Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Decision overload is real. Some estimates suggest the average American adult makes up to 35,000 decisions every day.1 When those choices accumulate in the workplace, especially when leaders are expected to contend with disconnected systems, this overload can cause what’s commonly called “decision fatigue.””Decision fatigue is a psychological phenomenon that happens when we have the cognitive load of making decisions over and over again throughout the day,” explained leadership psychologist and founder of Sharp Brain Consulting Dr. Jessica Sharp in a recent webinar. Multiple small decisions compound, and when it comes to making significant, strategic decisions, our brains are too…

As an adult with a generally optimistic view on technology, I had a rude awakening recently: My third grader mentioned that he and his buddies had been using Google’s Gemini on their school-provided Chromebooks to make funny pictures of poop and dinosaurs. Loading audio narration… Technically, he admitted they’re not supposed to be using Gemini like this, but they’ve figured out they have access to the tool — and if they finish their assigned schoolwork a few minutes early, they have time to mess around on their Chromebooks.I didn’t love the idea of them getting access to a generative AI image-making…

The Justice Department on Thursday accused Yale University of illegally considering race in admissions to its medical school — the second institution to face discrimination allegations by the federal agency this month.In a letter to a lawyer for Yale, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a DOJ investigation found that Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to the medical school than white or Asian students, despite having lower grade-point averages and lower test scores.“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” Dhillon…

Cerebras Systems raised $5.5 billion in its IPO on Thursday, pricing shares at $185 Wednesday evening, way higher than its range ($115 to $125, later raised to $150-$160), even as it increased the size of the offering to 30 million shares. It then opened to public trading at $385, more than double (up 108%), as retail investors bid up the price to grab them. The stock cooled only slightly soon after. It is currently trading heavily mid-day at above $330. Even at the IPO price of $185, the company entered its first day of trading at a fully-diluted valuation of…

Ian Crosby, whose previous startup Bench Accounting famously shut down in 2024 before being bought for scraps, is taking another shot at building a business out of automating the arduous work of bookkeeping. His new startup, Synthetic, aims to build a fully autonomous AI bookkeeper that can generate accrual-based financials without direct human involvement. Although the product is still in the design phase — and Crosby admits his vision may not yet be technologically possible — the startup has raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Basis Set Ventures and Shopify CEO…

Nobody likes seeing headlines about Big Tech layoffs, but some smaller companies are taking advantage of access to a fresh pool of top-tier talent. Loading audio narration… Paul Jaeschke, chief product officer at PitchBook, told Business Insider that the private-market data platform was “definitely a beneficiary” of recent cuts across the industry.Amazon let go of 16,000 employees in January from its corporate workforce of roughly 350,000. Meta, which employs about 78,000 people globally, is also planning to reduce its headcount by 10% this month.While those cuts represent a relatively small share of each company’s workforce, in tech hubs like Seattle,…

There’s a lot of public concern that an AI will someday go off the rails and annihilate humanity. Loading audio narration… So it may be a little surprising that Boston Consulting Group is training its customer-facing AI agent, Jamie, on what not to do.Japjit Ghai, a managing director and partner at BCG X, the firm’s tech build-and-design division, said on a recent episode of the company’s podcast that Jamie is learning from both the best — and worst — customer service behaviors of its clients’ salespeople.”We trained the agent by studying the best sellers — their call transcripts, how they…

Technology giant Cisco is cutting fewer than 4,000 jobs, or around 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue in its fiscal third quarter.  The networking equipment maker said it reducing its headcount in order to change its “cost structure” and invest in AI and cybersecurity. Cisco’s decision follows a recent trend of tech companies increasingly citing a priority on AI spending as a reason to let employees go. Cloudflare and General Motors have both laid off staff in recent days, despite reporting strong financial results. Cisco said it plans to invest more in cybersecurity, as the company…

Your shot at VC access, global visibility, TechCrunch coverage, and $100,000 equity-free funding is running out. Startup Battlefield 200 applications officially close in just two weeks. If you’re building a breakout startup — or know a founder who is — now is the time to act. Apply by May 27 for the opportunity to take the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 alongside 200 of the world’s most promising early-stage startups. Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images This window is closing fast Pre-Series A founders, consider this your countdown reminder: The strongest startups are already entering the arena. If your startup has already been nominated, don’t wait to complete…

In the past few years, creative marketplaces and platforms have realized that they are sitting on a data goldmine, and they can either use that data to develop AI models themselves or turn it into a source of revenue by licensing it to other AI labs. Wirestock, which previously helped photographers distribute and sell their work on stock photography services like Shutterstock, has taken the latter path. The company pivoted to being a data provider in 2023, and now supplies datasets of images, videos, design assets, and gaming and 3D content to AI labs. Wirestock said its platform has signed…