20:14

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Mercor's $10 billion valuation underscores the growing industry demand for specialized human experts to provide the nuanced judgment essential for training advanced AI models.

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AMD Sharpens Focus on Rack-Scale AI Innovation

27 October 2025 at 17:18

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AMD's strategic divestiture of ZT Systems' manufacturing, while retaining design expertise, sharpens its focus on integrated AMD rack-scale AI solutions.

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Streetbeat’s $15M Bet on AI Wealth Management’s Future

27 October 2025 at 14:38

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Streetbeat secured $15 million to expand its AI wealth management platform, promising increased efficiency for advisors and AI-powered investment returns for retail users.

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NVIDIA Boosts Physical AI Robotics Open Standards

27 October 2025 at 06:17

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NVIDIA is accelerating physical AI robotics development by contributing GPU-aware abstractions to ROS 2 and releasing new tools, strengthening open standards.

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Google AI Studio Vibe Coding Redefines AI App Creation

27 October 2025 at 04:17

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Google AI Studio's 'vibe coding' allows users to describe AI app ideas in natural language, with Gemini models handling complex setup and iteration.

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Google Fuels AI Economic Growth SEA with Major Initiatives

26 October 2025 at 06:17

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Google's new initiatives in Southeast Asia are poised to drive significant AI economic growth SEA, with a projected US$270 billion boost through strategic investments in skills, research, and sustainability.

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Agentic AI Accessibility: Salesforce Sets New Support Standard

25 October 2025 at 12:17

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Salesforce's Agentforce AI successfully streamlined accessibility support at Dreamforce, demonstrating a powerful model for personalized and efficient Agentic AI accessibility.

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South Korea’s Dual AI Strategy: A Global Blueprint

25 October 2025 at 03:17

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South Korea's new AI strategy combines sovereign capability development with strategic global partnerships to drive economic growth and establish the nation as a top-tier AI leader.

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Google’s New AI Tools Master Spooky AI Images

24 October 2025 at 22:17

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Google's new AI tools, including Nano Banana and Veo, democratize advanced generative AI, making sophisticated creative capabilities like spooky AI images accessible to all users.

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Gemini AI Transforms World Series Broadcasts

24 October 2025 at 19:18

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Gemini AI is revolutionizing the World Series, enhancing broadcast commentary with real-time stats and ensuring seamless delivery through agentic network monitoring.

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