Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman was offered $26 million from an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back.  That tension is everywhere this week, from OpenAI shutting down its Sora app to courts finally starting to hold social platforms accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality.  Listen to the full episode…

Starting July 1, a new population of prospective students will be eligible for American Indian tuition waivers in Montana — a shift that could make college more affordable for thousands of people and affect campus budgets. The change is also receiving mixed reactions from tribal leaders. The American Indian tuition waiver is a decades-old program within the Montana University System that encourages eligible Native American students to pursue higher education by covering tuition costs. About 800 Native students receive the funding annually, which costs the state about $3.8 million, according to the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education (OCHE).…

Lovable is hiring fast — and the vibe-coding startup is doing it in its own way.The Swedish company expects to grow to around 400 employees globally this year, Maryanne Caughey, who leads Lovable’s people team, told Business Insider, up from 146 employees in early March. Instead of chasing head count, it’s focusing on hiring in key areas like engineering, product, and design to help it build faster.”If someone wants a highly structured, low-ambiguity environment, they won’t be happy at Lovable,” Caughey said. Beyond product roles, the startup is also hiring across go-to-market functions, including sales, customer success, and marketing, as…

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 7 million student loan borrowers who have been enrolled in a Biden-era repayment plan will receive notices beginning Friday with instructions to seek a new plan to repay their debt, the Education Department said. Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan, which was struck down by a federal court earlier this month, have been in forbearance since July 2024 as a legal battle played out in courts.Starting on July 1, loan servicers will begin issuing notices giving borrowers 90 days to select a new repayment plan, department officials said.Under President Donald Trump, a Republican, “The days…

It doesn’t have a trench coat, it doesn’t need a nap pod, and it doesn’t have stock options (yet) — but Agent Smith has entered the Googleplex. Loading audio narration… Google employees are using a new internal AI tool called “Agent Smith” that can automate tasks such as coding, according to three people familiar with it.Smith has become so popular that access had to be restricted to handle the influx of employees using it, two people said.Smith — likely a reference to the antagonist from The Matrix — builds on Google’s existing agentic coding platform, Antigravity, and can interact with…

An AI startup CEO says she no longer has engineers at her company. Instead, they have become engineering managers who manage AI agents.Tatyana Mamut, CEO and cofounder of AI agent startup Wayfound.ai, says her team of two engineers is more productive than a large engineering team. Mamut, a former Amazon Web Services director who managed engineering teams of over 30 people there, says her two engineers can “ship code much faster.””The two engineers ship more features than my team at Amazon in 2017,” Mamut said.Now, coding agents like Claude Code do the engineers’ work, while humans manage them. The team…

Amazon is moving deeper into Walmart’s territory with a new kind of supercenter. Internal documents show how that strategy is taking shape.The e-commerce giant is planning to build a number of large-format stores that combine a Walmart-style supercenter with a robotics-powered warehouse, including previously unreported locations, according to internal documents obtained by Business Insider.The effort, known internally as Project Kobe, is one of Amazon’s most ambitious attempts yet to remake physical retail. The stores combine grocery and general merchandise with an automated fulfillment center embedded in the back, designed to handle in-store shopping, pickup, and delivery from the same building.…

STOWE, Vt. (AP) — Looking back, gubernatorial candidate Dean Roy says his political ambitions started in the eighth grade. And by that he means, last year.After working as a legislative page at the Vermont Statehouse, the 14-year-old freshman at Stowe High School now has his sights set on the corner office. In November, he’ll be the first candidate for governor under age 18 to appear on the state’s general election ballot. “I don’t expect necessarily to win,” he said. “What I do expect is to start the movement, and get more young people to come in behind me and say,…

Chong Ming: Base44 built me a writing companion app with a cute egg. The layout felt bland, but it was a full-fledged, functional app created without using up all my credits.Lovable’s build was similar and didn’t use all credits.Both platforms could generate the app; the main variation was in aesthetics. I did appreciate that Base44 and Lovable let me edit the app directly in the interface.The Cursor build process wasn’t as hands-off. Unlike Base44 and Lovable, which ran start to finish, Cursor required me to approve commands and grant permissions to override folders on my computer. As it generated code,…

David Sacks has used up his days as Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar. Speaking with Bloomberg on Thursday, the longtime entrepreneur, investor, and podcaster confirmed that his non-consecutive 130-day stint as a special government employee is over and that he’s moving on to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) alongside senior White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios.  “I think moving forward as co-chair of PCAST, I can now make recommendations on not just AI but an expanded range of technology topics,” he told Bloomberg via a video interview. “So yes, this is how I’ll…