Tag Archives: developers

A new way for job seekers to stand out to IT recruiters

Almost two years ago, Grow with Google introduced the IT Support Professional Certificate, a program that helps people prepare for entry-level roles in IT, with no experience or degree necessary. IT support skills are highly teachable, and a four-year degree isn’t typically required to build a successful career in this field. We knew that if we could train beginners on technical skills, we could create paths to real jobs—both at Google and at other companies across the country. So we created a hands-on curriculum and made it available on Coursera to prepare learners for IT support jobs in under six months.

Google and CompTIA badge

Now, Google is teaming up with CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association, to provide a dual badge of completion. Employers widely recognize the CompTIA A+ certification as a valued credential for high-growth IT support roles. Now, learners who complete the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams will have access to a new dual credential from CompTIA and Google: a badge that can be posted on LinkedIn to catch the attention of potential employers. 

One recipient of the dual credential is Leo Chui, who was a personal trainer for 12 years when he decided he was ready for a career change. “I have always been passionate about technology and I always wanted to work in that field, but I didn’t have a university degree,” he says. “I simply did not have the means to take on student loans in order to pursue my dreams and also keep a roof over my head.” Leo believes that the IT Support Professional Certificate aligns with the training in CompTIA’s certification exams. He says the training and the badge gave him the confidence to start applying for positions in the field, and he just landed his first IT job. 

With this dual badge, people who complete the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and receive the CompTIA A+ certification are better set up to share their skills with potential employers. 

A new way for job seekers to stand out to IT recruiters

Almost two years ago, Grow with Google introduced the IT Support Professional Certificate, a program that helps people prepare for entry-level roles in IT, with no experience or degree necessary. IT support skills are highly teachable, and a four-year degree isn’t typically required to build a successful career in this field. We knew that if we could train beginners on technical skills, we could create paths to real jobs—both at Google and at other companies across the country. So we created a hands-on curriculum and made it available on Coursera to prepare learners for IT support jobs in under six months.

Google and CompTIA badge

Now, Google is teaming up with CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association, to provide a dual badge of completion. Employers widely recognize the CompTIA A+ certification as a valued credential for high-growth IT support roles. Now, learners who complete the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams will have access to a new dual credential from CompTIA and Google: a badge that can be posted on LinkedIn to catch the attention of potential employers. 

One recipient of the dual credential is Leo Chui, who was a personal trainer for 12 years when he decided he was ready for a career change. “I have always been passionate about technology and I always wanted to work in that field, but I didn’t have a university degree,” he says. “I simply did not have the means to take on student loans in order to pursue my dreams and also keep a roof over my head.” Leo believes that the IT Support Professional Certificate aligns with the training in CompTIA’s certification exams. He says the training and the badge gave him the confidence to start applying for positions in the field, and he just landed his first IT job. 

With this dual badge, people who complete the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and receive the CompTIA A+ certification are better set up to share their skills with potential employers. 

Building a more private web

Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do. So today, we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. We’re calling this a Privacy Sandbox. 


Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent - to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy. Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.


First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting. With fingerprinting, developers have found ways to use tiny bits of information that vary between users, such as what device they have or what fonts they have installed to generate a unique identifier which can then be used to match a user across websites. Unlike cookies, users cannot clear their fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected. We think this subverts user choice and is wrong.


Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. Many publishers have been able to continue to invest in freely accessible content because they can be confident that their advertising will fund their costs. If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone. Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average1.


So we are doing something different. We want to find a solution that both really protects user privacy and also helps content remain freely accessible on the web. At I/O, we announced a plan to improve the classification of cookies, give clarity and visibility to cookie settings, as well as plans to more aggressively block fingerprinting. We are making progress on this, and today we are providing more details on our plans to restrict fingerprinting. Collectively we believe all these changes will improve transparency, choice, and control. 


But, we can go further. Starting with today’s announcements, we will work with the web community to develop new standards that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started sharing our preliminary ideas for a Privacy Sandbox - a secure environment for personalization that also protects user privacy. Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy.


We are following the web standards process and seeking industry feedback on our initial ideas for the Privacy Sandbox. While Chrome can take action quickly in some areas (for instance, restrictions on fingerprinting) developing web standards is a complex process, and we know from experience that ecosystem changes of this scope take time. They require significant thought, debate, and input from many stakeholders, and generally take multiple years. 


To move things forward as quickly as possible, we have documented the specific problems we are trying to solve together, and we are sharing a series of explainers with the web community. We have also summarized these ideas today on the Chromium blog.


