Well, Casey, we have a special emergency podcast episode today about the launch of Gemini 3.
Yes, Kevin, hotly awaited, much discussed among AI nerds here in Silicon Valley. We are finally about to get our hands on the genuine article.
Yeah. So, normally we wouldn't break our Friday publication schedule to publish a special episode just about a new model coming out from one of the big AI companies. They're releasing models all the time. But there are a couple reasons that we thought it was worth doing this week to talk about this model Gemini 3 in particular. The first is that we got some time with Demis Hassabis and Josh Woodward, two of the leading AI executives at Google. Demis of course is the CEO of Google DeepMind, which is their in-house AI lab. And Josh Woodward is the VP of the Gemini team and some other stuff there at Google. So we were excited to talk to them and ask them about this big new model release. But I think there are a couple other reasons we were interested in doing this as well.
Yeah. I mean, one big thing, Kevin, is just that maybe more than other model releases, this one seems to have the attention of Google's competitors. We're hearing a lot of whispers from folks who work at other AI labs that it seems like Gemini 3 has managed to figure some things out in a way that may be bad for their businesses. And I think around the AI industry, there's this feeling that Google, which kind of struggled in AI for a couple years there. They had the launch of Bard and the first versions of Gemini, which had some issues. And I think they were seen as sort of catching up to the state-of-the-art. And now I think the question is, is this them returning to the top of the AI leaderboard? Is this them taking their crown back? So we'll get into all that with Demis and Josh. But let's just talk, Casey, about what we know about Gemini 3. They held a briefing early this week and told us a little bit about the new model and what it can do. So what did we learn about Gemini 3?
Yeah. Well, so in terms of what it can do, which is always the most interesting to me, Google shared a few different things. One, in addition to saying all the things you would expect, like it's better at coding and it's better at vibe coding, it also is going to do some new things around generating interfaces for you when you ask it a question. So nowadays, you ask most chatbots a question, it'll spit back an answer in text, maybe it shows you an image. According to the Google folks, Gemini 3 is just going to start building custom interfaces for you. So they showed an example where somebody wanted to learn about Vincent Van Gogh, the painter, and Gemini 3 just sort of coded up an interactive tutorial that had all sorts of images and interactive elements. They showed another example that involved building a mortgage calculator for buying a home over a million dollars, which is the lowest amount of money that anyone at Google can imagine spending on a home. So these are the kinds of things that you can expect to find in Gemini 3, Kevin.
Yeah. So I would say the theme of the briefing and of the materials that Google shared ahead of the Gemini 3 launch was this is just kind of better than their last model Gemini 2.5 Pro in basically all respects. Some of the benchmarks that caught my attention one was this benchmark test called humanity's last exam which is sort of a very hard interdisciplinary exam that consists of a bunch of questions like basically a graduate student or PhD level. And their previous model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, got about a 21.6% on that test. And Gemini 3 Pro gets a 37.5% on that test. That's basically the story of all of these benchmarks. They gave more than a dozen examples of various benchmarks where the new model just beats the old one handily. And to a lot of people, I think that may not matter. Most people who are using Google's AI products are probably not out there trying to solve novel problems in physics. But their basic pitch for this is just like this is a state-of-the-art model. Anything that you could do with Chat GPT or Claude or even the older versions of Gemini, you can do better with Gemini 3 Pro. They also talked about testing what they're calling the Gemini agent, which is going to be able to do one thing in particular that I've been waiting for somebody to do forever, which is look through your inbox, understand its contents, propose replies, organize emails together, and really help you get your inbox under control in a way that I personally have never been able to. So we basically only saw a few animated GIFs about that, but that will definitely be one of the first things that I try when I get my hands on Gemini 3.
Yeah. And they are not, we should say, rolling this out to everyone right away. It's going to be available this week for users in the Gemini app and also in the AI mode, which is sort of the tab off to the side of the main Google search engine. It will also be available for developers in various products. But they're not saying when this will come to things like the Gemini integrations in Google Docs or Gmail. These very popular things that are used by billions of people a day. But I thought it was interesting that they have brought this model to Google search albeit in this AI mode that's not the main search bar. That to me suggests that they feel like they can serve this model cheaply enough to make it potentially something that billions of people could use and that would not melt their servers and incur billions of dollars of costs.
Yeah. So far they say that the usage keeps going up for AI overviews and every quarter they continue to make more money. So seems to be working out for them.
Not working out for the rest of the web but it's working out well for Google.
Yeah. But I think that's like obviously Google's big advantage here over their competitors is that they have products that are used by billions of people a day and they can kind of shove Gemini 3 into those products over time and just get more and more usage and get more data and use that to improve their models. So, which is why we always tell students when they ask us for advice, step one, build an illegal monopoly.
Yes. And speaking of students, the other notable announcement that Google is making this week is that they are giving all US college students a year of free access to a paid version of Gemini. Which I think is a smart move. I feel a little gross about it. Like essentially telling students, hey, why don't you use this to maybe do some of your homework? Maybe help you with your exams. We'll give you the first hit for free.
Yeah. You know, I was also struck during the briefing that we had this morning that I believe three different people used the phrase learn anything. This seems like it has become a very prominent plank of Google's messaging is they are presenting Gemini as a learning tool. Which maybe is just sort of a euphemism for a do your homework tool. I don't know.
