Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

It’s getting harder to resist the temptation to pull up a chatbot and switch off your brain for simple tasks, like replying to emails. Loading audio narration… But that convenience comes with a downside: If you stop engaging in tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and judgment, those mental muscles can weaken over time.As AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday work, some researchers have found that a heavy reliance on AI is quietly deskilling workers.It’s a concern for average employees, too. Nearly half of 2,950 workers surveyed by Workday last year worried AI agents would lead to a decline in…

Tinder’s West Hollywood headquarters was covered in balloons.I toured the office on a Friday, a day when most Tinder employees don’t work in person. It was also the day after the company’s product conference, Tinder Sparks. The balloon arches and leftover juice bottles celebrated the occasion.The office is new to some staff, but it’s a homecoming for the company. Tinder was built here at the West Sunset Boulevard location. It then moved across the street, but is now returning to its roots.Here’s a peek inside the Tinder headquarters, filled with snacks, Lego bricks, and beer on tap. Recline against a…

In February, Block CEO Jack Dorsey wrote a letter in such a gentle whisper that he almost made you forget he was announcing some of the biggest layoffs in recent history. “i’ll be straight about what’s happening,” he wrote to the 4,000 people, or 40% of his fintech company, he had just axed. “i’m grateful to you, and i’m sorry to put you through this.” He wrote the entire 600-word missive in the new language of power, lowercase.As tech executives amass more influence on humanity, “type softly and carry a big stick” has become the unspoken communications mantra among many…

Anthropic is close to passing OpenAI when it comes to business spending on AI, according to new data. Loading audio narration… Ramp, a finance automation and corporate card issuer, said half of its customers now pay for AI products. Among those customers, 30.6% use Anthropic, up 6.3% from March. The gap between Anthropic and OpenAI, which accounts for 35.2% of customers, has narrowed dramatically, according to Ramp.”At the current pace, Anthropic is on track to surpass OpenAI within the next two months,” a Ramp spokesperson told Business Insider. “It already leads among early adopters, including VC-backed companies, and in key…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post on Friday evening responding to both an apparent attack on his home and an in-depth New Yorker profile raising questions about his trustworthiness. Early Friday morning, someone allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco home. No one was hurt in the incident, and a suspect was later arrested at OpenAI headquarters, where he was threatening to burn down the building, according to the SF Police Department. While the police have not identified the suspect publicly, Altman noted that the incident came a few days after “an incendiary article” was published…

Anthropic launched a beta version of Claude for Word, another challenge to Microsoft’s software empire and a bid to appeal more to the legal profession. Loading audio narration… The AI startup, having pushed Claude into Excel and PowerPoint earlier this year, said its latest add-in for Word is “designed for professionals who work extensively with documents, particularly in legal review, financial memo drafting, and iterative editing.”On Saturday, Anthropic said Claude for Word would allow users to ask questions about their documents and get answers with clickable section citations.Other features include the ability to edit selected text while preserving surrounding styles,…

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — The room intimidates whether it’s the first gathering or the 20th, so much intellect, achievement and initiative squeezed into a confined space.The uneasiness begins to peel away during initial conversations, then dissipates more during the 1-mile walk to the start of the race.By the time the Tillman Scholars reach the Pat’s Run start line, there’s an ease, a comfortable feeling that they’re among peers, like-minded people who uphold the values of the race’s namesake, NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman.“I had major imposter syndrome after getting selected to this program,” said Jason Williams, a Tillman Scholar and…

I interviewed Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena.ai, recently. He created what I call the defecation test, officially known as BullshitBench. Something else he mentioned caught my attention, though. Loading audio narration… It’s a striking example of AI agents in the wild. While editing photos in Adobe Lightroom, he had 50 images that needed denoising, a tedious task typically done one-by-one. Instead of doing it manually, or even knowing how to batch it, Gostev let OpenAI’s Codex AI coding service figure it out.”You have to go and click into each one to denoise 50 photos. That sounds like hard…

Have you ever wondered exactly what sorts of financial bets lawmakers and top staffers are making? Loading audio narration… If you’re talking about stock trading, that information is easy enough to find. Current ethics laws require federal politicians and other high-ranking government officials to disclose their purchases and sales of stocks within 30 to 45 days of making the trade, allowing the public to follow along.But if you’re wondering about prediction market trades, you’re out of luck: There’s no law on the books requiring government officials to disclose to the public exactly what they may be betting on.That doesn’t mean…

Maine could be the first state to successfully call a timeout on the AI race. Loading audio narration… Lawmakers in at least 12 states have tried this year to slow Big Tech’s AI infrastructure buildout with legislation that would impose temporary bans on approvals and construction of new data centers.The proposed moratoriums are a response to rising local resistance to data centers, as communities across the country raise questions about the impact of these facilities on local resources and infrastructure.The US has 4,000 data centers, and 3,000 either proposed or under construction, according to the American Edge Project, a tech…