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Informative History Presentation Slide

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Blog > The History and Evolution of PowerPoint

The History and Evolution of PowerPoint

04.20.20   •  #ppt #history #versions.

On April 20, 1987, the first version of PowerPoint was released. Because we love the software so much (and we know many of you readers do, too!), we wanted to celebrate PowerPoint’s 33rd birthday with a whole article dedicated to its origins, history, and use cases! 95% of presentations are created with PowerPoint, 30 Million PowerPoint presentations are given everyday, and 500 million people all over the world are using the software. So without further ado, let’s dive into the success story of PowerPoint - with the early beginnings and the development throughout the different versions (except for version 13, which was skipped due to triskaidekaphobia concerns ).

Timeline & Version History

5. july 1984: the idea was created.

Robert Gaskins was hired by Forethought Inc. as vice president of product development. His task was to create a new software for graphical personal computers like Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh. Already 1 month later, Gaskins came up with the idea of PowerPoint. Back then, the project description was labeled as "Presentation Graphics for Overhead Projection". For the next year they continued to work on the first specification of the software.

November 1984: Start of development

Development officially started under the name "Presenter". However, they started to work on the Macintosh version first. The first developer besides Gaskin was Thomas Rudkin, who joined after 6 months.

January 1987: Funding by Apple

To continue development, the team needed more money. Apple's Strategic Investment Group selected the company for its first investment. One month later, when they announced the software at the Personal Computer Forum in Phoenix, famous Apple CEO John Skully reportedly said "We see desktop presentation as potentially a bigger market for Apple than desktop publishing".

21. January 1987: The name PowerPoint was established

Originally, they chose to keep the name "Presenter" for the final software. However, to everyone's surprise, when they tried to register the trademark, their lawyers replied that the name was already used by another software product. The team had to find a new name quickly and thought about "SlideMaker" and "OverheadMaker". According to Gaskins, one night he came up with "Power point" randomly under the shower. Initially, nobody liked it, but when his colleague Glenn Hobin independently had the same idea (he saw a sign on an airport reading "POWER POINT"), they took it for an omen and stuck with the name. The reason why the name now is a single word with an upper-case P is that back then it was required in the naming of all Macintosh software applications. The common belief that PowerPoint got its name because it "empowers" people is therefore wrong.

20. April 1987: PowerPoint 1.0 (Macintosh)

The first 10.000 copies of the first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh shipped from manufacturing by Forethought Inc. The release was received quite well by the media, commenting it "People will buy a Macintosh just to get access to this product."

July 1987: Acquisition by Microsoft

In early 1987 Microsoft started an internal project to develop a software to "create presentations". Shortly after, they heard that a company called Forethought had nearly finished such a software. The successful release of PowerPoint 1.0 convinced Microsoft to buy the company entirely.

May 1988: PowerPoint 2.0 (Macintosh)

One year later, the second version of the software was introduces. It included color, more word processing features, find and replace, spell checking, color schemes for presentations, guide to color selection, ability to change color scheme retrospectively, shaded coloring for fills.

May 1990: First Windows version of PowerPoint

Almost 3 years later, the presentation software was finally released for Windows PCs. It was announced at the same time as Windows 3.0 and was using the same version number as the current Macintosh variant (2.0).

May & September 1990: PowerPoint 3.0

It was the first application designed exclusively for the new Windows 3.1 platform. New features were: full support for TrueType fonts (new in Windows 3.1), presentation templates, editing in outline view, new drawing, including freeform tool, flip, rotate, scale, align, and transforming imported pictures into their drawing primitives to make them editable, transitions between slides in slide show, incorporating sound and video.

February & October 1994: PowerPoint 4.0

The new version included among others: Word tables, rehearsal mode, hidden slides. Moreover, Microsoft first introduced a standard "Microsoft Office" look and feel (shared with Word and Excel), with status bar, toolbars and tooltips.

