Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
When I covered Google a decade ago, the company’s driverless car project was a hot topic. Every time the press gathered, project lead Chris Urmson stepped up to answer questions.Most of us journalists were desperately trying to learn the key technical details on the fly, so we often resorted to the same question that we hoped would yield an interesting story: “When will cars be fully autonomous?”Urmson always did his best to answer, without committing Google to unrealistic timelines. After a while, he lost his patience or grew bored. One day in 2015, he made a joke, or rather, a…
As more Americans turn to weight loss drugs, the U.S. adult obesity rate is declining, according to new survey data from Gallup.The data published Tuesday showed the obesity rate among participants has gradually declined to 37% in 2025 after previously hitting a record high of 39.9% in 2022. Results were based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults interviewed by web in the first three quarters of 2025.”This is a statistically meaningful decrease representing an estimated 7.6 million fewer obese adults compared with three years ago,” the report noted.In the report, obesity was defined using the…
When a federal judge decided to allow a sprawling class-action lawsuit against OpenAI to move forward, he read some “Game of Thrones” fan fiction.In a court ruling Monday, US District Judge Sidney Stein said a ChatGPT-generated idea for a book in the still-unfinished “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R.R. Martin could have violated the author’s copyright.”A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ works,” the judge said in the 18-page Manhattan federal court ruling. The decision was made in a case that consolidated several class-action lawsuits from authors —…
OpenAI says its deep learning systems are rapidly advancing, with models increasingly able to solve complex tasks faster. So fast, in fact, that internally, OpenAI is tracking toward achieving an intern-level research assistant by September 2026 and a fully automated “legitimate AI researcher” by 2028, CEO Sam Altman said during a livestream Tuesday. The ambitious timeline comes on the same day OpenAI finalized its transition to a public benefit corporation structure, moving away from its non-profit roots. This restructuring releases OpenAI from limitations tied to its non-profit charter, while also opening up new opportunities for capital raising. Jakub Pachocki,…
Owen Sakawa, the founder of Elloe AI, wants his platform to be the “immune system for AI” and the “antivirus for any AI agent.” The idea, Sakawa said in an interview days before the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, where Elloe AI is a Top 20 finalist in the Startup Battlefield competition, is to add a layer to companies’ LLMs that checks for bias, hallucinations, errors, compliance issues, misinformation, and unsafe outputs. “AI is evolving at a very fast pace, and it’s moving this fast without guard rails, without safety nets, without mechanism to prevent it from ever going off…
Vinod Khosla has a bold vision for how society could be reconfigured to share the abundance created by AI technology. Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Tuesday, the Khosla Ventures founder suggested the U.S. government could take a 10% stake in all public corporations and redistribute that corporate wealth to the public at large. As Khosla put it, the idea was spurred by President Donald Trump’s decision for the U.S. government to purchase a 10% stake in Intel. “When Trump bought 10% of Intel, I wondered if it wasn’t a good idea,” Khosla said onstage at Disrupt. “Take…
A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school ignored multiple warnings that a 6-year-old student had a gun in the hours before he shot his teacher, an attorney for the teacher said Tuesday as trial opened in the woman’s $40 million lawsuit.Abby Zwerner, a first-grade teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet remains in…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday accused the companies behind Tylenol of deceptively marketing the pain reliever to pregnant mothers in a lawsuit that asserted unproven claims that early exposure to acetaminophen increased risk of autism and other disorders.Paxton, an ally of President Donald Trump and a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, announced the suit against Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue weeks after Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserted an unproven link between the pain reliever and autism while announcing a wide-ranging effort to study the causes of the complex brain disorder.The suit alleges that the…
Finding the best surround sound system for your home theater can feel overwhelming. Between speaker size, room layout, and overall performance, there’s a lot to weigh. As someone who reviews home entertainment gear for a living, I’ve tested everything from compact soundbars to full-scale speaker setups. With that in mind, I’m here to break down the basics of surround sound and offer my top picks.The best surround sound systems use dedicated rear or “satellite” speakers to create a cinematic soundstage that pulls you right into your favorite movies, shows, and games. If you’re looking for a great all-around option, I…
I’m not a financial advisor, but I am a lawyer who’s spent enough time around markets to know how unpredictable they can be.I recently had some extra cash, and I wanted to invest it in something unique. I didn’t want to put the money into the volatile stock market, bonds, crypto, or even real estate.When I ran out of options, I turned to an unlikely guide for help and found an even more unlikely answer.I turned to AI to help me investAI has been working well for me lately — helping me plan trips, organize work, and even write better,…