Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Major tech companies aren’t just using AI to help you generate or summarize content — they also want you to use it for shopping. OpenAI, Google, and Amazon have heavily invested in AI assistants that research new product categories for you and suggest the right ones to buy. Startups like Perplexity, Daydream, and Cherry have also built businesses around AI for product discovery. All these efforts have resulted in customers using more AI for shopping. Onton (previously known as Deft), an AI-powered furniture shopping platform, says it has seen its user base grow from 50,000 monthly active users to over…

BANGKOK (AP) — Severe flooding in southern Thailand has caused at least 33 deaths since the weekend, officials said, as dramatic video footage showed people whose homes were virtually engulfed by water awaiting help on rooftops.About 1 million households and more than 2.7 million people have been impacted by floods in 12 southern provinces triggered by heavy rains, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said Wednesday.The accumulated rainfall began to decrease Wednesday and authorities were hopeful water levels would start to recede, but the Meteorological Department issued a warning for heavy rains and flash flooding in the country’s southern…

Michael Burry has doubled down on his critique of Nvidia and other AI giants, and revealed he’s betting against both it and Palantir.In a Tuesday post on his new Substack, the investor of “The Big Short” fame called out Nvidia’s recent memo to Wall Street analysts, saying it was responding to claims he didn’t make.Burry, in a post titled “Unicorns and Cockroaches: Blessed Fraud,” wrote that he couldn’t believe Nvidia’s responses had come from the world’s most valuable public company. He said the document contained “one straw man after another” and the memo “almost reads like a hoax.”The market veteran,…

AI may eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. That was the stark warning from Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI startup Anthropic, in May. Despite backlash from some in Silicon Valley, Amodei hasn’t backed down.”The first step towards solving these problems is kind of being honest with the population that these problems exist,” Amodei told Axios during an event in September.Amodei said the rate of AI advancement and its adoption by society make predicting the actual timetable for job displacement difficult.”As with most things, when an exponential is moving very quickly, you can’t be sure,”…

Trust me when I say that I am absolutely thrilled by the chance to blow some money on a new gadget. I really am. I love a gizmo, a device, a widget, or a doohickey. When I see some new electronic thingamabob that might make my life easier or more enjoyable, I want it.And yet, I am really scratching my head about why I would want or need the new device that OpenAI is working on — whatever it is.We don’t know much about this mysterious piece of hardware — not exactly what it will do, what it will look…

Investors have been breaking out their checkbooks this year for healthcare startups, especially when AI is involved.Digital health startups raised $9.9 billion in the first three quarters of the year, surpassing the sector’s fundraising pace from the same period last year, according to Rock Health.And while AI scribe startups dominated the headlines last year, this year’s players are raising venture capital to apply AI to a broader range of healthcare tasks, from remote monitoring to medical coding and billing.Business Insider has published exclusive pitch decks for 9 healthcare startups grabbing funding so far this year.Here are those startups, in alphabetical…

Grocery stores are eating turkey costs this Thanksgiving.A surge in bird flu cases has spiked wholesale turkey prices for groceries and retailers, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows. But those price shocks aren’t being passed to shoppers, as USDA data shows advertised turkey prices holding steady compared with last year.Experts say grocery stores are stomaching the increased costs in an effort to bring customers in, though turkey dinner price projections show meal prices have held steady, as well.The increased costs can be traced to lower supply, with bird flu one of the culprits. Bird flu cases spiked among…

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Turkish-German family of four who died while on holiday in Istanbul were likely poisoned by gas emitted from a pesticide used to treat a bug infestation in their hotel, according to a preliminary autopsy report cited by Turkey’s state-run news agency.The Bocek family had arrived from Germany and were staying at a hotel in Istanbul’s Fatih district. On Nov. 12, they fell ill and went to hospital by taxi for treatment before returning to the hotel. The following day, they became sick again and were taken to hospital by ambulance.The children — Kadir Muhammet, 6,…

NEW YORK (AP) — MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women and most influential philanthropists, is now known for her “no strings attached” surprise grantmaking. But, as a Princeton University sophomore, she learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of generosity.Facing the prospect of dropping out if she couldn’t come up with $1,000, Scott was crying when her roommate, Jeannie Tarkenton, found her and got her dad to loan Scott the money.“I would have given MacKenzie my left kidney,” Tarkenton told the Associated Press recently. “Like, that’s just what you do for friends.”Today, Scott’s net…

The holidays are a time of merriment, festivity — and, for many, tense family gatherings.People think, ”’How do I deal with relatives who, at times, are intrusive or trigger me or say things that are abusive?” said Mark Rapaport, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.When trying to defuse stressful family dynamics, some people use a strategy called “gray rocking.”The point is to “act boring, like a gray rock,” said Samantha Whiten, a Maryland-based clinical psychologist. “You do not give difficult people any potential ammunition.”Is gray rocking actually a smart way to survive the holiday season? Here’s what experts said.When it…