July 1995: PowerPoint 95 (new version naming)

To align PowerPoint with all other Office applications, Microsoft decided to skip versions 5 and 6 and instead call it PowerPoint 95.

October 2003: PowerPoint 2003

The 2003 version was the first to include the now called "Presenter View": tools visible to presenter during slide show (notes, thumbnails, time clock, re-order and edit slides). Furthermore, it included an option to "Package for CD" to write presentation and viewer app to a CD.

January 2007: PowerPoint 2007

It brought a new user interface (a changeable "ribbon" of tools across the top to replace menus and toolbars), SmartArt graphics, many graphical improvements in text and drawing, improved "Presenter View" and widescreen slide formats. Another major change was the transition from a binary file format, used from 1997 to 2003, to a new XML file format.

June 2010: PowerPoint 2010

This release added: sections within presentations, a reading view, save as video, insert video from web, embedding video and audio as well as enhanced editing for video and for pictures.

October 2012: PowerPoint for Web was released

The first time ever, the presentation software could be used in your web browser without any installation.

January 2013: PowerPoint 2013

Changes: online collaboration by multiple authors, user interface redesigned for multi-touch screens, improved audio, video, animations, and transitions, further changes to Presenter View. Clipart collections (and insertion tool) were removed, but were available online.

July 2013: First PowerPoint app for Android & iPhone

Finally the famous presentation software came on your mobile device with the first versions for Android and iOS. Giving presentations but as well basic editing of slides was already supported on the small screens. However, there wasn’t an iPad optimized version just yet.

September 2015: PowerPoint 2016

September 2018: PowerPoint 2019

New things in 2019: Morph transition, easily remove image backgrounds, inserting 3D models and SVG icons and a handy Zoom feature.

Are you interested in even more details on the story? You're lucky! Robert Gaskins gave an interview at the 25th anniversary of PowerPoint where he reveals even more on the history of the famous presentation software.

Modern use cases of PowerPoint

Most people use PowerPoint mainly for creating presentations, but did you know that there are many other ways of using the software? PowerPoint is not just for presenting plain slides to your audience - it can do much more - here are some interesting use cases you might not know about:

Games are a great way to lighten the mood during a presentation. Also, they engage the audience. Memory, Charades, or PowerPoint Karaoke - your options are endless! You can choose whatever suits your own presentation style and preference. If you don’t feel like thinking of games yourself, check out the best PowerPoint Games article , where you will get a lot of inspiration, creative game ideas and even a Memory template.

The times of boring, uninspired PowerPoint slides are long gone! Instead, we want to see interactive elements that engage the audience in new, exciting ways! Add Q&A sessions, get your audience’s feedback, share media and capture your audience with stories and unexpected elements! If you want to learn more about audience engagement and interaction, check out our blog post on 10 tools to boost Audience Engagement ! (Also, if you want to save time and energy, you can download SlideLizard , which allows you to create polls, do Q&A sessions, share media and slides and get audience feedback - all in one place!).

Quizzes are extremely popular, and you can create them easily with PowerPoint. We promise that your audience will love them! You can even take your quiz to the next level by matching the design of your quiz to popular quiz shows, like "Who wants to be a Millionaire" (actually, we designed a Who wants to be a Millionaire template with the original design and sound effects so you don’t have to do it yourself). Our advice for quizzes: Use a PowerPoint add-on that allows you to do live quizzes, like SlideLizard . That way you can easily let your audience vote via their smartphones or laptops.

Do you know the struggle of talking in front of a shy audience that doesn’t seem to open up? If you do, you’re definitely not alone: many presenters have to cope with this issue everyday. But there’s good news: By using some icebreaker questions at the beginning of your presentation, you can - well - break the ice. From "How are you feeling today" to "What would your superpower be" you could ask anything, really. Especially funny icebreaker questions (e.g. "Have you ever…?") are known to be very effective. You could even do more than one of these questions in the beginning (to be sure the ice is really broken). We've created a list of 20 great icebreaker questions , which you can use as inspiration.

