Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

The Chinese government has ordered Meta to unwind its acquisition of Manus, an AI startup that builds autonomous agents. Loading audio narration… Meta announced it would acquire Manus in December as part of a push into building general-purpose AI agents across its products.China’s National Development and Reform Commission said on Monday that it had prohibited Meta’s investment in Manus. The commission, which handles economic policymaking, ordered the companies to unwind the acquisition. It did not provide any further details.”The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.Manus was…

The race to secure electricity for AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night. In 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—roughly enough to power more than 1.7 million American homes for a year—and its need for compute power is only increasing. The company has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants. Typically, data centers turning to solar power must…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rhiannon Bell, vice president of user experience for Google Search, based in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… I had an interesting start to my career. I’m from a small town in Wales called Aberystwyth and I didn’t finish high school.I remember when the internet came out, I was like, “what is this magical thing?” I worked in a local cafeteria and had access to the university computers, so I taught myself HTML and JavaScript. I started understanding more about design and topics…

The key to landing the hottest job in tech might be learning a traditional trade. Loading audio narration… Data centers built for the AI boom desperately need skilled laborers to install and maintain cabling and computer equipment inside the wave of new facilities sweeping across the country. Meta is even launching a program to train them.Often advertised as a fiber or data center technician role, the job requires the same fundamental skills and qualifications as a common trade school career path: the low-voltage technician.Low-voltage techs install, maintain, and repair low-voltage electrical equipment, from security systems to audio-visual equipment.They can also…

Amazon’s retail business is closely tracking how often software engineers use AI and how that influences output, all while navigating resistance from parts of its workforce. Loading audio narration… An internal document obtained by Business Insider shows the company’s vast retail division, known as “Stores,” measuring the AI rollout in granular detail. Teams monitor how many engineers use AI each month, how frequently those tools are embedded in day-to-day workflows, and whether this produces meaningful results.The effort calls for more than 2,100 engineering teams in the retail arm to triple software code release velocity using what Amazon calls “AI-native” practices,…

Law firms are getting hit with a blizzard of pitches from tech startups promising faster research, quicker drafting, and higher margins. For firm leaders, the challenge is no longer just finding useful tools. It’s stopping the deluge of AI software demos and trials from wasting time and energy. Loading audio narration… At one Big Law firm, that problem has a name: pilot fatigue. Andrew Woolfe, Cozen O’Connor’s chief strategy and innovation officer, uses the term to describe what happens when organizations ask employees to test too many new products at once.”Pilot fatigue is real,” Woolfe said in an interview with…

Myles Slayton wanted to be a startup founder, not an influencer.Then the 23-year-old CEO of the dating app Cerca started posting multiple videos a day on TikTok and Instagram, walking around New York City and sharing advice for young singles.”I saw this beautiful girl outside the 1 train in this leather jacket,” Slayton says in one typical video. “So I went up to her,” and asked for her email. In the post, which has more than 6 million views, he never mentions Cerca. He only occasionally references his startup in the hundreds of videos he’s posted since last July. And…

OpenAI just shared an update to its principles, and three differences stand out from the 2018 version. Loading audio narration… In a blog on Sunday, CEO Sam Altman posted a list of five “principles” for the frontier model lab. While the company has shared smaller safety policy shifts and model specs over the years, the new set of principles is a major update to its guidelines since 2018.OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a nonprofit AI research organization. It was established in San Francisco by a group of founders, including Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, some…

Two years ago, Josephine Timperman arrived at college with a plan. She declared a major in business analytics, figuring she’d learn niche skills that would stand out on a resume and help land a good job after college.But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. “Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI,” said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio.A few weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use…

Someone’s offering an unusual deal for a 13-acre property in Mill Valley, just north of South Francisco. Homeowner and investment banker Storm Duncan has created a LinkedIn page for the home, which he said he’d “like to exchange […] for Anthropic equity.” The San Francisco Standard reports that Duncan described this as a “diversification play,” as he’s “under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the importance of AI in the future, and over-concentrated in real estate,” while a young Anthropic employee might be “in the exact opposite scenario.” Duncan is asking potential buyers to email him to discuss deal specifics, but…