Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Something strange is happening in tech right now. Companies are posting record profits and revenue while laying off tens of thousands of people, citing AI as the official explanation. So far this year, there have been an estimated 363 layoffs at tech companies this year, affecting nearly 150,000 people — a pace of about 974 people per day, 44% faster than last year — according to TrueUp, a tech job board and recruiting platform that also runs one of the most widely cited tech layoff trackers. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in two years last month, with nearly…
Google is one of the companies leading the AI revolution.Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, made no mention of that during his commencement speech to Stanford University graduates on Sunday — and for good reason.Students relentlessly booed one of Pichai’s predecessors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, when he praised the promise of AI during his own commencement speech at the University of Arizona last month. Students also booed Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta when he talked about AI at Middle Tennessee State University. “I know today is about giving you all advice,” Pichai told the graduates. “But people have also…
The Trump administration’s decision to impose sweeping export controls on Anthropic followed a frantic 24-hour effort by senior officials to convince the company to voluntarily pull a newly released artificial intelligence model that officials believed posed security risks, according to two administration officials and a senior White House official, who, like others in this story, were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode.The move, which followed multiple tense calls between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, underscores how the White House is wrestling…
SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Despite its name, SpaceX has been emphasizing the potential of its costly AI business, and competitors OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts. So on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what’s looking like a hot IPO summer. “We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company…
Emily Blunt took a very human approach to creating the alien language in Steven Spielberg’s new film “Disclosure Day.”During her press tour for the film, Blunt said she refused Spielberg’s offer to use AI to perfect the clicking noises her character makes in the film.”He said, ‘You know, we could do it with AI, or you could do it,'” Blunt told Entertainment Tonight earlier this month. “And I was like, ‘I feel confident I can make some weird noises.'”Blunt said she experimented with sounds alone in her bathroom and would send different versions to Spielberg.”Clicking, humming, doing weird Barry White…
Moyan Chen was laid off from her role as a data scientist at Meta in May after just under a year on the job. The 24-year-old, who lives in New York City, isn’t sure what she wants to do next. Business Insider has verified her identity and former employment. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.When the rumor of layoffs at Meta leaked in March, there was no timeline. Some of my colleagues and I were fearing Wednesdays because Meta has sometimes laid off people on those days. So, every Tuesday night, when I left work, I wondered…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jae Park, a 32-year-old based in Las Vegas. It’s been edited for length and clarity.About a decade ago, I took a furniture-building class on a whim, and I loved it so much.I considered going into carpentry at the time, but after leaving college with six-figure debt, I gave up on the idea of having my work tied to something I was actually passionate about. Instead, I wanted to pursue a path that could let me make more money.Over the past year, as my tech job pushed me to incorporate AI into…
Americans across the country are rallying against the AI-inspired data center boom.Now, an increasing number of local lawmakers are backing them up, issuing restrictions, imposing moratoriums, or outright banning construction. Data centers have become a major source of contention in the United States, where tech leaders, developers, and investors are pumping billions of dollars into the large-scale construction projects. The facilities house the servers powering the AI products sold by Big Tech companies and leading AI startups like Anthropic and OpenAI.Although data centers in America aren’t new, the AI revolution is fueling ever-increasing demand and requiring facilities that dwarf those…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Giegel, the 41-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Gambit, who lives in Los Angeles. It’s been edited for length and clarity.I was in grad school at Stanford, finishing my master’s and wanting to do a Ph.D.I had worked at NASA the previous summer, and one of the women I worked with was also a Stanford graduate, and was like: “You’re going to be so bored at NASA. Why don’t you check out this small space company in Los Angeles called SpaceX?”I applied and interviewed in the two weeks between flight…
One morning in February, Mark Lanier woke up after four hours of sleep and started preparing to cross-examine one of the wealthiest people in the world: Mark Zuckerberg.His team had worked through the night, preparing material for the day ahead that he could then review in the hours before court, all with the help of AI.Lanier, a nationally known Texas trial lawyer with a reputation for taking on major corporations in high-stakes trials, was representing the plaintiff in a landmark social media addiction case. He said AI allowed his team to do significantly more with the limited hours they had…