We look forward to getting feedback on this approach from the web platform community, including other browsers, publishers, and their advertising partners. Thank you in advance for your help and input on this process - we believe that we must solve these problems together to ensure that the incredible benefits of the open, accessible web continue into the next generation of the internet.

1 Google Ad Manager data; n=500 global publishers; Analysis based on an A/B experiment where cookies are disabled on a randomly selected fraction of each publisher's traffic; May-August 2019. More information available on the Google ads blog.


Building a more private web

Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do. So today, we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. We’re calling this a Privacy Sandbox. 


Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent - to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy. Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.


First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting. With fingerprinting, developers have found ways to use tiny bits of information that vary between users, such as what device they have or what fonts they have installed to generate a unique identifier which can then be used to match a user across websites. Unlike cookies, users cannot clear their fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected. We think this subverts user choice and is wrong.


Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. Many publishers have been able to continue to invest in freely accessible content because they can be confident that their advertising will fund their costs. If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone. Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average1.


So we are doing something different. We want to find a solution that both really protects user privacy and also helps content remain freely accessible on the web. At I/O, we announced a plan to improve the classification of cookies, give clarity and visibility to cookie settings, as well as plans to more aggressively block fingerprinting. We are making progress on this, and today we are providing more details on our plans to restrict fingerprinting. Collectively we believe all these changes will improve transparency, choice, and control. 


But, we can go further. Starting with today’s announcements, we will work with the web community to develop new standards that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started sharing our preliminary ideas for a Privacy Sandbox - a secure environment for personalization that also protects user privacy. Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy.


We are following the web standards process and seeking industry feedback on our initial ideas for the Privacy Sandbox. While Chrome can take action quickly in some areas (for instance, restrictions on fingerprinting) developing web standards is a complex process, and we know from experience that ecosystem changes of this scope take time. They require significant thought, debate, and input from many stakeholders, and generally take multiple years. 


To move things forward as quickly as possible, we have documented the specific problems we are trying to solve together, and we are sharing a series of explainers with the web community. We have also summarized these ideas today on the Chromium blog.


We look forward to getting feedback on this approach from the web platform community, including other browsers, publishers, and their advertising partners. Thank you in advance for your help and input on this process - we believe that we must solve these problems together to ensure that the incredible benefits of the open, accessible web continue into the next generation of the internet.

1 Google Ad Manager data; n=500 global publishers; Analysis based on an A/B experiment where cookies are disabled on a randomly selected fraction of each publisher's traffic; May-August 2019. More information available on the Google ads blog.


Source: Google Chrome


Developer Student Clubs: A Walk That Changed Healthcare

Posted by Erica Hanson, Program Manager

ARUA, UGANDA - Samuel Mugisha is a 23 year old university student with a laugh that echoes off every wall and a mind determined to make change. Recently he heard from a healthcare worker that many children at a local clinic were missing vaccinations, so he decided to take a walk. He toured his community, neighbor to neighbor, and asked one simple question: “Can I see your vaccination card?”

In response he was given dirt stained, wrinkled, torn pieces of paper, holding life or death information - all written in scribble.

He squinted, held the cards to the light, rubbed them on his pant leg, but for no use. They were impossible to read. As Samuel put it, “They were broken.”

From the few cards he could read, Samuel noted children who had missed several vaccinations - they were unknowingly playing the odds, waiting to see if disease would find them.

“Looking through the cards, you could tell these kids had missed several vaccinations.”

Without hesitation, Samuel got right to work, determined to fix the healthcare system with technology.

He first brought together his closest friends from Developer Student Clubs (DSC), a program supporting students impacting their communities through tech. He asked them: “Why can’t technology solve our problem?”

Team photo of Developer Student Club

This newly formed team, including Samuel, Joshwa Benkya and Norman Acidri, came up with a twofold plan:

  1. Create a mobile app to replace the broken cards, so healthcare workers can clearly track which vaccines their young patients have received.
  2. Create a notification to alert healthcare workers when a child is due for a new vaccination.

The idea came together right as Developer Student Clubs launched its first Solution Challenge, an open call for all members to submit projects they recently imagined. These young developers had to give it a shot. They created a model, filled out an application, and pitched the idea. After waiting a month, they heard back - their team won the competition! Their idea was selected from a pool of 170 applicants across India, Africa, and Indonesia. In other words, everything was about to change.

In a country where talent can go unnoticed and problems often go unsolved, this new team had pushed through the odds. Developer Student Clubs is a platform for these types of bold thinkers. Students who view the issues of their region not simply as obstacles to overcome, but chances to mend their home, build a better life for themselves, and transform the experiences of their people.

