Yossi Matias, head of Google Research, discusses what he calls the golden age of research — a moment where AI is accelerating both scientific discovery and real-world impact. He covers Google Research's broad portfolio including flood prediction now covering 2 billion people across 150 countries, MedGemma with 5 million downloads enabling offline healthcare in Uganda, AI Co-Scientist helping researchers generate hypotheses in days rather than years, and ERA (Empirical Research Assistants) for automated model discovery. He also discusses speculative decoding as an algorithmic breakthrough that effectively doubled LLM inference efficiency industry-wide, factuality research for LLMs dating back to 2021, and the application of AI to education through LearnLM. Throughout, Matias emphasizes a 'magic cycle' of research where breakthroughs feed back into new questions, and argues that AI serves as an amplifier of human ingenuity rather than a replacement.