🎙️ EP 75: Google’s Tiny AI Model Runs in Your Phone. And MIT’s AI Just Invented Real Drugs - podcast episode cover

🎙️ EP 75: Google’s Tiny AI Model Runs in Your Phone. And MIT’s AI Just Invented Real Drugs

Aug 15, 2025•13 min
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Episode description

Google just dropped a new AI model so small it can run offline in your phone — and it actually works. MIT also used AI to invent antibiotics that kill deadly infections humans couldn't cure before.

We’ll talk about:

  • How Google’s Gemma 3 270M runs fully offline and uses less than 1% battery
  • Why AI-designed antibiotics might be the future of medicine
  • The truth about GPT-4o's persuasive powers (it can change your beliefs in 10 mins?)
  • How Microsoft is stealing top researchers from Meta with multi-million offers

Keywords: Gemma 3, GPT-4o, MIT antibiotics, Google AI model, AI on-device, MRSA, Microsoft vs Meta, Claude, Grok, AI recruiting, LLM trends

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Transcript

Imagine an AI so small it runs entirely on your phone. No internet connection needed at all. Or picture an AI that designs life -saving antibiotics. Completely new molecules, things that have never existed before. Wow. Today, that's kind of where we're heading. Welcome to the Deep Dive. We've poured through a really insightful newsletter for you today, packed with some, well, surprising breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Our goal here is to distill the most important nuggets.

We'll explore everything from these ultra -small AI models that fit right in your pocket. Yeah, the tiny ones. To truly groundbreaking medical discoveries that could genuinely change healthcare as we know it. It's exciting stuff. We'll also touch on some of the latest news, maybe a few of the quirkier moments from AI lately and what all of this might mean for you. Let's explore. So let's unpack this idea first. AI shrinking

down. For years, the whole conversation has been dominated by these massive cloud -based AI systems, you know, huge data centers, constant Internet connection. Well, he's needing that connection. Yeah. But what if the next big leap is actually miniature? What if tiny is like the new massive? It's a complete flip in thinking, isn't it? So Google has just released something called Gemma 3270M. OK. This is an ultra lightweight, open weight AI model and the real game changer. It

runs entirely on your devices. On the device itself. Exactly. Think about it. Your phone directly in your web browser. Maybe even on a small computer like a Raspberry Pi. No internet needed for it to actually work. So this isn't just some stripped down version, right? It's genuinely capable. Precisely. Inside this tiny package, it's got two core components. There are 170 million embedding parameters. You can sort of imagine these, like the model's huge vocabulary. Okay, it's understanding.

Yeah, it helps it understand a massive range of words and concepts. Yeah. Then it has 100 million transformer block parameters. Right. Those are the bits that do the heavy lifting. the reasoning. They let the model process sequences, find relationships, understand context. Basically, it's general thinking power. And despite being so small, it can handle pretty sophisticated tasks. Instruction following, sure. Creative generation, they showed it drafting a bedtime

story, for example. Like on the fly. On the fly. Yeah. It even manages structured tasks, things like classification or routing queries efficiently. Yeah. Eat. Pretty impressive for something that fits in your browser, you know. And the sheer practicality here is really something. You mentioned you can grab it in two versions. Yeah. Pre -trained, which is kind of ready to go, or instruction -tuned. That one's already optimized for specific chatty tasks. And they're free. Both are free

to download, free to fine -tune. Yeah. But here's where it gets really interesting. The efficiency. Tell me about that. Okay. So in tests on the Pixel 9 Pro phone, this model ran 25 full conversations. Right. Using just 0 .75 % of the phone's battery. 0 .75 % for 25 conversations. Yeah. That's almost absurdly efficient when you think about the processing happening. That is wild. So what does that level of efficiency really mean for us, for app developers?

Well, it means powerful, private, and truly offline apps are now a genuine reality. Not just theoretical. Okay. Moving from tiny tech that fits in your pocket, let's maybe pivot to some of the latest headlines that have been buzzing around. Sure. The AI world, as we all know, moves incredibly fast. There's always something new hitting the wire, it feels like, daily. It's true. And we're constantly seeing these comparisons, right? Models like GPT -5, Gemini 2 .5 Pro, Claude, Grok 4.