The goal of the Solution Challenge, and all other DSC programs, is to educate young developers early and equip them with the right skills to make an impact in their community.

In this case, office space in Uganda was expensive and hard to find. Samuel’s team previously had few chances to all work under the same roof. After winning the challenge, Developer Student Clubs helped them find a physical space of their own to come together and collaborate - a simple tool, but one that led to a turning point. As Samuel described it,

“Developer Student Clubs helped us not be alone and apart from each other while trying to solve this problem. They gave us the space to come together and learn. We could all be in the same room, thinking together.”

Image of developers in classroom

With this new space to work, DSC then brought some of Africa’s best Google Developer Group Leads directly to the young developers. In these meetings, the students were given high-level insights on how to best leverage Android, Firebase, and Presto to propel their product forward. As Samuel put it:

“If we wanted to learn something, they gave us the best expert.”

As a result, the team realized that with the scarcity of internet in Uganda, Firebase was the perfect technology to build with - allowing healthcare workers to use the app offline but “check in” and receive updates when they were able to find internet.

Although the app has made impressive strides since winning the competition, this young team knows they can make it even better. They want to improve its usability by implementing more visuals and are working to create a version for parents, so families can track the status of their child’s vaccination on their own.

While there is plenty of work ahead, with these gifted students and Developer Student Clubs taking each step forward together, any challenge seems solvable.

What has the team been up to recently? From August 5th-9th they attended the Startup Africa Roadtrip, an intensive training week on how best to refine a startup business model.

Flutter Create’s big winner is a self-taught “beginner”

When Zebiao Hu found out he won the $10,000 Flutter Create grand prize, he didn't even tell his own wife. She learned about it through his posts on social media. He says he didn’t boast about his big win because he still sees himself as a beginner: He taught himself Flutter just weeks before the deadline, and created a compass app that won him the big prize. 

Flutter is Google's toolkit for building beautiful apps that run on your mobile phone, laptop and web browser from the same code (instead of having to write a different app for each device, as is common today). When Google announced Flutter Create, the contest attracted attention from developers all over the world. We received nearly a thousand submissions from 60+ countries and regions, including entries from both first-time coders and Flutter experts. The contest challenged developers to build something interesting, inspiring, and beautiful with Flutter using five kilobytes or less of Dart code. That’s a tiny amount of space: to put it into perspective, that’s less than half a second of a typical digital music file.

Flutter Create highlights

Highlights from the hundreds of submissions we received.

As a coder working in Shenzhen, China, Zebiao decided to learn about mobile development, because the industry was heading in a “mobile-first direction.” He bought books about Flutter and Dart in Chinese, and started to learn during the spring of 2019. Flutter Create was less than one month away.

Zebiao is no stranger to teaching himself how to code, though. In high school, he spent days and nights in the computer room, taking up coding because of his love of video games. After becoming an accomplished player, he began to wonder, "How are these games developed? Could I make one myself?"

Zebiao Hu, Flutter Create winner

Zebiao in the park where he usually jogs.

But, at that time, information about programming was hard to get and, for a high school student, difficult to learn. Luckily, Zebiao discovered a box of CDs, with one called “Programming.” His hobby turned into a career. As an early adopter, he became well known in local software circles, and was often approached to collaborate on projects. Customers became frequent customers, and then friends, bringing even more projects to him. 

Eventually, Zebiao got married and became the father of two children. Every day, he sends his children to school, and goes home to work. In the evening, he ends his work day and picks the kids up.

He says when he’s not working, he’s “running, drinking tea, and spending the weekend with my children at the amusement park.” And he’ll still take time to play the video games he played 15 or 20 years ago. 

Zebiao Hu, Flutter Create winner, made a compass app

The compass app did not feature a globe at first. 

When he set out to build his compass app, Zebiao found useful materials on Flutter’s official  website, Flutter’s Youtube channel and from Flutter Chinese online communities. He didn’t aim for the prize because he hadn’t been using Flutter for long, but instead entered to test his knowledge. 

He started the new project on March 15, only three weeks from April 7, the final submission date for Flutter Create. After the first version of the app was completed, the code was less than 5KB, but Zebiao was not satisfied, because it lacked an interesting visual. "It was boring to read the latitude and longitude in text form," he says. So he decided to upgrade the design to display the data using an interactive globe.

There was only one small problem: he had never programmed an animation before.

