Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

The US government is poised to become a shareholder in a semiconductor startup chaired by Pat Gelsinger, who ran Intel until his resignation last year.The Commerce Department said on Monday that the Trump administration signed a nonbinding letter of intent to invest up to $150 million in xLight, a startup trying to build a more advanced and cost-effective way to manufacture chips.The investment would come from the CHIPS and Science Act and would be structured as equity, giving the federal government direct ownership in the company.The deal — a first from the Trump administration’s CHIPS Research and Development Office —…

The Trump administration has agreed to inject up to $150 million into xLight, a semiconductor startup developing advanced chip-making technology, marking the third time the U.S. government has taken an equity position in a private startup and further expanding a controversial strategy that has put Washington on the cap tables of American companies. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the Commerce Department will provide the funding to xLight in exchange for an equity stake that will likely make the government the startup’s largest shareholder. The deal uses funding from the 2022 Chips and Science Act and represents the first…

It was a tough day for one of the nation’s largest transaction platforms to experience instability.Shopify suffered an outage on Cyber Monday, freezing some merchants out of their accounts and point-of-sale systems during one of the busiest shopping days of the year.The financial impact is still unclear. A spokesperson directed Business Insider to the company’s status page.Many small business owners posted on social media to tell shoppers that their shipping labels could not be generated and that they may experience issues during checkout.Outage tracker Downdetector showed a spike of roughly 4,000 problem reports at 11 a.m. ET, with thousands more…

In a carefully worded announcement on Monday, Apple said John Giannandrea, who has been the company’s AI chief since 2018, is “stepping down” to, well, not work at Apple anymore. He’ll stick around through spring as an adviser. His replacement is Amar Subramanya, a highly regarded Microsoft executive who spent 16 years at Google, most recently leading engineering for the Gemini Assistant. It’s a savvy hire, given that Subramanya knows the competition intimately. The move is being characterized as a shake-up. It was seemingly inevitable in retrospect. Apple Intelligence, the company’s answer to the ChatGPT moment, has been stumbling since…

BANGKOK (AP) — Behind the hoopla over the promise of artificial intelligence lay difficult realities, including how such technology might affect people already disadvantaged in a data-driven world.A new report by the United Nations Development Program notes most of the gains from AI are likely to be reaped by wealthy nations unless steps are taken to use its power to help close gaps in access to basic needs, as well as such advanced know-how.The report released Tuesday likens the situation to the “Great Divergence” of the industrial revolution, when many Western countries saw rapid modernization while others fell behind.Questions over…

A small, highly anticipated study shows a glimmer of hope in the long effort to control HIV without medication and search for a cure for a virus that attacks immune cells.Researchers gave 10 people with HIV a complex regimen of experimental immunotherapies, then discontinued the daily pills that kept the virus at bay. In six participants, the virus rebounded slowly and stayed at a low level for months, and one person’s immune system kept the virus in check for more than a year and a half – giving scientists hope that they could optimize the approach to create a cure.Subscribe…

Students applying to college know they can’t — or at least shouldn’t — use AI chatbots to write their essays and personal statements. So it might come as a surprise that some schools are now using artificial intelligence to read them.AI tools are now being incorporated into how student applications are screened and analyzed, admissions directors say. It can be a delicate topic, and not all colleges are eager to talk about it, but higher education is among the many industries where artificial intelligence is rapidly taking on tasks once reserved for humans.In some cases, schools are quietly slipping AI…

A Google Search exec said that one of the company’s biggest opportunities in AI lies in its ability to get to know the user better and personalize its responses. The promise is AI that’s uniquely helpful because it knows you. But the risk is AI that feels more like surveillance than service. In a recent episode of the Limitless podcast, Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, explained that Google’s AI tends to field more queries that are advice-seeking or those where the user is looking for recommendations — and these types of questions are more likely to benefit…

Having a smartphone may be harmful for children younger than 12, according to a new study.The study published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics found that owning a smartphone during early adolescence is associated with increased risks of mental health issues and obesity. As far as psychological impacts, it pinpointed higher incidences of depression and insufficient sleep among children who owned smartphones by ages 12 or younger, compared with others kids without the devices.Researchers at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University arrived at those conclusions after analyzing data from more than 10,000 adolescents around…

HAVANA, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Cuba on Monday confirmed the deaths of 33 people from mosquito-borne illnesses in recent ​months in an epidemic that has hit at least one-third of the ‌population, according to official reports.Deputy Minister of Health Carilda Peña said 12 people had died of dengue and ‌21 of chikungunya, the two viruses circulating widely across the Caribbean island nation. At least 21 of those who died were under the age of 18, Peña said.The minister did not specify a date range for the deaths.The deaths, and still-raging ⁠epidemic, are more bad news ‌for Cuba, whose healthcare system…