Dave Berke served for over 23 years as a USMC fighter pilot, Top Gun graduate and instructor, and combat veteran. Berke became the first operational pilot qualified in the F-35B Lightning II. He flew the F/A-18 Hornet, as well as several other fighter jets, served as a forward air controller on the ground in Iraq, and later became an instructor at Top Gun. Berke speaks with Business Insider about the realities of operating as a pilot aboard an aircraft carrier, including the demands of carrier life and combat deployments following 9/11. In 2026 alone, US aircraft carriers participated in combat missions in Venezuela, Iran, and Yemen. Since retiring as lieutenant colonel from the Marine Corps in 2017, Berke has worked as an instructor and executive at Echelon Front, where he teaches leadership, accountability, and decision-making under pressure. For more: https://echelonfront.com/ Read the original article on Business Insider

A hands-on guide to setting up image similarity search in Milvus, and why visual replication isn't always enough. The post The Power and Pitfalls of Vector-Based Image Search appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions. Pixi is betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR).

The company has identified at least 13 instances where its robotaxis drove into highway sections closed for construction.

JIATF-401 is the US' interagency counter-drone task force focused on developing and employing systems to defeat small uncrewed aerial systems. US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Michael A. Richmond A recent exercise simulated attacks on US military infrastructure, including drones and cyberattacks. The drone threat was inspired by Ukraine's surprise Operation Spiderweb attack on Russia. JIATF-401 is a counter-drone task force led by the US Army. In a future war, an enemy could attempt to target US bases with cyber attacks and drone strikes to cripple American forces before the fighting even really begins. It's a challenge that the US Army recently assessed during a tabletop exercise, drawing inspiration from real-world action, including Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb attack against Russia. There were important lessons on defending infrastructure from drones, including certain counter-drone systems, but also a reminder that no single system will be a silver bullet. Last month, the Army gathered federal and local partners for its first summit on defending critical defense infrastructure at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The featured threats included attacks that could disrupt Army data and communications, shut down electricity and other essential utilities, and degrade the Army's ability to quickly gather forces in preparation for a conflict. Brandon Pugh, the Army's principal cyber advisor, said the challenge is turning "best practices and lessons learned" into "a playbook" that "a local garrison commander," who "is not a cyber or physical protection expert," can use at "their garrison and their camps, posts and stations." While many of the threat scenarios weren't tied to specific adversaries or enemies, the counter-drone element was specifically inspired by Ukraine's June 2025 Operation Spiderweb, which saw Kyiv sneak over 100 drones into Russian territory and launch them at nearby air bases. They struck dozens of grounded aircraft and destroyed others. A similar threat to a US base or installation would need to be defended by a layer of counter-drone systems, officials said, including kinetic and non-kinetic options that can handle specific threats. "Effective C-sUAS [counter-small uncrewed aerial systems] requires a tailored approach, employing capabilities that match the likely threat and take into account what needs to be protected," Lt. Col. Adam Scher, spokesperson for the US Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force-401, told Business Insider. Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb surprise attack brought drones into Russian territory. The drones targeted nearby Russian air bases. Oliver Contreras / AFP A kinetic counter-drone solution is the Bumblebee, made by Perennial Autonomy, a low-cost attritable platform that uses artificial intelligence to physically intercept and destroy hostile small UAS. JIATF awarded Perennial Autonomy a $5.2 million contract for Bumblebee systems earlier this year. Non-kinetic options, like electronic jamming, and passive defenses, such as netting or hardening, are also needed. JIATF-401 is an Army-led task force that includes the Department of Defense and other federal agencies and works across the government to detect, track, and stop drone activity in and around military installations, as well as the broader US. JIATF-401 replaced DoD's previous counter-drone task force. It recently tested a non-kinetic platform for detecting, tracking, and non-kinetically destroying drones at the US southern border. During the training summit, teams examined how current counter-drone capabilities could best be used to defeat an attack like Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb. While the environments, infrastructure, and threats differed, the experience still prompted data that could improve counter-UAS tactics, officials said. Scher told Business Insider that one key takeaway was the need for a common user interface that streamlines the use of counter-drone systems, reducing the time it takes soldiers to identify drones and decide which systems are best for neutralizing them. Beyond Operation Spiderweb, US Army officials are drawing broader counter-drone lessons from Ukraine, where systems for detecting and defeating drones can become outdated within months as Russian tactics and technology evolve. One important takeaway for JIATF-401 is the need for defenses that are cheap, scalable, and adaptable enough to keep pace with a fast-changing threat. Read the original article on Business Insider