“Honestly, I learned everything from scratch,” Zebiao says. “After all, I had never used these tools before.” 

Finally, two days before the deadline, Zebiao successfully submitted his compass application.

Zebiao Hu's app

 Zebiao learned how to make his app from scratch. 

Zebiao says he doesn’t want to give advice to Flutter beginners, because he sees himself as a beginner, too. But he urged people to keep learning, even if their projects don’t use Flutter yet, and to find their own community of developers to share resources. And he says it’s important to stay open to whenever an idea strikes. “Keep a notebook with you,” he says. “Write down your thoughts, ideas or problems whenever possible. And try to solve them later.” 

Step up your interviewing game with Byteboard

I’ve worked as a software engineer on Google products like Photos and Maps for four years. But if you asked me to interview for a new role today, I doubt most technical interviews would accurately measure my skills. I would need to find time to comb through my college computer science books, practice coding theory problems like implementing linked lists or traversing a graph, and be prepared to showcase this knowledge on a whiteboard. 

According to a survey we conducted of over 2,500 working software engineers, nearly half of the respondents spent more than 15 hours studying for their technical interviews. Unfortunately, many companies still interview engineers in a way that's entirely disjointed from day-to-day engineering work—valuing access to the time and resources required to prepare over actual job-related knowledge and skills.

As a result, the tech interview process is often inefficient for companies, which sink considerable engineering resources into a process that yields very little insight, and frustrating for candidates, who aren't able to express their full skill-set. 

At Byteboard, a project built inside of Area 120 (Google’s workshop for experimental projects), we’ve redesigned the technical interview experience to be more effective, efficient and equitable for all. Our project-based interview assesses for engineering skills that are actually used on the job. The structured, identity-blind evaluation process enables hiring managers to reliably trust our recommendations, so they have to conduct fewer interviews before reaching a confident hiring decision. For candidates, this means they get to work through the design and implementation of a real-world problem in a real-world coding environment on their own time, without the stress of going through high-pressured theoretical tests. 

An effective interview to assess for on-the-job skills

Byteboard creates more effective technical interviews

We built the Byteboard interview by pairing our software engineering skills analysis with extensive academic research on assessment theory and inclusion best practices. Our interview assesses for skills like problem solving, role-related computer science knowledge, code fluency, growth mindset and interpersonal interaction. Byteboard evaluators—software engineers with up to 15+ years of experience—are trained to objectively review each anonymized interview for the presence of 20+ essential software engineering skills, which are converted into a skills profile for each candidate using clear and well-defined rubrics. 

By providing a more complete understanding of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses across a range of skills, Byteboard enables hiring managers and recruiters to make data-backed hiring decisions. Early tester Betterment saw their onsite-to-offer rates significantly increase by using Byteboard, indicating its effectiveness at identifying strong candidates for the job.

A more efficient interview to save engineers time

Byteboard creates more efficient technical interviews

Byteboard offers an end-to-end service that includes developing, administering and evaluating the interviews, letting companies focus on meeting more potential candidates face-to-face and increasing the number of candidates they can interview. Our clients have replaced up to 100 percent of their pre-onsite interviews with the Byteboard interview, allowing them to redirect time toward recruiting candidates directly at places like conferences and college campuses.

An equitable interview format to reduce bias

Byteboard creates more equitable technical interviews

The Byteboard interview is designed to grant everyone, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, name, background or education, the same opportunity to demonstrate their skills. Traditional technical interviews tend to test for understanding of theoretical concepts, which often require a big investment of time or resources to study up on. This can create anxiety for candidates who may not have either of those to spare as they are looking for a new job. By focusing on engineering skills that are actually used on the job, Byteboard allows candidates to confidently show off their role-related skills in an environment that is less performative and more similar to how they typically work as engineers. 

I felt less anxious while doing the interview and it gave me the most complete view of my strengths and weaknesses than any other interview I've done. a recent candidate from Howard University
An applicant or recruiter using Byteboard

The Byteboard Assessment Development team of educators and software engineers develop challenging questions that are tested and calibrated among engineers across a wide range of demographics. Through Byteboard's anonymization and structured evaluation of the interviews, hiring managers can make decisions with confidence without relying on unconscious biases. 


With Byteboard, our ultimate goal is to make interviewing better for companies and candidates alike. Companies looking to improve their hiring process can get in touch at byteboard.dev.

.App: bringing more people online securely

A year ago, we launched .app, the first open top-level domain (TLD) with built-in security through HSTS preloading. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have registered .app domains, and we want to take a moment to celebrate them.  

