Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
The AI researchers at Andon Labs — the people who gave Anthropic Claude an office vending machine to run and hilarity ensued — have published the results of a new AI experiment. This time they programmed a vacuum robot with various state-of-the-art LLMs as a way to see how ready LLMs are to be embodied. They told the bot to make itself useful around the office when someone asked it to “pass the butter.” And once again, hilarity ensued. At one point, unable to dock and charge a dwindling battery, one of the LLMs descended into a comedic “doom spiral,”…
Spanish police said Friday they have busted an international ring suspected of smuggling nitrous oxide, commonly known as “laughing gas,” and contraband tobacco.Officers confiscated 5,184 liters of nitrous oxide from a warehouse and the home of the suspected owner of the trucks used by the ring in the southern province of Malaga, police said in a statement.Authorities also seized more than 2.5 million contraband cigarettes from a truck in the eastern province of Alicante while members of the group were unloading the cargo, the statement added. Police released a video showing officers unloading dozens of boxes from the truck as…
Leslie Stoll developed a blood clot that led to a pulmonary embolism after she broke her leg in 2014. The embolism was treated, but another occurred when Stoll had surgery on her foot years later. After the treatment, she was referred to a hematologist who could prescribe blood thinners and monitor the clot.At an appointment in 2024, the hematologist recommended a CT scan. It showed a small anomaly in her lungs. Stoll wasn’t worried: She was an athlete and former boxer who had never smoked. Her lung function felt normal.”I tried to reassure him that it was nothing, and it…
After Kahlil Lalji closed the first funding round earlier this month for his new AI company, Natural, one of the first things he wanted to do with the money was embark on a rite of passage for new tech founders: Buying a billboard around San Francisco. He quickly found out he would have to be patient.”If you want to buy billboard space, you have to wait six to nine months,” Lalji said, adding it was even worse when he tried to secure prime space around Y Combinator’s outpost in the Dogpatch or Jackson Square, the home of many startups. “It’s…
HILDALE, Utah — Few people talk about vaccinations here. Not to outsiders, anyway.By and large, the people who live in Hildale, as well as in neighboring Colorado City, just across the state border in Arizona, are fiercely private. High walls surround many of the homes to avoid the prying eyes of strangers.Measles got in anyway.As of Friday, 161 cases had been confirmed in Utah and Arizona, the bulk concentrated right along the border in the twin towns collectively known as Short Creek. Eleven people — eight in Utah and three in Arizona — were hospitalized.Short Creek, a community that straddles…
Tuesday brought 14,000 job cuts and fresh AI concerns. By Thursday, investors were cheering.It was a turbulent week for Amazon and its CEO Andy Jassy, marked by historic layoffs and rising doubts about AI, followed by a swift 48-hour rebound that reassured investors. Wall Street is impressed — Amazon shares hit record highs on Friday — though questions remain.”Amazon isn’t perfect, and we are seeing increasing urgency in defending their cloud leadership position and reclaiming some of the unique culture,” Baird’s senior analyst Colin Sebastian told Business Insider. “Jassy’s strategy is proving successful, even if there are still some wrinkles…
By Ricardo Brito, Manuela Andreoni and Adriano MachadoSAI CINZA, Brazil (Reuters) -Deep in the Amazon, Indigenous women say they fear getting pregnant.Rivers that have been the lifeblood of their people now carry mercury from illegal gold mining, threatening the health of their unborn children.”Breast milk is no longer reliable,” said Alessandra Korap, a leader of the Munduruku people.At Sai Cinza, a Munduruku community surrounded by illegal mines, the family of three-year-old Rany Ketlen struggles to understand why she has never been able to raise her head and suffers from muscle spasms.Scientists may soon have an answer. Rany is one of…
I’ll admit I’m fairly skeptical of the results of xAI’s new Grokipedia and its mission to be an anti-woke version of Wikipedia.And yet, after testing it out a little bit, I was surprised to find that, in certain cases, it seems better than Wikipedia.Of course, its entries for hot-button things like “Elon Musk” or “gender” are exactly what you’d expect for its “unbiased” mission. It hurts my head to think about this too much, so I won’t linger on this.But most pages are not hotbeds of “wokism,” so they end up almost word-for-word identical to Wikipedia. (Grokipedia is able to…
By Jonathan Stempel(Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday said 36 drugmakers and executives must face nearly all claims in an antitrust lawsuit brought by most U.S. states, accusing them of conspiring to fix prices of 80 generic drugs.Chief Judge Michael Shea of the federal district court in Connecticut rejected claims that 45 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories waited an unreasonably long time to pursue federal antitrust claims, and missed formal deadlines to file similar claims under state laws.Led by Connecticut, the states accused drugmakers including Pfizer, Perrigo and Sandoz of conspiring to raise prices, limit competition…
Eric Zelikman, a top AI researcher who departed xAI in September, is raising $1 billion at a $4 billion valuation for his new startup, Humans&, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.Humans&’s eye-popping funding round comes amid a frenzy of early-stage AI deals, where valuations have soared despite limited products or revenue. Thinking Machines Labs, the AI firm started by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raised $2 billion in a seed round earlier this year at a $12 billion valuation.Venture capitalists are pouring billions into startups led by prominent researchers, betting that the next breakthrough in AI will come…