Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Sam Altman says one of AI’s underappreciated risks is that people may let the technology do so much thinking for them that their own mental muscles begin to weaken.”One that I don’t think gets much attention is how are we going to avoid cognitive atrophy?” the OpenAI CEO said on an episode of the “Invest Like the Best” podcast that aired on Tuesday, when asked about the most important unresolved questions facing AI.”How are we going to use these tools and make sure that we are stretching our brains more and more and continuing to understand the stuff that really…

Tim Cook’s final earnings report as Apple CEO is today after the closing bell. The exec — who has held the role since August 2011 — leaves his Apple post in a familiar position: a dominant force crushing the stock market.Apple shares are up more than 2,400% since Cook took the reins, a period that’s seen the tech giant add $4.6 trillion in market cap, becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar company along the way.Meanwhile, Apple is up 24% so far in 2026, trouncing the Magnificent 7 (flat) and S&P 500 (+7%). Much of that separation has come in the month…

With the end of summer getting closer, you might be wondering how to lock in a return offer at your internship.These days, it’s tough to even secure an internship at a big company — and Tinder is no exception. Tinder’s Tindership program drew 30,000 applications per cycle for just 27 spots, a spokesperson for the company said.What does it take to turn a such an internship into a full-time job? Business Insider spoke with three former Tinder interns who did just that. They said sharing their Gen Z perspective, voicing their opinions, and showing they understood the app helped them…

Cheap cars typically suck.Consider the Mitsubishi Mirage. During its final decade in the US, the roughly $17,000 hatchback achieved its low price through obvious trade-offs: an engine that whined at highway speeds, a punishing suspension, and an interior so cramped that occupants rubbed shoulders.Its 2024 discontinuation helped usher in the first period in modern US automotive history without a new car priced below $20,000.So, when Slate announced a $24,950 starting price for a 2027 model, I assumed the low cost would come with plenty of compromises.Building an affordable EV is difficult enough. Building one profitably — without making it miserable…

It’s never been easier to take on the big guys, says Alexandr Wang.At a talk at a Y Combinator event, the Scale AI founder, who now leads Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, said that AI has been a game changer for startups.”It’s probably a once in a civilization opportunity to be a dreamer and to have a vision and to have ambition and to impose a view of how the future world should look by building something amazing,” Wang said in a video from the event released on Wednesday. He said that it wasn’t so easy when he started his AI training…

Whatnot is proving there’s still room for consumer startups in the AI era.Live shopping startup Whatnot is in talks to raise financing at about a $20 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.This would be a significant jump from the $11.5 billion valuation at which the company raised capital late last year.Whatnot hosts livestream shopping across categories ranging from fashion and sneakers to sports cards and vinyl records, taking a cut of each sale made on its platform in North America and Europe.The round is in progress, and details could change. Whatnot did not respond to requests for…

If you can’t seem to get off your Instagram scroll, it is not an accident.During Meta’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that global time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter, “largely driven by improvements to our feed and Reels recommendations.””Our recommendations are also becoming more personalized, surfacing more fresh content while giving people more direct control over what they see,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Instagram reels combined “faster inference with a new architecture that draws on deeper user history to improve predictions.””This drove a 15 basis point increase in sessions…

Microsoft is in a unique position as AI overtakes the tech industry. It’s one of the world’s largest cloud providers and software-as-a-service companies, while also holding valuable stakes in the two biggest AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic. Those incentives are starting to clash as Microsoft posts blockbuster financial results. The company just reported an extremely profitable quarter with $90 billion in revenue and net income of $35.8 billion. For the fiscal year, which ended June 30, Microsoft reported $331.8 billion in revenue with a net income of $133.7 billion for the year. And CEO Satya Nadella is not about to…

Meta’s AI strategy is, once again, worrying investors.The social media giant’s stock tumbled 10% on Wednesday after it disclosed that its capital expenditure growth far outpaced revenue growth.Meta has a core problem: much of this spending doesn’t yet have a financial return. About 98% of Meta’s revenue still comes from its traditional ads business, according to its second-quarter results.Meta has been trying lots of new things lately, like rolling out new subscriptions, smart glasses, and apps. It’s also weighing selling AI compute to other companies. All these moves leave its actual AI strategy unclear, EMARKETER senior analyst Minda Smiley said.”These…

The infrastructure behind Meta’s AI-powered advertising machine is swallowing almost every dollar of cash the company produces.Meta said on its Wednesday earnings call that its free cash flow — the money left from operating cash after capital investments — plunged 91% from a year ago to $784 million in the second quarter of 2026. Its free cash flow exceeded $12 billion last quarter.The collapse wasn’t because Meta’s business stopped delivering. Net cash from operating activities rose 25% year-over-year to $31.86 billion. Meanwhile, capital expenditures on servers, data centers, and networking — which all power Meta’s AI systems — surged 83%…