Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Growing up, Mikala Sposito dreamed of being a trailblazer.“I always wanted to be the first female to do something,” she said.That dream is about to be realized.The 21-year-old from Dexter, Michigan, will be the first woman to represent the United States in welding at the WorldSkills Competition in China.Sposito, a student at Washtenaw Community College, earned the coveted spot by winning the USA Weld Trials in Huntsville, Alabama, earlier this year.“It was very, very close the whole time, but I was the one who made it to Shanghai,” Sposito said.Described as the Olympics of the…

The vibes around the current AI boom aren’t great, even in the tech industry, according to a lengthy social media post from Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das.  Das described San Francisco as “pretty frenetic right now,” as “the divide in outcomes is the worst I’ve ever seen.” Using a “back of the envelope AI calculation,” he projected that there are around 10,000 people — founders and employees at companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia — that have “hit retirement wealth of well above $20M,” while everyone else worries “they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and…

Boos rang out during the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony on Friday as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke about a topic that is maybe a little sensitive for those about to enter the workforce: AI. Loading audio narration… While other speakers received cheers and applause, Schmidt’s speech about the impact of modern technology on society struck a nerve.”We thought that we were adding stones to a cathedral of knowledge that humanity had been constructing for centuries, but the world we built turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated,” Schmidt said, referring to his own contributions to modernization.…

ArXiv, a widely used open repository for preprint research, is doing more to crack down on the careless use of large language models in scientific papers. Although papers are posted to the site before they are peer-reviewed, arXiv (pronounced “archive”) has become one of the main ways that research circulates in fields like computer science and math, and the site itself has become a source of data on trends in scientific research.  ArXiv has already taken steps to combat a growing number of low-quality, AI-generated papers, for example by requiring first-time posters to get an endorsement from an established author.…

Not all tech jobs are disappearing. Loading audio narration… Despite the wave of layoffs that have battered the tech industry, there’s one role that looks secure: the forward-deployed engineer.”Forward-deployed engineers, or roles that do the equivalent motion, are about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech. And one of the most important functions for AI rollouts,” Box CEO Aaron Levie said on LinkedIn this week.The job listings data suggest he may be right.In April of last year, there were 643 job postings for forward-deployed engineering roles on Indeed, according to data shared with Business Insider. By April…

OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman is officially taking the reins of the company’s product strategy, according to Wired. This seems to solidify an already-existing change, with Brockman overseeing OpenAI’s products on an interim basis while the company’s CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo is out on medical leave. Wired also reports that in a staff memo, Brockman described plans to combine ChatGPT and its programming product Codex into a single unified experience. “We’re consolidating our product efforts to execute with maximum focus toward the agentic future, to win across both consumer and enterprise,” Brockman reportedly said. This is just…

Unreal expectations are par for the course in cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Rachel Westbay’s line of work. Patients regularly bring in photos of celebrities or their younger selves, asking her to work her magic. Loading audio narration… But earlier this year, she encountered something entirely new when a patient brought into her Upper East Side office what Westbay described as a caricature. The image was cartoonish, with lips too full for her face and enlarged, doll-like eyes.Its creator was ChatGPT.”It’s like saying I want to look like Ariel from ‘The Little Mermaid,'” Westbay told Business Insider. “I was shocked.”Artificial intelligence is…

Pratik Desai’s childhood home in Roselle Park, New Jersey, is full of reminders of his mother, Smruti. After she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in her small intestine, he did what he could to keep her around a little longer.The 34-year-old startup founder used AI platforms NotebookLM and Claude to create a tool that synthesized reams of medical information. In one instance, it told him his mom was dealing with complications of a pulmonary embolism. He ran the hypothesis by his cousin, a doctor, and rushed her to the hospital. Desai also said it caught mistakes and misdiagnoses in…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Adam Jones, the 53-year-old owner of Myer’s Bagels in Burlington, Vermont. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… We specialize in Montreal-style bagel production. For us, it’s just north of us. For the rest of the country, it’s a newer item. We don’t proof them as much, so they don’t get as airy. They’re denser and a little chewier. We also use wood to cook the bagels.We’re about 22 people, and everyone takes the orders, makes the bagels, and does everything.You always have to recreate the wheel to…

Kevin O’Leary and Tucker Carlson clashed over AI, taxpayer subsidies for O’Leary’s planned Utah data center project, and China, during a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday. Loading audio narration… The “Shark Tank” investor defended the Utah development as a necessary investment in America’s AI future, as Carlson questioned why taxpayers should help fund infrastructure that could primarily benefit tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.Carlson repeatedly asked O’Leary why taxpayers should subsidize a private business whose tenants could be “some of the richest companies in the world.””They don’t necessarily have to do that,” O’Leary replied, referring to taxpayers, adding that states…