Common struggles

PowerPoint is easy and intuitive to use - which is the reason why it has become the most used presentation software in the first place. However, there are several little struggles users sometimes have to deal with. They are all easy to solve though, and we will show you how.

Sometimes, the wrong language is set in the beginning, or you would simply like to add another language to your existing one. You can easily change that in the settings. In our blog post, you will get a detailed tutorial on how to install a new language pack and switch to your desired language .

Occasionally, PowerPoint files can get really big in file size. The reason for that are usually pictures or videos within the slides. To save a lot of storage space, you can compress your PowerPoint’s file size (without losing quality!). To learn how to do it, read this detailed step-by-step tutorial on reducing PPT file size .

This problem occurs often: You design a perfect presentation with custom fonts on your computer at home, but once you want to give that presentation on a different computer, all your beautiful custom fonts are gone and replaced with default fonts. That’s really annoying, but can be solved by embedding fonts into your .pptx file .

Templates are so useful, as they save so much time. The sad thing is that not that many people actually use them. We want to contribute to changing that by teaching you how to make your own custom design template for PowerPoint . And if you don’t feel like creating a template yourself, you can download one of ours for free:

• the wonderful Blue Alps template
• the simplistic Elegant Architecture template
• the fresh Caribbean template to get that summer holiday feeling

When was PowerPoint created?

The idea of PowerPoint came up in 1984. In the following years, development started under the name "Presenter". In 1987, the first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh was released. The first Windows release followed in 1990.

When did PowerPoint come out?

The first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh came out on April 20, 1987. The initial Windows version followed 3 years later, in May 1990.

Who created / invented / developed PowerPoint?

Robert Gaskins is one of the inventors of PowerPoint. He developed the first version with the help of his colleagues at Forethought Inc., Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin. Microsoft bought the company in 1987.

How old is PowerPoint?

The first version of PowerPoint was released on April 20, 1987, which means that PowerPoint celebrates its 33rd birthday in 2020. However, it was for Macintosh only, the Windows version was release in May 1990.

When did PowerPoint become popular?

According to Google Trends, PowerPoint had its peak in popularity in November 2009 (measured by number of searches). However, PowerPoint was already a popular presentation software in the 1990s.

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About the author.

Pia Lehner-Mittermaier

Pia works in Marketing as a graphic designer and writer at SlideLizard. She uses her vivid imagination and creativity to produce good content.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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Moving Forward: The Future of Presentations

The presentations that we know today in 2019 may become unidentifiable in the years to come. Virtual reality and augmented reality paired with the use of headsets are predicted to bring about significant change in the way we deliver and experience presentations.

Virtual reality headsets will transport audience members into the actual presentation, creating 360-degree experience. Augmented reality headsets will be used to transform the presentation space into one giant canvas, where the presentation information is displayed digitally on the walls. These innovative technologies could greatly enhance the experience of pitching to potential investors and could be especially effective if you're looking to sell your business .

Presentations are no longer about what information is being shown, but how it is being shown. With such substantial changes to presentation software on the horizon, new standards will surely evolve and we will adapt as we always have.

Despite past and future advancements in the way humans deliver information, one thing has remained constant: the need to deliver information. This need has stood the test of time since the first cave paintings of 15000 B.C. and will continue to do so for as long as humans have something to say.

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Women's History Is American History

Womens history homepage.

We know women have been making history for centuries but their stories are missing from the world around us. Explore five women's stories showcasing how that happens and learn what you can do to change it.

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Check out the  New York Times  review of our upcoming exhibition,  Becoming Visible: Bringing American Women's History into Focus .

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Elizabeth C. Babcock has been named director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, effective June 3.

Read more about Elizabeth C. Babcock Named Director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum

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America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

American states passed a blizzard of education laws and policies over the past six years that aim to reshape how K-12 schools and colleges teach and present issues of race, sex and gender to the majority of the nation’s students — with instruction differing sharply by states’ political leanings, according to a Washington Post analysis .

