Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

For years, parents, teenagers, pediatricians, educators and whistleblowers have pushed the idea that social media is detrimental to young people’s mental health and can lead to addiction, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and suicide.For the first time, juries in two states took their side.In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury found both Meta and YouTube liable for harms to children using their services. In New Mexico, a jury determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.Tech watchdog groups, families and children’s advocates cheered the jury decisions.“The era of Big…

As demand grows for training and refining AI models, Deccan AI — a startup supplying post-training data and evaluation work — has raised $25 million in its first major funding round, with much of that work carried out by an India-based workforce of experts. The all-equity Series A round was led by A91 Partners, with participation from Susquehanna International Group and Prosus Ventures. While frontier AI labs including OpenAI and Anthropic build core models in-house, much of the post-training work — from data generation to evaluation and reinforcement learning — is increasingly being outsourced as companies push to make systems…

Meta is rebranding some employees as “AI builders” and organizing them into AI-native “pods,” according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider. Loading audio narration… The memo described an overhaul of roles, titles, and team structures across a 1,000-employee team within Meta’s Reality Labs. It’s part of a broader, aggressive push by Meta to adopt small teams and use AI.The pilot program was announced last month within the Reality Labs team that builds developer tools. Everyone in the division will now have one of three titles: AI Builder, AI Pod Lead, or AI Org Lead. That’s to encourage a…

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Two landmark jury verdicts against social media companies have arrived at the front of a wave of lawsuits alleging that the popular platforms endanger the mental health of children.Financial penalties total $381 million in the two cases involving tech giant Meta in New Mexico and both Meta and YouTube in California. The verdicts highlight a growing shift in the public perception of social media companies and their responsibilities toward child safety.But it may be too soon to tell whether litigation will change the way popular social media and messaging platforms function — or influence the…

Anthropic’s latest research suggests that while AI is rapidly changing the way work gets done, it hasn’t meaningfully eliminated jobs. At least, not yet. But beneath what Anthropic’s head of economics, Peter McCrory, says is a “still healthy” labor market, early signs are pointing to uneven impacts, especially for younger workers just entering the workforce.  In an interview on the sidelines of the Axios AI Summit in Washington, D.C., McCrory said the company’s newest economic impact report finds little evidence of widespread job displacement so far.  “There’s no material difference in unemployment rates” between workers who use Claude for the…

A 4-year-old California girl is fighting for her life in a pediatric intensive care unit after ingesting a button battery.When Camila Romero was admitted to Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Loma Linda, California, on March 8, her parents said she was struggling with flu-like symptoms, including a cough, fever, fatigue, and loss of appetite.”[Camila] kept saying, ‘Mommy, I’m hot,’ and I said, ‘OK, baby, we need to take your medicine.’ And she was like, ‘No,'” mom Cassandra Tafolla told ABC News. “She was telling me her throat burned. She was telling me that she couldn’t breathe.”Courtesy of Cassandra Tafolla…

If Google’s AI researchers had a sense of humor, they would have called TurboQuant, the new, ultra-efficient AI memory compression algorithm announced Tuesday, “Pied Piper” — or, at least that’s what the internet thinks. The joke is a reference to the fictional startup Pied Piper that was the focus of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” TV series that ran from 2014 to 2019. The show followed the startup’s founders as they navigated the tech ecosystem, facing challenges like competition from larger companies, fundraising, technology and product issues, and even (much to our delight) wowing the judges at a fictional version of TechCrunch…

A COVID-19 variant that has remained “underground” for years is catching the attention of health officials in the United States and abroad.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a March 19 report that it was tracking variant BA.3.2, nicknamed “Cicada,” after routine surveillance noted a steady incline in U.S. cases. The World Health Organization (WHO) likewise listed the “highly mutated” virus on its Feb. 23 “variants of monitoring” record as more detections crop up in various countries, including Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.While the variant has yet to account for a significant number of…

Apple’s brand-new MacBook Neo is the most affordable laptop it’s ever made. In fact, the Neo’s surprisingly low $599 starting price is likely the first thing people will notice. The second is its use of a mobile A18 Pro chip, which debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro. For longtime MacBook users, that combination might raise eyebrows: the price is undeniably appealing, but the chip may seem underpowered. In practice, though, most people don’t need to worry.For the money, the MacBook Neo isn’t a compromise. It merely captures the essentials of what an Apple laptop is and makes it more attainable…

A large, new study found that the stimulant methylphenidate, such as the drugs Ritalin and Concerta, may lower the risk of psychosis when prescribed to younger children with ADHD.Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have been identified to be at greater risk of developing psychotic conditions such as bipolar or schizophrenia, compared with neurotypical kids. Some studies have suggested a link to stimulants prescribed for ADHD.The findings, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, found no difference in psychosis risk between children who were treated with methylphenidate — considered the most commonly prescribed medication for ADHD — and those who were not. In fact,…