Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
It’s an annual ritual in Michigan: The state proclaiming how much cash the lottery is pouring into schools. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently announced that for the seventh year in a row, the lottery contributed more than $1 billion to the School Aid Fund.But buying a $1 scratch-off doesn’t mean you’ve just pumped $1 into school coffers. In fact, Michigan schools get about a fourth of that — or less, depending how you count it. For every dollar spent on a lottery ticket, 63 cents goes toward prizes. Nine cents toward lottery sales commissions and 3 cents for operations and administration…
ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski says voice is becoming the next major interface for AI – the way people will increasingly interact with machines as models move beyond text and screens. Speaking at Web Summit in Doha, Staniszewski told TechCrunch voice models like those developed by ElevenLabs have recently moved beyond simply mimicking human speech — including emotion and intonation – to working in tandem with the reasoning capabilities of large language models. The result, he argued, is a shift in how people interact with technology. In the years ahead, he said, “hopefully all our phones will go back…
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The writings of the person who killed three 9-year-olds and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville can be made available to the public, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. The ruling is part of a yearslong dispute over public records surrounding the 2023 shooting that likely is not over yet. The shooter left behind documents that include journals, a suicide note and a memoir, according to court filings. A group of Covenant parents has been fighting to keep them from being released out of fear that the writings will further…
Scarlet Sands-Bliss, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, typically gets up at 6 a.m. to make the drive to rural Lake County, where she’s researching how community members can prepare for extreme heat events. Last Monday evening, after a long day of meetings with tribal representatives and behavioral health workers, she hit the road again, racing down country byways to a pop-up science fair and lobbying event in Sacramento.Along with a couple dozen other students and postdocs from universities across California, she was there to present her work to state lawmakers and urge them to set up a $23 billion…
OpenAI has a pitch for software companies freaking out about AI and this week’s massive sell-off: Work with us, not against us.On Thursday, OpenAI announced “Frontier,” its new enterprise-focused platform that is set to build on the startup’s existing ChatGPT enterprise offerings and its growing team of Forward Deployed Engineers. The product is designed to give agents greater autonomy across multiple systems rather than performing isolated tasks.”Are software companies going to need to adapt to AI in general? Yes, of course,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, told reporters during a call ahead of Thursday’s announcement. “But I think the…
Larry Ellison has seen an unmatched $49 billion wiped off his net worth in 2026, as this week’s software rout deepened his wealth decline.Oracle’s cofounder and tech chief was worth $199 billion at Wednesday’s close, down from $247 billion at the start of January, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.A 5% slump in Oracle stock on Wednesday erased about $9 billion from his fortune. Investors have been offloading software stocks following Anthropic’s release last week of plugins for its Claude Cowork AI agent, designed to automate legal, sales, finance, marketing, and data analysis tasks for corporations.Tools of that kind threaten to…
Larry Bordeaux, 65, has been on blood thinners since 2010, after he started developing deadly clots following an operation.He credits the drugs with saving his life. If he stops taking them for several days — which he must sometimes do before certain medical procedures — clots develop quickly.Still, Bordeaux, of Havelock, North Carolina, knows that being on blood thinners is a double-edged sword: They put him at a heightened risk of serious, uncontrolled bleeding. Since he started taking them, Bordeaux has experienced complications ranging from a serious hematoma — in which a pool of blood forms outside of blood vessels…
In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared “software is eating the world.” Today, AI is beginning to devour software.Instead of helping the industry improve, new AI tools and agents could end up replacing some software products entirely.This anxiety crystallized in recent weeks with three developments: Anthropic’s release of a new autonomous AI agent called Cowork, the launch of industry-specific Cowork plugins, and the rise of OpenClaw, an open-source AI assistant spreading rapidly through messaging apps.OpenAI added to the angst on Thursday by rolling out Frontier, a platform that helps companies create and run AI coworkers that are not trapped behind…
SHANGHAI, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Authorities in China launched a new countrywide crackdown on medical insurance fraud in mental health institutions this week, after local media reported some hospitals were offering free services to compete for patients in Hubei province.The National Healthcare Security Administration said in a notice on Wednesday that all provincial-level departments must summon local officials in charge of designated mental health institutions to strengthen management, and eliminate the illegal or non-compliant use of insurance funds.It said provincial departments should use the problems recently exposed by the media at mental health institutions in Hubei province, and the results…
Last fall, teens younger than 18 who logged into Instagram last fall were met with a PG-13-like shroud on their feeds. No longer could they follow accounts that regularly share what Meta deemed “age-inappropriate content” or search for terms like gore and alcohol. To opt out of these automatically applied guardrails, they’d need their parents to grant permission through a connected account. The move was an expansion of Instagram’s efforts to give parents more control over teens’ accounts. As the chorus against social media and screentime at large rises, Meta has tried to do something to appease parents and keep…