Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — The interim president of Howard University said over 200 of the more than 500 first-year incoming students who were unenrolled for the fall semester have been readmitted to the Washington, D.C. school.In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Wayne A. I. Frederick defended the way the historically Black university handled the initial unenrollment, saying many students and their families apparently misunderstood the communicated financial obligations they were expected to meet before the start of instruction in August.“There were no issues as far as what we communicated,” Frederick said, adding that the school had been clear…
Disney has decided it no longer needs a Copilot on its AI coding journey.The Mouse House is ditching Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot and several other AI coding tools in August in the US, tech leaders told select staffers on Tuesday afternoon, according to a screenshot of an internal message viewed by Business Insider. These changes don’t apply internationally, a Disney tech leader told employees.A breakup with Disney is the latest headache for Microsoft’s Copilot, which “lags behind” rivals like ChatGPT and Claude in adoption, as Business Insider’s Ashley Stewart has reported. GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant in Microsoft’s AI product…
Robotics startup Generalist AI is in talks with investors to raise a new funding round that would value the company at $3 billion. Venture firm 8VC is expected to lead the round, according to people familiar with the discussions.The round is in progress, and details could change. Generalist AI and 8VC did not respond to requests for comment. It’s the latest example of investors pouring money into “physical AI” — AI systems that can act in the real world. Generalist is competing with startups like Physical Intelligence, valued at more than $11 billion, Skild AI, valued at more than $14…
America’s fast-growing fleet of electric vehicles could become an unexpected source of electricity storage as the country races to meet surging power demand from AI.That’s according to Redwood Materials, a startup founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, which now recycles more than 70% of all the batteries in North America.With millions of EV batteries coming to the end of their lives over the next decade and beyond, Redwood has adapted its business to repurpose many of these batteries to store electricity for the power grid, factories, and AI data centers rather than being immediately recycled.The proposal comes as electricity…
Chinese models are the latest boogeyman for the AI trade, and investing veteran Ed Yardeni see problems ahead for US regulators trying to contain them.The summer has been marked by the rise of Chinese AI models like as Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, putting Silicon Valley on high alert for new competition. Yet, as Yardeni noted, Washington, DC, might struggle to keep a lid on models from China’s tech companies. “Short of a ban on foreign open-weight models, Washington is using the tools it can to prevent distillation and data theft,” he wrote. “That mostly involves security advisories, limits on frontier…
Martha Stewart is entering the AI software era in the most Martha Stewart way possible: she has joined the co-founding team at Hint, an app that leverages AI technology to manage the tasks surrounding home maintenance and management. With the Hint app, which launches today, homeowners can tackle challenges around maintenance schedules and tasks, energy management, learn about their soil and air quality, weigh insurance claims, and more. It can also serve as storage for various contracts, files, and invoices related to the home and its upkeep, which can be queried through the built-in AI assistant. Martha StewartImage Credits:Kathryn Cooper…
Encore AI, a startup that studies companies’ customer interactions to train and deploy AI voice agents that can work alongside customer support and sales teams, or operate autonomously, has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Team8. Founded in 2022 as Insait IO by CEO Dvir Ginzburg, the company started out building recommendation software for financial advisers and relationship managers. Now rebranded as Encore AI, the startup has expanded that system into a platform that analyzes conversations between a company’s employees and customers to identify which approaches resulted in successful outcomes, and uses those findings to train its…
DETROIT (AP) — Two people who attended a prestigious Michigan fine arts school reported conduct of a sexual nature by Jeffrey Epstein, a major donor, according to an investigation that also uncovered dozens of allegations spanning decades against nearly 50 other people.Interlochen Center for the Arts operates a summer camp and performing arts school that draws students from around the world. It hired a law firm in 2024 to investigate reports of sexual abuse by faculty and staff. Subsequently, it expanded the work to include information about Epstein, the 66-year-old financier who killed himself in jail in 2019.Interlochen removed Epstein’s…
With little fanfare, Microsoft’s Xbox made a move last week that could shake up the gaming ad market.Xbox is testing a way for users to stream games they own for free by watching ads, rather than paying for a Game Pass subscription. There’s no word yet on what exact ad formats will be available or which brands will participate.Xbox has trialed limited ad offerings in the past, but this effort signals that its new leadership team is serious about finding ways to make advertising work as it pursues profitability, said Itamar Benedy, CEO of the gaming ad platform Anzu.”Xbox has…
New York-based AI detection startup Pangram is on a mission to combat the AI slop infestation spreading across the internet, and it just raised $9 million on a bet that demand for tools that distinguish human-generated content from AI-generated text will only grow. Pangram’s fundraise — led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Haystack, ScOp, Script Capital, and Cadenza — comes as the startup also launches its next-generation AI text detection model, Pangram 4, and an AI image detection model, Pangram Image. Pangram says the new text detection model is over 99% accurate at finding AI-assisted writing and mixed human-AI…