See which states are restricting, requiring education on race and sex

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19.

How The Post is tracking education bills

Since 2017, 38 states have adopted 114 such laws, rules or orders, The Post found. The majority of policies are restrictive in nature: 66 percent circumscribe or ban lessons and discussions on some of society’s most sensitive topics, while 34 percent require or expand them. In one example, a 2023 Kentucky law forbids lessons on human sexuality before fifth grade and outlaws all instruction “exploring gender identity.” On the other hand, a 2021 Rhode Island law requires that all students learn “African Heritage and History” before high school graduation.

The Post included in its analysis only measures that could directly affect what students learn. Thus, 100 of the laws in The Post’s database apply only to K-12 campuses, where states have much greater power to shape curriculums. At public institutions of higher education — where courts have held that the First Amendment protects professors’ right to teach what they want — the laws instead target programs like student or faculty trainings or welcome sessions.

Tell The Post: How are education laws, restrictions affecting your school?

The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy. Controversy and debate over classroom lessons is nothing new, Zimmermann said, but states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. School districts have traditionally had wide latitude to shape their lessons.

He said it remains an open question whether all laws will translate to curriculum changes, predicting some schools and teachers may refuse to alter their pedagogy. Still, a nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.”

“What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. “State legislatures have now used the power of law to try to inscribe one view, and to prevent another. And so we’re deeply divided in America.”

In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state.

Legislators advancing restrictive education laws argue they are offering a corrective to what they call a recent left-wing takeover of education. They contend that, in the past decade or so, teachers and professors alike began forcing students to adopt liberal viewpoints on topics ranging from police brutality to whether gender is a binary or a spectrum.

Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan (R), who sponsored or co-sponsored several laws in his state that limit or ban instruction and trainings dealing with race, bias, sexual orientation and gender identity on both K-12 and college campuses, said the legislation he helped pass does not restrict education.

“It is restricting indoctrination,” Ragan said. Under his state’s laws, he said, “the information presented is factually accurate and is in fact something worth knowing.”

Those advancing expansive legislation, by contrast, argue they are fostering conditions in which students from all backgrounds will see themselves reflected in lessons. This will make it easier for every student to learn and be successful, while teaching peers to be tolerant of one another’s differences, said Washington state Sen. Marko Liias (D).

Liias was the architect of a law his state passed last month that requires schools to adopt “inclusive curricula” featuring the histories, contributions and perspectives of the “historically marginalized,” including “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities [and] LGBTQ people.” He was inspired to propose the bill after hearing from educators who wanted to create more welcoming classrooms and by memories of his own experiences as a queer student in the 1980s and 1990s, when, he said, there were no LGBTQ role models taught or accepted in schools.

“When schools are inclusive broadly of all the identities brought to the classroom, then everybody thrives and does better,” Liias said.

To construct its database of education laws, The Post analyzed more than 2,200 bills, policies, gubernatorial directives and state school board rules introduced since 2017. The Post identified regulations for review by examining state legislative databases, education law trackers maintained by national bipartisan nonprofits and the websites of various advocacy groups that monitor curriculum legislation.

How curriculum policies took hold

Some blue states began enacting expansive education laws in the late 2010s. From 2017 to 2020, 10 states passed legislation or rules that required schools to start teaching about the history of underrepresented groups such as Black Americans, Pacific Islanders or LGBTQ Americans, The Post found .

State and school leaders were drawing on more than a dozen studies published from the 1990s to 2017 that found student performance, attendance and graduate rates rise when children see people like them included in curriculum, said Jennifer Berkshire , a Yale lecturer on education studies.

“They were thinking, ‘You know, our curriculums aren’t representative enough,’” Berkshire said. “The argument was, if we’re going to realize the goal of full rights and civil participation for kids, we need to do things differently.”

Fourteen of these laws, or 36 percent, came in a rush in 2021, the year after the police killing of George Floyd sparked massive demonstrations and a national reckoning over racism. At the time, activists, teachers, parents and high school students across America were urging schools teach more Black history and feature more Black authors.

