Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Runpod, an AI app hosting platform that launched four years ago, has hit a $120 million annual revenue run rate, founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh tell TechCrunch.   Their startup journey is a wild example of how if you build it well and the timing is lucky, they will definitely come. The story includes bootstrapping their way to over $1 million in revenue; landing a $20 million seed round after VC Radhika Malik, a partner at Dell Technologies Capital, saw some Reddit posts; and gaining another key angel investor, Hugging Face co-founder Julien Chaumond, because he was using the product…

Using acetaminophen as directed during pregnancy does not increase a child’s risk of autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or intellectual disability, a major new review published Friday finds.Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and by the brand name Tylenol, is one of the most commonly used medications in pregnancy, with doctors often recommending it as the first option for pain or fever, but in limited use.Earlier studies have produced mixed results, with some suggesting the drug may be associated with a raise in the risk of autism or ADHD in children, leaving some pregnant people unsure of how safe it is.Debunking 3 claims about…

A new review of studies has found that taking Tylenol during pregnancy doesn’t increase the risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities – adding to the growing body of research refuting claims made by the Trump administration.President Donald Trump last year promoted unproven ties between the painkiller and autism, telling pregnant women: “Don’t take Tylenol.”The latest research review, published Friday in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women’s Health, looked at 43 studies and concluded that the most rigorous ones, such as those that compare siblings, provide strong evidence that taking the drug commonly known as paracetamol outside of the U.S.…

“Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it.”That was the message from President Donald Trump when he and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced in September that women should avoid Tylenol during pregnancy due to what they described as a link to autism.The risk had not been substantiated by robust scientific evidence when Trump issued the warning. Now, a group of researchers have responded with what may be the most thorough analysis yet of the existing science on the topic.Their review, published Friday in the medical journal The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology, & Women’s Health,…

Earlier this week, the California attorney general’s office announced that it was investigating xAI over reports that the startup’s chatbot, Grok, was being used to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of women and minors. On Friday, the government followed up by sending a cease-and-desist letter to the company, demanding that it take immediate action to stop the production of nonconsensual intimate images and CSAM — child sexual abuse material. “Today, I sent xAI a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the company immediately stop the creation and distribution of deepfake, nonconsensual, intimate images and child sexual abuse material,” said California AG Rob Bonta in a…

The South Carolina measles outbreak is growing at an astounding speed.“Over the last seven to nine days, we’ve had upwards of over 200 new cases. That’s doubled just in the last week,” Dr. Johnathon Elkes, an emergency medicine physician at Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina, said during a media briefing Friday. “We feel like we’re really kind of staring over the edge, knowing that this is about to get a lot worse.”On Friday, the state’s health department said that 124 measles cases had been diagnosed since Tuesday, bringing the state’s total since the outbreak began last fall to 558.A…

There is a yearslong lag in the AI hype cycle, according to one former AI researcher turned venture capitalist.Jenny Xiao, who cofounded Leonis Capital in 2021 after a stint at OpenAI, said the current investment excitement around AI is far behind the actual research.”There is a massive disconnect between what researchers are seeing and what investors are seeing,” Xiao said on the Fortune Magazine podcast this week.What’s being discussed at the biggest AI conferences is as much as 3 to 5 years behind what researchers are thinking about, Xiao said.”We are so behind the technical frontier, and that’s the gap I really…

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has demanded that xAI prevent its chatbot, Grok, from creating sexualized deepfake images of children.Bonta’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to Elon Musk’s AI startup on Friday after sustained criticism over the bot’s ability to create nonconsensual sexualized images, including those of minors.The letter demanded that xAI prevent Grok from creating sexualized images of people who did not request the image be made, or were minors when the image was created. Failure to stop such images from being created or distributed would be considered a violation of the state’s deepfake porn, child-sexual-abuse images, unlawful recording,…

All day, I see ads. Ads when I scroll social feeds, ads when I search Google, and ads on every website I go to. You’re looking at some ads on this website right now (hopefully they aren’t too annoying). I’ve lived to tell the tale — and so have you.OpenAI announced on Friday that it will start testing ads in ChatGPT for US users on its free and Go tiers, something that had been rumored for a while. If you’re a brand or advertiser, this might be exciting news, but I think most of us who are merely ChatGPT users…

Drug discovery, the art of identifying new molecules to develop pharmaceuticals, is a notoriously time-consuming and difficult process. Traditional techniques, like high-throughput screening, offer an expensive scattershot approach—one that is not often successful. However, a new breed of biotech companies are leveraging AI and advanced data technologies in an attempt to accelerate and streamline the process. Chai Discovery, an AI startup founded in 2024, is one such company. In a little over 12 months, its young co-founders have managed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and rally the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors, making it…