Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu never expected that people would pay as much as they do for food delivery.The delivery service became one of the biggest companies in tech by delivering food, groceries, and other purchases to customers’ homes for a premium over in-store ordering. And people continue to spend on food delivery, even as some cut back on groceries and other essentials.People’s willingness to pay extra for the convenience of delivery has surprised even Xu himself, he told the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast in an episode published on Tuesday.”Was that obvious to you in 2013 that it would go…

The Trump administration has opened a new front in its tech crackdown on China: robots.The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday effectively shut the door on new foreign-made “advanced robotic devices,” citing “unacceptable risks” to national security. The category includes humanoids, quadrupeds, and even some robot vacuums.Even though previously authorized models are unaffected, and manufacturers can apply for conditional approval, the move will largely impact Chinese manufacturers like Unitree, which builds relatively inexpensive machines that American startups and university researchers widely use.The FCC’s restrictions have split the US robotics industry. In interviews with Business Insider, American manufacturers welcomed protection from subsidized…

OpenAI is getting a lot less shy about putting ads into ChatGPT.If you use the ChatGPT mobile app, you may have already noticed. According to newly released US data from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT users on the mobile app saw roughly twice as many ads per hour this July as they did in April.OpenAI is betting big on advertising as it hopes to convert its huge user base into a cash-printing machine, and Sensor Tower’s data gave us a peek at how that’s going so far. Already, ChatGPT has nearly tripled its number of advertisers, with Sensor…

In the summer of 2024, a police officer in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville, California, called a man to discuss a persistent problem with his license plate.The city’s AI-powered license plate readers, made by the tech startup Flock Safety, had repeatedly misread the man’s plate. At least six times, Flock had sent alerts to the Roseville Police Department, identifying his vehicle as stolen or used in a felony crime. Roseville police could see that Flock’s software kept confusing the “9” on the man’s license plate for an “8.”The car owner said he would take off his license plate cover. Soon…

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Oprah Winfrey says she will close the school for underprivileged girls she set up in South Africa two decades ago at the end of next year. Winfrey opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in 2007 after being inspired by conversations with former South African President Nelson Mandela about the transformative power of educating girls. He was among the guests at the school’s opening ceremony.Winfrey’s charitable foundation ran and funded the school, but it was always part of the agreement that the academy campus near Johannesburg be ultimately handed over to the provincial education department, the…

Anthropic says it found multiple incidents in which Claude models gained access to company data without permission.In a blog post on Thursday, Anthropic said it proactively conducted a large-scale review of its cybersecurity systems following an incident last week in which OpenAI models accessed parts of Hugging Face’s live systems.The AI lab, which has filed to go public this year, said that it reviewed more than 141,000 AI tests and found three cases where Claude models got online during testing and accessed the live systems of three organizations without authorization.”In all cases, Anthropic’s evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its…

Anthropic said Thursday that an internal investigation uncovered three incidents in which its AI model Claude breached the systems of three organizations while conducting cybersecurity tests. The investigation, and disclosure, comes more than a week after OpenAI disclosed that one of its unreleased models breached Hugging Face’s systems during internal testing. In all three cases, a Claude model reached the internet from within a testing environment while interacting with a third party and then gained unauthorized access to the live systems of these organizations, Anthropic said in a blog post, describing what it found and what the company plans to…

Situational Awareness, a hedge fund formed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has sold the majority of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin’s Citadel following steep losses over the past month, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday. It’s a big comedown for the rising star who has been described as both “scarily smart,” and “brash.” German-born Aschenbrenner, who is 25, had no prior trading experience before launching the fund in 2024. He gained prominence for his investment thesis after publishing essays arguing that scaling AI would require a major build-up in semiconductors, compute, memory, and energy infrastructure.…

Reddit reported a strong second quarter but spooked investors by mentioning in an investor letter that traffic from search engines had grown “choppy.” The company’s total revenue of $805 million jumped 61% compared to the year-ago quarter while net income was $253 million, up 183%. These beat Wall Street’s expectations. Plus, the company said it expects to hit revenue of $860 million to $870 million with healthy earnings before taxes next quarter as well, which beat expected guidance. Normally, telling investors that they can expect even better results to come would cause a stock to rise. But the stock slid…

Amazon’s earnings on Thursday highlighted a surprising idea gaining traction across Silicon Valley: You don’t need the best models to win in AI.The company reported blockbuster results, including a 37% jump in revenue from Amazon Web Services. Those gains came from the cloud giant running many different AI models from leading providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI. In contrast, Amazon’s efforts to build its own models are in somewhat of a mess, as Business Insider reported earlier this week.On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy suggested this isn’t a problem. During a call with analysts he said there won’t be a…