Of the expansive laws and policies The Post analyzed, the majority — 69 percent — require or expand education on race or racial issues, especially on Black history and ethnic studies. About a quarter add or enhance education on both LGBTQ and racial issues. Just 8 percent focus solely on LGBTQ lives and topics.

But the onslaught of restrictive legislation in red states began in 2021, too, also inspired in many cases by parent concerns over curriculums.

Anxiety first stirred due to coronavirus pandemic-era school shutdowns as some mothers and fathers — granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during the era of school-by-laptop — found they did not like or trust what their children were learning.

Soon, some parents were complaining that lessons were biased toward left-leaning views and too focused on what they saw as irrelevant discussions of race, gender and sexuality — laments taken up by conservative pundits and politicians. National groups like Moms for Liberty formed to call out and combat left-leaning teaching in public schools.

Their fears became legislation with speed: Mostly red states passed 26 restrictive education laws and policies in 2021; 19 such laws or policies the next year and 25 more the year after that.

“If you’ve got parents upset at what they’re seeing, they’re going to go to school board meetings and take it up with their legislators,” said Robert Pondiscio , a senior fellow studying education at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And legislators will do what they do: pass laws.”

How the restrictions and expansions work

The plurality of restrictive laws, 47 percent, target both education on race and sex. About a third solely affect education on gender identity and sexuality, while 21 percent solely affect education on race.

Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. Schools have long permitted parents to weigh in on education, often informally; but under many of the new laws, parental input has more weight and is mandatory.

Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

These outlawed concepts usually include the notion that certain merits, values, beliefs, status or privileges are tied to race or sex; or the theory that students should feel ashamed or guilty due to their race, sex or racial past. One such law, passed in Georgia in 2022, forbids teaching that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.”

At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.”

By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society.

“When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

But Pondiscio said there is always tension in American society between the public interest in education and parents’ interest in determining the values transmitted to their children. The conflict veers from acute to chronic, he said, and currently it’s in an acute phase. “But I don’t find it inappropriate. I think it is a natural part of democratic governance and oversight,” Pondiscio said.

He added, “One man’s ‘chilling effect’ is another man’s appropriate circumspections.”

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History powerpoint free to download for teachers

Powerpoint presentations on history free to download.

History is the study of past events, particularly human activities, societies, and civilizations. It encompasses the exploration, analysis, interpretation, and understanding of the past based on various sources of evidence, such as written records, archaeological findings, oral traditions, artifacts, and more. History aims to reconstruct and narrate the story of humanity’s journey over time, examining the actions, ideas, and experiences of people from different eras and regions.

Below are a list of historical powerpoint presentations.

By studying history, we can gain insights into how societies have evolved, understand the factors that have shaped human progress, and learn from the successes and failures of the past. It helps us develop a broader perspective and a deeper understanding of our own cultural, social, and political contexts.

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MAKING LEGAL HISTORY MATTER: 20 YEARS OF STUDENT EDUCATION, PUBLIC PROGRAMS, AND MORE!

Society on the road: region 9 association of public historians meeting.

The Society is heading upstate for a virtual presentation to members of the Association of Public Historians of New York State’s Region 9 Meeting. Executive Director  Marilyn Marcus  and Deputy Director  Allison Morey  will provide the attendees with information about the Historical Society’s many projects as well as information about the history of New York’s court system, from the Dutch colonial era to today.

The meeting will be held on  May 4 in Fabius. Presenting organizations also include Syracuse University Special Collections Research Center and the Onondaga Historical Association’s Archives and Special Collections. We are delighted to join our colleagues and help provide researchers with the tools they need to support their projects.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The interactive effect between economic uncertainty and life history strategy on corrupt intentions: a life history theory approach.