The author has raised her four children through high school and college. Courtesy of Jennifer Young For the past 20 years, I've been raising my kids and experiencing their firsts. Now that my youngest is graduating from high school, I'm experiencing many lasts. This phase of motherhood is over for me, but I'm glad I got to experience it all with my kids. In 2005, my oldest son stood at the living room window and watched the big yellow school bus rumble past. "Mommy, when do I get to ride the yellow bus?" he asked, his voice full of something I can only describe as pure forward motion. He could not wait to begin. That was the start of nearly 20 years of firsts. And this June, I'm counting down to the last of the lasts. I've watched all my children graduate from high school Our four children graduated every two years like clockwork, beginning in 2020— the year the world shut down and my son's senior spring dissolved into lockdowns, canceled proms, and a postponed graduation split into four sessions, sitting six feet apart. Two years ago, our third child crossed the stage. This spring, our oldest daughter finished college. And in a few weeks, our baby will receive her high school diploma. Before she does, there is a whole season of lasts still ahead of us: prom, the senior boat cruise, the yearbook signing party. Each one is a milestone I have been looking forward to and dreading in equal measure. I've long been celebrating firsts For 20 years, I celebrated the firsts without fully understanding they were finite: first steps, first days, first friendships, first heartbreaks, first acceptances. They arrived one after another, and I met each one with my whole heart. There were nine straight years of diaper changes, nearly eight years of breastfeeding, orthodontist appointments, science fair projects, and brown-bag lunches assembled at sunrise. I walked the same sidewalks pushing a double stroller while holding someone's hand, four children in six years, a small parade of backpacks and permission slips, and lost socks. My dad, who died four years ago, once lifted my son onto his shoulders on the first day of kindergarten and carried him the whole way to school, a proud grandfather leading his grandson toward everything that was coming. We celebrated everything: the championships, the honor roll certificates, and the long-awaited college acceptances. I did not know that on the other side of all those firsts was a last This June feels different from all the Junes before it. The sounds of graduation at the high school are the same: the applause, the music, the laughter on a warm afternoon. But I am not walking toward those sounds anymore. I am standing still, listening from a distance, understanding for the first time that this particular chapter of my life as a mother has quietly, completely closed. I am not sad, exactly. Bittersweet is closer. I am proud in a way that has no adequate language — proud of four children who grew into people I genuinely like, who were shaped by a school district that saw them and a community that let them thrive. Everything went by quickly People say the days feel like years and the years feel like days. I have found that to be true. The years have collapsed into a blur I can barely separate until I pause long enough to feel the weight of it. My bright-eyed baby is about to cross the graduation stage. Her oldest sister just crossed hers at college. The double stroller is long gone, and the sidewalk is quiet, and June sounds like other people's children now, which is exactly as it should be. That is what 20 years of school has taught me: ordinary moments are not the backdrop to the important ones. They are the important ones. And if you are lucky enough to be present for them — really present, unhurried, paying attention — you will find that they were more than enough. They were everything. Read the original article on Business Insider