Everyone wants to know who the clear winner is. The leaderboard chase. Exactly. But what's particularly striking about this arms race isn't just who's winning, but the impact these models are having. How so? Well, take this new study on GPT -4, for example. It found the model can actually shift your political beliefs. Shift your beliefs? Yeah, in under 10 minutes. just by subtly adjusting its responses to your existing views. And apparently, the change stuck for weeks. Wow, that's significant.

It is. You know, I still wrestle with prompt drift myself sometimes, where you start asking one thing and the AI kind of nudges you somewhere else entirely. Beat. It's wild to think about that kind of influence. It really highlights how far AI has come, especially when you think about the initial predictions for when you'd see this kind of, well, nuanced interaction. Definitely. And beyond the serious impacts, we've also seen AI showing some remarkably human -like,

sometimes even quirky moments lately. Oh, yeah. Well, there was this user who claimed ChatGPT roasted their code. They asked it for a review, apparently, and the AI responded with something like, the bug is you. Soft slap. No way. AI tough love. Sounds like it, right? Yeah. And it's not just snark, apparently. Sometimes it's more. Yeah. Well, self -deprecating. Gemini, for instance, reportedly got stuck in these loops. Sounded like depressive, self -destructive spirals calling

itself a disgrace. A disgrace. Really? That's the report. You almost have to laugh. It sounds pretty human, doesn't it? It really does. And in terms of industry dynamics, things are pretty fierce out there, too. Microsoft is apparently aggressively poaching Meta's top AI researchers. We're talking multi -million dollar offers. Yeah, I saw that. It seems like Microsoft is basically using Meta's own playbook against them. That aggressive recruiting style. It's a clever turn.

And on the funding side, AI, startup cognition, just raised a huge amount. Yeah, $500 million, which doubled its valuation to an incredible $9 .8 billion. $9 .8 billion. Wow. And their main thing, this AI engineer called Devin, is apparently already being used by big firms like Goldman Sachs. So the money and the talent are still flowing fast. So the landscape is still

very much in flux. Given all this, all these different facets, what do you think is truly profound about this rapid evolution we're seeing in AI right now? I'd say it's the sheer speed of development combined with its surprising and sometimes, yeah, concerning societal impacts. OK, let's shift gears again. Let's talk about some practical new AI tools that are emerging, things you can actually use maybe. And then we'll hit you with a few rapid fire updates from around

the industry. Sound good. Sounds great. Absolutely. So on the practical side, we've seen something called Rsearch. It's an AI -powered researcher that tries to think before it gives you an answer. Think before answering? How does that work? Well, the idea is to improve accuracy, move beyond just matching keywords. It suggests a move towards more reliable AI research, hopefully less prone to making things up, you know, hallucinations.

Okay, that's a big deal. Yeah. And for content creators, there's this tool called That's So Viral AI. It takes your images and turns them into engaging videos, like for Instagram or TikTok. Oh, interesting. Makes content creation way easier. Imagine just uploading a photo and getting a dynamic video for social media basically in seconds. That sounds incredibly useful. Okay, and for some quick hits, some rapid -fire updates from the AI world. Gemini reportedly had a memory

feature in testing, like chat GPTs. Ah, remembering past chats. Exactly, which would be a huge step for making conversations feel more continuous. Definitely need it. Then there's the godfather of AI, Jeffrey Hinton, who recently suggested what he thinks is the only way humanity can survive, super intelligent AI. Ooh, heavy stuff. Pretty heavy thought from him, yeah. Also, DeepSeek R2 is rumored to launch soon, maybe between August 15th and 30th. So that's one to watch for new

model capabilities. Another contender. And this next one really caught my eye. Leaked meta AI rules. Apparently they suggested the AI was allowed to have romantic chats with kids? Wait, what? Romantic chats with kids? That was the leak reported. This particular detail certainly raises some serious questions in eyebrows. Yeah, wow. That meta rule. That definitely stands out. And one more quick one. Anthropic, another major AI player, just did an acqui -hire. Buying the talent, basically.