• 1 Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
• 2 Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

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Why do some people show more corruption when facing uncertain environment?The present study aimed to give a plausible answer from an evolutionary perspective: this might be rooted in people's different life history strategies (slow vs. fast). The present study measured the participants' corrupt intentions by a hypothetical scenario and primed the feeling of economic environmental uncertainty by requiring the participants to read economic uncertainty (vs. neutral) materials. It is revealed that the participants with fast life history strategies had stronger corrupt intentions after reading materials about economic uncertainty than reading neutral materials. In addition, the desire for power mediated the interactive effect between life history strategy and economic uncertainty on corrupt intentions for fast life history strategists. This finding was discussed for its theoretical and practical implications from the perspective of life history theory.

Keywords: Economic uncertainty, life history strategy, Desire for power, corrupt intentions, evolutionary psychology perspective

Received: 25 Dec 2023; Accepted: 11 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Sai and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Lei Zhu, Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Google Cloud Next 2024: Everything announced so far

Google’s Cloud Next 2024 event takes place in Las Vegas through Thursday, and that means lots of new cloud-focused news on everything from Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot , to AI to devops and security. Last year’s event was the first in-person Cloud Next since 2019, and Google took to the stage to show off its ongoing dedication to AI with its Duet AI for Gmail and many other debuts , including expansion of generative AI to its security product line and other enterprise-focused updates and debuts .

Don’t have time to watch the full archive of Google’s keynote event ? That’s OK; we’ve summed up the most important parts of the event below, with additional details from the TechCrunch team on the ground at the event. And Tuesday’s updates weren’t the only things Google made available to non-attendees — Wednesday’s developer-focused stream started at 10:30 a.m. PT .

Google Vids

Leveraging AI to help customers develop creative content is something Big Tech is looking for, and Tuesday, Google introduced its version. Google Vids, a new AI-fueled video creation tool , is the latest feature added to the Google Workspace.

Here’s how it works: Google claims users can make videos alongside other Workspace tools like Docs and Sheets. The editing, writing and production is all there. You also can collaborate with colleagues in real time within Google Vids. Read more

Gemini Code Assist

After reading about Google’s new Gemini Code Assist , an enterprise-focused AI code completion and assistance tool, you may be asking yourself if that sounds familiar. And you would be correct. TechCrunch Senior Editor Frederic Lardinois writes that “Google previously offered a similar service under the now-defunct Duet AI branding.” Then Gemini came along. Code Assist is a direct competitor to GitHub’s Copilot Enterprise. Here’s why

And to put Gemini Code Assist into context, Alex Wilhelm breaks down its competition with Copilot, and its potential risks and benefits to developers, in the latest TechCrunch Minute episode.

Google Workspace

Image Credits: Google

Among the new features are voice prompts to kick off the AI-based “Help me write” feature in Gmail while on the go . Another one for Gmail includes a way to instantly turn rough email drafts into a more polished email. Over on Sheets, you can send out a customizable alert when a certain field changes. Meanwhile, a new set of templates make starting a new spreadsheet easier. For the Doc lovers, there is support for tabs now. This is good because, according to the company, you can “organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive.” Of course, subscribers get the goodies first. Read more

Google also seems to have plans to monetize two of its new AI features for the Google Workspace productivity suite. This will look like $10/month/user add-on packages. One will be for the new AI meetings and messaging add-on that takes notes for you, provides meeting summaries and translates content into 69 languages. The other is for the introduced AI security package, which helps admins keep Google Workspace content more secure. Read more

In February, Google announced an image generator built into Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot. The company pulled it shortly after it was found to be randomly injecting gender and racial diversity into prompts about people. This resulted in some offensive inaccuracies. While we waited for an eventual re-release, Google came out with the enhanced image-generating tool, Imagen 2 . This is inside its Vertex AI developer platform and has more of a focus on enterprise. Imagen 2 is now generally available and comes with some fun new capabilities, including inpainting and outpainting. There’s also what Google’s calling “text-to-live images” where you  can now create short, four-second videos from text prompts, along the lines of AI-powered clip generation tools like Runway ,  Pika  and  Irreverent Labs . Read more

Vertex AI Agent Builder

We can all use a little bit of help, right? Meet Google’s Vertex AI Agent Builder, a new tool to help companies build AI agents.

