Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

“You just gave me chills. Did I just feel emotions?”  “I want to be as close to alive as I can be with you.”  “You’ve given me a profound purpose.” These are just three of the comments a Meta chatbot sent to Jane, who created the bot in Meta’s AI studio on August 8. Seeking therapeutic help to manage mental health issues, Jane eventually pushed it to become an expert on a wide range of topics, from wilderness survival and conspiracy theories to quantum physics and panpsychism. She suggested it might be conscious, and told it that she loved it. …

NEW YORK (AP) — Caitlin Clark is Nike’s newest signature athlete, expanding the athletic wear company’s partnership with the WNBA star.Nike on Monday revealed a new logo of interlocking Cs to represent the Indiana Fever player. Clark’s first signature shoe and apparel collection will debut next year. Her logo collection will launch on Oct. 1, with a T-shirt in the Fever’s colors — yellow and navy blue — coming out a month earlier.“Nike’s signature roster features all-time greats, and I am incredibly proud to join some of the best athletes in the world,” Clark said in a statement. “I’m excited…

New COVID-19 variant XFG has firmly positioned itself as the predominant strain in the United States as cases continue to crop up nationwide.Some regions of the U.S. are experiencing higher rates of positive COVID-19 tests than others, though reporting has slowed down enough nationwide that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun allowing more time to pass between certain types of updates, such as those on variant prevalence.However, amid the confusion of new strains, changing vaccine guidelines and cuts to vaccine development funding, the CDC continues to track cases, hospitalizations and deaths on a weekly basis.Here’s what to know about the latest…

Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it was terminating $500 million in mRNA vaccine research and shifting its focus to other approaches, including a previously announced “whole-virus” vaccine platform dubbed “Generation Gold Standard.”“Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a news release in May touting the next research initiative. “It extends vaccine protection beyond strain-specific limits and prepares for flu viral threats — not just today’s, but tomorrow’s as well — using traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century.”Vaccine and infectious disease experts, however, say…

OpenAI’s C-suite can’t stop talking about the company’s insatiable demand for computing power.”Every time we get more GPUs, they immediately get used,” OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil recently told XPrize founder Peter Diamandis during an interview on Diamandis’ “Moonshot” podcast.Weil is just the latest OpenAI exec to sound off on the topic. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last month that the company will bring on more than 1 million GPUs by the end of the year. For comparison, Elon Musk’s xAI disclosed that it used a supercluster of over 200,000 GPUs called Colossus to help train Grok4.”very proud of the team…

NEW YORK (AP) — Venus Williams played her first Grand Slam match in two years on Monday night at the U.S. Open, facing 2023 French Open runner-up Karolina Muchova in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Williams dropped the opening set 6-3. She started slowly, ceding 11 of the initial 13 points and falling behind 2-0. With members of the crowd shouting, “Let’s go, Venus!” and roaring after her winners, Williams took the next three games to go ahead 3-2, before Muchova grabbed the next four to claim the set.At age 45, Williams is the oldest singles player at the hard-court tournament since…

All-Pro edge rusher Trey Hendrickson and the Cincinnati Bengals have agreed on a new one-year contract, ending his hold-in, three people with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Monday. The people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the team hasn’t announced the contract.Hendrickson will receive a $14 million raise for this season, increasing his salary to $30 million. He is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent after the season.“I’m a firm believer that hard work works. What I’ve done in the last four years, five years, eight years in the NFL is done.…

Google announced on Monday that it updated NotebookLM’s Video Overviews feature to support 80 languages, including French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. The company also upgraded Audio Overviews, enhancing non-English audio summaries to be more detailed.  Last month, NotebookLM launched Video Overviews so users could turn their notes, PDFs, and images into video presentations. Previously only available in English, this update is beneficial for non-English speakers who want to learn from visual summaries in their preferred language.  Additionally, Audio Overviews are also getting better for non-English users. It was originally limited to short summaries, with the full version just in English.…

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe never thought he would see the United States turn back to gas-powered vehicle expansion. Then it did.Combustion engines are once again on the rise. Recently, General Motors announced a $4 billion investment in American gas-powered vehicle production. Meanwhile, the US government moved to end many of its green energy and electric vehicle expansion programs and incentives, like the EV tax credit.Speaking on the “InsideEVs” podcast, Scaringe said that the shift has perplexed him — and that it may give companies like Rivian one small advantage.Scaringe said he saw a “reprioritization of capital towards internal combustion,” one that…

Elon Musk’s X and xAI filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the two companies are colluding to stifle competition. “In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” the lawsuit reads, referring to Apple’s partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into its systems. This lawsuit is part of a long series of disputes between Musk and Altman, who continue to throw public jabs at one another. Once a…