People are making more websites and apps than ever before. A recent survey we conducted with The Harris Poll found that nearly half (48%) of U.S. respondents plan to create a website in the near future. And a lot of people, especially students, are already building on the web. Over a third (34%) of 16-24 year olds who’ve already created a website did so for a class project. 

Having a meaningful domain name helps students turn their projects into reality. Take Ludwik Trammer, creator of shrew.app, who said: “The site started as a project for my graduate Educational Technology class at Georgia Tech. Getting the perfect domain gave me the initial push to turn it into the real deal (instead of making a prototype, publishing a scientific paper on it, and forgetting it).”

Helping creators launch their sites securely

With so many new creators, it’s essential that everyone does their part to make the internet safer. That’s why Google Registry designed .app to be secure by default, meaning every website on .app requires a HTTPS connection to ensure a secure connection to the internet.

HTTPS helps keep you and your website visitors safe from bad actors, who may exploit connections that aren’t secure by:

  • intercepting or altering the site’s content

  • misdirecting traffic

  • spying on open Wi-Fi networks

  • injecting ad malware or tracking

“As a social application, data protection is paramount. As cyber attacks increase, the security benefits a .app domain brings was a key factor for us. We also believe that a .app domain is significantly more descriptive than a .com domain, meaning us Daneh Westropp
Founder, pickle.app

There's still work to  be done. One out of two people don’t know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Many major browsers (like Chrome) warn users in the URL bar when content is "not secure," but there’s every website creator still has a shared responsibility to keep their users safe.

.App is year in, and we’re happy to see so many people using it to build secure websites and connect with the world. You can read more stories from .app owners here and get your own .app name at get.app. If you’re one of the millions of people planning to build a website, we hope you’ll join us in making the internet safer and take the steps to securely launch your website.

.App: bringing more people online securely

Posted by Ben Fried, VP, CIO, & Chief Domains Enthusiast

Celebrating 100 of our favorite .app websites. See the list here.

A year ago, we launched .app, the first open top-level domain (TLD) with built-in security through HSTS preloading. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have registered .app domains, and we want to take a moment to celebrate them.

People are making more websites and apps than ever before. A recent survey we conducted with The Harris Poll found that nearly half (48%) of U.S. respondents plan to create a website in the near future. And a lot of people, especially students, are already building on the web. Over a third (34%) of 16-24 year olds who’ve already created a website did so for a class project.

Having a meaningful domain name helps students turn their projects into reality. Take Ludwik Trammer, creator of shrew.app, who said: “The site started as a project for my graduate Educational Technology class at Georgia Tech. Getting the perfect domain gave me the initial push to turn it into the real deal (instead of making a prototype, publishing a scientific paper on it, and forgetting it).”

Helping creators launch their sites securely

With so many new creators, it’s essential that everyone does their part to make the internet safer. That’s why Google Registry designed .app to be secure by default, meaning every website on .app requires a HTTPS connection to ensure a secure connection to the internet.

HTTPS helps keep you and your website visitors safe from bad actors, who may exploit connections that aren’t secure by:

  • intercepting or altering the site’s content
  • misdirecting traffic
  • spying on open Wi-Fi networks
  • injecting ad malware or tracking

“As a social application, data protection is paramount. As cyber attacks increase, the security benefits a .app domain brings was a key factor for us. We also believe that a .app domain is significantly more descriptive than a .com domain, meaning users can find us more easily! All in all it was a no brainer for us switching to .app.”

-Daneh Westropp, Founder, pickle.app

There's still work to be done. One out of two people don’t know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Many major browsers (like Chrome) warn users in the URL bar when content is "not secure," but there’s every website creator still has a shared responsibility to keep their users safe.

.App is year in, and we’re happy to see so many people using it to build secure websites and connect with the world. You can read more stories from .app owners here and get your own .app name at get.app. If you’re one of the millions of people planning to build a website, we hope you’ll join us in making the internet safer and take the steps to securely launch your website.

10 lessons learned from Inspiration Sessions at I/O 2019

Google I/O didn’t just have developers in attendance. Rock stars, astronauts and Turing Award winners took the stage for more than a dozen Inspiration Sessions, in which attendees learned about how technology is shaping the future, from music to art to creativity. Here are just a few lessons learned from these talks:

The key to creativity is thinking like a child.Academy Award-winning animator Glen Keane created beloved characters like Ariel, The Beast and Pocahontas. He told attendees that no matter your line of work, it’s important to stay in touch with your inner child. “We all had that six-year-old kid that had something to do with who you are today and what you are doing,” he said. “Don’t forget that part of the adventure you had as a child.”

