Google to help developers make their own AI agents in cloud push

At its annual cloud computing conference in Las Vegas, Google announced plans to release the Agent Development Kit, an open-source toolkit designed to simplify the creation of AI agents. The company also introduced a selection of pre-built agents within its cloud platform, targeting tasks like customer service, coding, and marketing.

Key Highlights:

• Agent Development Kit: Enables developers to build AI agents with fewer than 100 lines of code.
• Agent2Agent Protocol: A new standard allowing interoperability between agents from different companies. Partners include Anthropic, Deloitte, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow. Notably absent are Microsoft and OpenAI.
• Cloud Revenue Boost: Google aims to offset the high costs of its generative AI investments by driving more cloud service adoption.

Industry Context:

• Economic Concerns: Investors worry about rising infrastructure costs, including tariffs. Alphabet (Google’s parent) plans $75B in capital expenditures this year, exceeding analyst expectations.
• AI Agent Trend: Silicon Valley is embracing AI agents, hoping advancements in language models will enable more complex workflows. Chris O’Neill, CEO of GrowthLoop, described the shift as "removal of the soul-sucking nature of a lot of workflows."

Partnerships and Infrastructure:

• Notable Clients: Google secured cloud business from AI startups like Safe Superintelligence (co-founded by ex-OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever) and Augment Code, which praised Google’s chip access and pricing.
• New Chip: Google unveiled Ironwood, an efficiency-focused chip for AI prediction tasks.
• Reddit Collaboration: Reddit will integrate "Reddit Answers," an AI-powered search feature, on its homepage, leveraging Google’s generative AI.

External Links:

• Old coal-fired power plant to become gas-powered campus for AI, data centers
• OpenAI study finds links between ChatGPT use and loneliness
• Original Bloomberg article