Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
CHICAGO (AP) — Just before noon on a sunny Friday earlier this month, federal immigration agents threw tear gas canisters onto a busy Chicago street, just outside of an elementary school and a children’s play cafe.Parents, teachers and caretakers rushed to shield children from the chaos, and have been grappling ever since with how to explain to them what they’d seen: how much to tell them so they know enough to stay safe, but not too much to rob them of their innocence.Weeks later, families — even those not likely in danger of being rounded up in immigration raids —…
CHICAGO (AP) — The 2-year-old boy was so frightened, he stuttered.“Mommy, mommy, mommy,” he repeated, clinging to her.His mother, Molly Kucich, had been grocery shopping when her husband called, panicking. She heard “immigration raid.” Then: “tear gas.”She abandoned her grocery cart and drove as fast as she could to her toddler and his 14-month-old brother, who, on that warm October Friday, were among the hundreds of Chicago children caught suddenly in the turmoil of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.Parents, teachers and caregivers have been grappling ever since with how to explain to children what they’d seen: how much to tell…
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (AP) — The women wade with baskets near the beaches, their colorful dresses a magnet for tourist cameras. Sunscreen worn by the holidaymakers may even contain the product the women are collecting: Zanzibar’s seaweed.An eco-friendly local industry that employs thousands of women, the seaweed farming looks like a picture postcard — even if the reality of the work is grimmer than what meets the eye.“I experience pain in my back, waist and chest due to the labor in the sea. There are also risks of being stung or bitten,” said one farmer, Mwanaisha Makame Simai. “Sometimes strong waves…
NEW YORK (AP) — Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won’t be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it’s instead time for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.A doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world, Gates said.…
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan believes that AI assistants will finally allow us to shorten our workweek. Speaking on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Monday, Yuan discussed his videoconferencing product’s embrace of AI, which includes a “digital twin” feature where an AI avatar can speak for you. Yuan began using his AI avatar in an earnings call with investors this year, demonstrating the technology’s potential and ability to push the “boundaries of communication,” he said. At Disrupt, the exec emphasized spending a lot of time talking about AI and the right products to bring to market.…
Elon Musk appears to have launched Grokipedia, an alternative to Wikipedia, on Monday.Musk said on X last month that the team at xAI was working on Grokipedia.Grokipedia.com was live on Monday afternoon, but some users reported experiencing errors with the site, according to the Washington Post. A screenshot of Grokipedia screenshot Business Insider was able to access Grokipedia.com shortly before 7:30 p.m. ET and view an entry for Musk himself. The page features a search bar on a dark background, and a font style reminiscent of Wikipedia. It is currently billed as v0.1 and says on the homepage that it…
Robots can be programmed to do a variety of tasks, like packing boxes and even performing surgery. But each individual movement or task requires its own specific training process, which makes it hard for robots to adapt in real-world scenarios. Mbodi wants to make training robots easier and quicker with the help of AI agents. The company will be showcasing this tech as one of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. New York-based Mbodi built a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, that is designed to integrate into existing robotic…
Amazon is planning thousands of job cuts across its corporate workforce, and managers have been warned to prepare for an announcement this week, according to people familiar with the matter, an internal document, and internal messages seen by Business Insider.The move is expected to be announced on Tuesday, and will impact employees in the US, the UK, and Canada, according to recent internal messages sent to Amazon managers.A draft email that’s due to go out to impacted employees noted that Amazon is eliminating jobs “after a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christine Zhang, a 19-year-old startup cofounder, based in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I’m 19 years old, and people are trusting me with over a million dollars to build a company. At first, it seemed somewhat crazy, but I think this is a great opportunity.During the summer, I turned down an internship to spend two months living in a hacker house while building a startup with my college roommate and cofounder. I had no idea I wouldn’t be returning to Harvard for my sophomore year.After we…
OpenAI says it is working with mental health professionals to improve ChatGPT.The company disclosed estimates Monday for how many users are showing signs of concern.It estimates roughly 560,000 users a week show “possible signs of mental health emergencies.”OpenAI estimates that over half a million ChatGPT users are showing possible signs of mental health concerns during a given week.On Monday, OpenAI said it is working with mental health professionals to improve how ChatGPT responds to users who show signs of psychosis or mania, self-harm or suicide, or emotional attachment to the chatbot.As part of its findings, OpenAI estimated that roughly 0.07%…