Yes. Okay. So that is what we know about Gemini 3. We will be doing our own testing and reviewing of Gemini 3 once it is fully out on Tuesday. But for now, we wanted to just kind of give you the basics and also bring you our interview with Demis Hassabis and Josh Woodward of Google DeepMind. And before we get to that, we should obviously make our AI disclosures. I work for the New York Times company which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the training of large language models.
And my boyfriend works at Anthropic. Demis and Josh, welcome to Hard Fork.
So, two years ago, Sundar Pichai told us that Bard, rest in peace, was a souped-up Civic that was in a race with more powerful cars. What kind of car is Gemini 3?
That's a good one. Demis, do you want to take it?
Well, I hope it's a bit faster than a Honda Civic. I don't really think of it in terms of cars. Maybe it's one of those cool drag racers.
Yeah. So, people are really excited about this model. We have been hearing from folks that have been early testing it. Obviously you guys have shown off a lot of the benchmarks. Very impressive. What can Gemini do on a concrete level that previous AI models couldn't?
Well, I'll jump in maybe a couple of things that stand out. One, we're starting to see this model really excel on reasoning and being able to think many steps at the same time. Sometimes models in the past would lose their train of thought, lose track. This one's way better at that. The other thing you'll see tomorrow as well is all kinds of new generative interfaces. This is our best model yet at being able to create new types of interfaces. It gives people really a custom sort of design and answer to their questions. And then maybe the third thing I would say is we've put a lot of investment in coding itself. And so a lot of the coding examples, you'll see some new products coming out like Google anti-gravity will also kind of showcase that.
There's been some discussion that for average users, the chat use case can feel solved, that sort of average users of products like Gemini kind of almost can't even think of a question to ask it that will generate something that feels meaningfully different from what they were able to get in the last model. To what extent does that feel true to you in Gemini 3? And to what extent do you think average folks are really going to notice a difference?
Yeah, one of the things I guess we're seeing in some of the testing and Demis feel free to chime in too is I think these are really for us this is a model that it's more concise. It's more expressive. It starts to present information in a way that's much easier to understand. And I think for most people that's going to be a big immediate effect. And then I think what starts to get interesting is how these models start to interact with other types of information. So we talk a lot about how students are going to be able to learn with this model or even how this model can connect to other types of data you might have in other Google products with your permission. These are the ways I think we're starting to show it's going beyond just the standard text Q&A back and forth.
Yeah, I think I'd add to that just like its general reliability on things is incredibly you'll notice that when you use it. I think also we work quite hard on the persona which we call it internally like the style of it. I think it's more succinct. I think it's more to the point. It's helpful. I feel like it's got a better style about it. I find it more pleasant to brainstorm with and use. And then I think there are various things where there's almost a step change. But I feel like it's crossed a sort of threshold of usefulness on things like vibe coding. I've been getting back into my games programming. I'm going to set myself some projects over Christmas on that because I feel like it's actually got to a point where it's incredibly useful and capable on front end and things like this that perhaps previous versions weren't so good at.
Demis, the last time we had you on the show in May, you said that you think we're 5 to 10 years away from AGI and that there might be a few significant breakthroughs needed between here and there. Has Gemini 3 and observing how good it is changed any of those timelines or does it incorporate any of those breakthroughs that you thought would be necessary?
No, I think it's sort of dead on track if you see what I mean. We're really happy with this progress. I think it's an absolutely amazing model and is right on track of what I was expecting and the trajectory we've been on actually for the last couple of years since the beginning of Gemini which I think's been the fastest progress of anybody in the industry and I think we're going to continue doing that trajectory and we expect that to continue but on top of that I still think there'll be one or two more things that are required to really get the consistency across the board that you'd expect from a general intelligence and also improvements still on reasoning on memory. And perhaps things like world model ideas that you also know we're working on with Simmer and Genie. They will build on top of Gemini, but extend it in various ways. And I think some of those ideas are going to be required as well to fully solve physical intelligence and things like that. So, I'm both are true. I'm really happy with the progress of Gemini 3. I think people are going to be pretty pleasantly surprised. But it's on track of what we were expecting the progress to be and I think that means still 5 to 10 years with one or two more perhaps breakthroughs required.
You mentioned Gemini 3's style. There's been a lot of discussion recently about AI companions, the relationships people are developing with them. How do you think about Gemini 3's personality and what kind of relationship do you want users to have with it?
I would say in the app itself, Casey, we're really interested in kind of we see it on the team a lot as almost like a tool or something you're using to work through and cut through your day. And so whether it's helping on different types of questions you have or helping you create things, that's really where we see it excelling and the direction we want to see it. I think if you zoom out, if you look at Gemini or some of our other projects like Notebook LM or Flow, we're really trying to think through how does AI really be this superpower kind of super tool in your toolbox that you can use whether it's for writing or researching or creating films or whatnot. And so that's really more where we're focused. I think over time we're really interested on the team to be able to track things like how many tasks did we help you complete in your day? That's a new type of metric that I think we get excited about and sort of a way that the original Google search worked. You would come to it, you would try to get an answer or sent to a page and move on from there.