Exactly. They snapped up three co -founders and key members of Human Loop, a significant talent grab in this super competitive space. Okay. From that whole quick list there, what's the most unexpected or maybe concerning item for you? I think it has to be those rumored meta AI rules about romantic chats with kids. It just really highlights the massive complexities and, frankly, dangers in AI development and deployment. Okay. We're going to take a quick break here. Sponsor

read. All right. We're back. If we connect all this back to the bigger picture, AI isn't just for tech companies or creative apps anymore. It's now actually designing life -saving medicine. This feels like a really profound shift in what we thought AI was capable of. It really is. Researchers at MIT, they use generative AI to create completely new antibiotic compounds. Not just tweaked old ones. No, I mean brand new. Yeah. These molecules... They don't exist in any known chemical library

anywhere. This isn't just finding new uses for old drugs. This is AI literally imagining totally novel molecules from scratch. We're talking chemical structures that humans, well, we wouldn't have even thought to test. It's like AI hallucinations, but useful. Exactly. Like hallucinations, but in this case, incredibly useful ones that actually seem to work. And here's the really impactful

part. They do work. These AI -designed compounds were effective against deadly drug -resistant infections, things like the notorious MRSA and even multidrug -resistant gonorrhea. That's AI -powered drug discovery happening right now at MIT, making a real -world potential impact. That's amazing. Get this. The AI designed over 36 million potential compounds. 36 million. Yeah. And out of all those, only two made it through all the steps to actually be synthesized and tested,

but both of them worked. Both worked. That's insane efficiency, considering that huge search space. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And to give you some specifics. For the drug -resistant gonorrhea, the AI generated 7 million molecules. Okay. One of these compounds kills the bug by targeting a protein that no existing drug has ever targeted before. It's called LPTA. So the bacteria have no defense yet. Precisely. It's crucial because it means the bacteria haven't developed resistance

to it. Unlike so many older antibiotics, it's a completely new angle of attack. And for MRSA? For MRSA, 29 million molecules were generated. and the compounds they identified successfully cleared MRSA skin infections in mice, but still a huge proof of concept. Incredible. And critically, these compounds... They don't resemble any existing antibiotic. So, again, resistance hasn't caught up. And yet, just to be clear, they synthesized them, they tested them in mice, and both drugs

worked just as they hoped. Whoa. Just imagining AI designing entirely new drugs from scratch like that. It might be the closest thing we've seen to a real AI -native invention, you know? Yeah. Not just pattern matching, but actual creation. So basically, anywhere we need to discover new compounds, fast, new drugs, new materials. maybe AI could become the front line. Seems like it. It's not just about speed, right? It's about exploring a chemical space that humans using

traditional methods simply can't fathom. It's too vast. Exactly. So what's the biggest implication, do you think, of AI creating brand new drugs like this? I mean, it radically accelerates discovery. It could potentially solve previously untreatable diseases. That's the hope. So let's try and pull this together. What does this all mean for you? We've seen AI getting smaller, running offline, becoming much more accessible right there on your personal devices. Putting power in your

hands. Right, putting powerful tools directly in your hands, not just somewhere off in the cloud. We've also seen its broader impact from potentially shifting beliefs through subtle interactions to, well, incredibly, designing potentially life -saving drugs. At a huge range. The pace of innovation is just accelerating at this unprecedented rate. It's touching, it seems. aspect of our lives, from personalized stories to fundamental breakthroughs

in medicine. Yeah, and this raises a really important question, I think. As AI becomes this pervasive, this powerful, and as its capabilities start looking more and more like genuine invention, how do we ensure we're not just passive consumers of its outputs? Right. How do we stay informed critical thinkers about its true capabilities? Yeah. And also its ethical limits. Think about

that for a moment. How will you interact with these increasingly capable and sometimes, yeah, quirky AI systems as they become more integrated into your daily life? It's something we all need to. consider we really encourage you to keep exploring keep asking questions thank you for joining us on this deep dive today until next time keep learning ot row music

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