IO_19_Glen Keane.jpg

Glen Keane does a live drawing of The Beast from “Beauty and the Beast.”

If technology is the answer, what is the question?That’s the thesis behind the work of artist and researcher Sougwen Chung, who has programmed robots to collaborate with her to create artwork. She spoke alongside Cedric Kiefer, co-founder and creative lead of the art studio Onformative, and Kenric McDowell, co-leader of the Artist + Machine Intelligence program at Google Arts & Culture. The three talked about the relationship between artists and AI, and whether AI could fully replace artists. “It’s the question of how you actually use technology in your art, in your practice,” Cedric said. “Do you just write a little bit of code and press ‘art, art, art, more art?’ That’s not exactly how it is.”

Be audacious, and think bigger. Astronaut Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to go into space, leads 100 Year Starship, an initiative to make sure humans can travel to another star in the next century. “When you look at space exploration, the audacity of it makes a difference,” she said. “I don’t think Mars pushes us hard enough.” She was joined in the talk by Sheperd Doeleman, a Harvard astrophysicist who helped construct the first-ever photo of a black hole—an audacious project in itself.

IO_19_Astronaut Mae Jemison.jpg

Astronaut Mae Jemison.

Technology can push you to create new things. Claire Evans, the singer of the band YACHT, incorporated machine learning into the creation of their new album with help from Google’s Magenta, a research project that explores the role of ML in art. She used Magenta to create new melodies based on YACHT’s back catalog. “It forcibly pushed us outside of our comfort zone, and forced us to play differently and think differently about how we work,” she said. She was joined by Googlers Adam Roberts and Jesse Engel, who work on Magenta, as well as a surprise guest, Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, who discussed how his band used Magenta for their I/O performance.

IO_19_Wayne Coyne_TheFlamingLips.jpg

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

AI can be used to fight climate change.Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder at DeepMind, is responsible for integrating its AI systems into Google products. He talked about how his team has made the energy from Google’s wind farms 20 percent more valuable, and has reduced energy use for Android phones. “Energy consumption is one of the largest contributors to climate change,” he said. “[We thought,] How could we as a team start to focus significant amounts of our effort on this really important problem?”

Space is full of wonder—and mystery, too. Famed theoretical physicist Michio Kaku spoke with inventor and entrepreneur Taylor Wilson about a wide range of topics, from string theory to multiverses to why he’s determined to complete Einstein’s theory of everything. He also weighed in on the recent first image of a black hole: “A black hole is a cosmic roach motel. Everything checks in, nothing checks out. But then the question is, where does all that stuff go?”

A feature may be a huge deal, even if you don’t use it.Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s senior vice president of Platforms & Ecosystems, sat down with writer and podcaster Florence Ion to share insights about the latest from Android, Chrome, Chrome OS and Google Play. And he weighed in on one of Android Q’s newest features: Dark Mode. “I will say, I’m personally not a huge Dark Mode person,” Hiroshi admitted. “I’m an outlier. But your feedback was heard.”

Different is the new normal.Elise Roy, an inclusive design strategist, struggled to prove she was “normal” after becoming deaf at age 10. Eventually she realized that small design changes can make a huge difference in her life. Something as small as a bright red hearing aid “created this huge shift in my life,” she said. “It allowed me to celebrate my difference and allowed others to join in.” Two Googlers, Michael Brenner and Irene Alvarado, also took the stage to discuss another inclusive project: Euphonia, an effort to help computers understand diverse speech patterns.

IO_19_Elise Roy.jpg

Elise Roy and an audience member demonstrate the “momentary disabilities” everyone faces from time to time.

The most brilliant AI is inspired by how the human brain functions.Geoffrey Hinton, Google Fellow and Turing Award winner, spoke with Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief of “Wired,” about why he kept working on neural nets when the rest of the AI community started to back away from the concept in the 90s: “You have two options. You can program it, or you can learn. This had to be the right way to go.” Although he says, “We are neural nets—anything we can do they can do,” he emphasized that he's not trying to recreate the brain, but instead “looking at the brain and saying, this thing works. If we want to make something else that works, let’s look at it for inspiration.”

Engineer for lasting innovation.Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, talked about the concept of lasting innovation and the role ethics and diversity of perspectives play. “The real issue is whether in the long-term society is happy with the thing that you put into society.” Astro emphasized that lasting innovation holds itself accountable to the communities in which it operates and society at large.