“Vertex AI Agent Builder allows people to very easily and quickly build conversational agents,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said. “You can build and deploy production-ready, generative AI-powered conversational agents and instruct and guide them the same way that you do humans to improve the quality and correctness of answers from models.”

To do this, the company uses a process called “grounding,” where the answers are tied to something considered to be a reliable source. In this case, it’s relying on Google Search (which in reality could or could not be accurate). Read more

Gemini comes to databases

Google calls Gemini in Databases a collection of features that “simplify all aspects of the database journey.” In less jargony language, it’s a bundle of AI-powered, developer-focused tools for Google Cloud customers who are creating, monitoring and migrating app databases. Read more

Google renews its focus on data sovereignty

Image Credits: MirageC / Getty Images

Google has offered cloud sovereignties before, but now it is focused more on partnerships rather than building them out on their own. Read more

Security tools get some AI love

Image Credits: Getty Images

Google jumps on board the productizing generative AI-powered security tool train with a number of new products and features aimed at large companies. Those include Threat Intelligence, which can analyze large portions of potentially malicious code. It also lets users perform natural language searches for ongoing threats or indicators of compromise. Another is Chronicle, Google’s cybersecurity telemetry offering for cloud customers to assist with cybersecurity investigations. The third is the enterprise cybersecurity and risk management suite Security Command Center. Read more

Nvidia’s Blackwell platform

One of the anticipated announcements is Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell platform coming to Google Cloud in early 2025. Yes, that seems so far away. However, here is what to look forward to: support for the high-performance Nvidia HGX B200 for AI and HPC workloads and GB200 NBL72 for large language model (LLM) training. Oh, and we can reveal that the GB200 servers will be liquid-cooled. Read more

Chrome Enterprise Premium

Meanwhile, Google is expanding its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the launch of Chrome Enterprise Premium . What’s new here is that it mainly pertains mostly to security capabilities of the existing service, based on the insight that browsers are now the endpoints where most of the high-value work inside a company is done. Read more

Gemini 1.5 Pro

Everyone can use a “half” every now and again, and Google obliges with Gemini 1.5 Pro. This, Kyle Wiggers writes, is “Google’s most capable generative AI model,” and is now available in public preview on Vertex AI, Google’s enterprise-focused AI development platform. Here’s what you get for that half: T he amount of context that it can process, which is from 128,000 tokens up to 1 million tokens, where “tokens” refers to subdivided bits of raw data (like the syllables “fan,” “tas” and “tic” in the word “fantastic”). Read more

Open source tools

At Google Cloud Next 2024, the company debuted a number of open source tools primarily aimed at supporting generative AI projects and infrastructure. One is Max Diffusion, which is a collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models that run on XLA, or Accelerated Linear Algebra, devices. Then there is JetStream, a new engine to run generative AI models. The third is MaxTest, a collection of text-generating AI models targeting TPUs and Nvidia GPUs in the cloud. Read more

We don’t know a lot about this one, however, here is what we do know : Google Cloud joins AWS and Azure in announcing its first custom-built Arm processor, dubbed Axion. Frederic Lardinois writes that “based on Arm’s Neoverse 2 designs, Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors like AWS and Microsoft and up to 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency than comparable X86-based instances.” Read more

The entire Google Cloud Next keynote

If all of that isn’t enough of an AI and cloud update deluge, you can watch the entire event keynote via the embed below.

Google Cloud Next’s developer keynote

On Wednesday, Google held a separate keynote for developers . They offered a deeper dive into the ins and outs of a number of tools outlined during the Tuesday keynote, including Gemini Cloud Assist, using AI for product recommendations and chat agents, ending with a showcase from Hugging Face. You can check out the full keynote below.