Esther Wojcicki raised Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's former CEO, and Anne Wojcicki, the former CEO of 23andMe. Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images Esther Wojcicki, "Godmother of Silicon Valley," is the mom of the former CEOs of YouTube and 23andMe. Wojcicki offered advice for parents questioning if their kids need to go to college. College is an opportunity for students to grow, Wojcicki said in a podcast interview. Wondering how to raise a successful kid? The mother of the former CEOs of YouTube and 23andMe says skipping college isn't the way to go, even in the AI era. Esther Wojcicki, an educator known as "The Godmother of Silicon Valley" known for sharing advice on raising successful children, is the mother of the late Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's former CEO, Anne Wojcicki, of 23andMe, and Janet Wojcicki, an anthropologist. During an episode of the "Silicon Valley Girl" podcast, posted on June 9, the host Marina Mogilko asked Wojcicki, "Do you think parents should be saving or pushing for college in today's age?" Wojcicki said she believes college is "so important," adding, "People think, 'Oh, we don't need college anymore, they can get it all online.' College is an opportunity for you to hone your interaction with other human beings skills. It's an opportunity for you to grow." "Between the ages of 18 and 22, you have a lot of growing to do, and if you don't interact with other people, you aren't going to get those skills. So you're never going to be able to substitute college with an AI education," she said. Wojcicki's comments add to the debate about how AI is transforming education. Earlier this year, a Gallup survey found that 16% of college students had changed their major because of the impact that AI might have. Other prominent business leaders to weigh in on how young people should approach their futures in the age of AI include Mark Cuban. Last year, he said he advised his college-aged children not to look for a job at big companies, since small and medium businesses need more help implementing AI. Echoing Wojcicki's comments on the importance of interpersonal skills, the AI researcher Yoshua Bengio, known as a "Godfather of AI," has said his advice for his grandson is to "work on the beautiful human being that you can become," since these skills will persist even if machines can someday do most jobs. Do you have a story to share about deciding whether to send your kid to college? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com Read the original article on Business Insider

Productivity guilt is the uneasy sense that time saved through technology has to be justified. Drazen Zigic / Shutterstock We have built tools that save us hours in work. So why do so many people feel worse for using them? The answer has less to do with AI and more to do with what we have always believed work is supposed to cost us. Artificial intelligence (AI) is supposed to save us time. It can draft emails, summarise reports, organise ideas and help complete tasks that once took hours. In theory, that should feel like progress. But the experience is often more complicated. Imagine using AI to draft a report that would normally take half a day. Twenty minutes later, the report is done. The work may be good. It may even be better than expected. But instead of feeling relieved, you feel faintly uncomfortable. What are you supposed to do with the time you have just saved? Relax? Move on? Fill the gap with more work? This feeling might be called productivity guilt: the uneasy sense that time saved through technology has to be justified, filled or repaid. AI does not create this guilt from nowhere. It exposes something that was already there. Many people already feel guilty when they are not working. Even rest can feel uncomfortable in cultures where busyness is treated as evidence of commitment, ambition and value. The familiar thought, “I should be doing something”, shows how deeply work has become moralised. For a long time, effort has been one of the clearest ways people signal value. In many workplaces, long hours, full calendars and rapid replies act as evidence of competence and importance. Psychology helps explain why this matters. Research on effort justification suggests that people often value outcomes more when they required greater effort. Many cultures also treat hard work as virtuous, so what feels easy can also feel less legitimate. AI unsettles that equation. When a tool allows someone to produce a report, presentation or set of ideas in a fraction of the time, the output may still be useful. But the emotional meaning of the work changes. If something no longer requires the same level of effort, it may feel less earned. And if it feels less earned, it may feel less like “real” work. Building an identity The discomfort is not only about having more time. It is also about what that saved time seems to say about us. Many professionals build identity through work that feels personally produced. A well written report, careful analysis or thoughtful proposal does more than complete a task. It tells a story about being capable, knowledgeable and useful. AI complicates that story. If an AI tool helps generate the structure, language or analysis, the question can shift from “Is this good work?” to “Is this still my work?” That question matters because AI changes where competence appears to sit. In the past, professional expertise was often demonstrated through direct effort: writing the document, producing the analysis, solving the problem. With AI, expertise may increasingly involve asking better questions, judging outputs, spotting errors, adding context and taking responsibility for decisions. This makes expertise more demanding, not less. It is no longer enough simply to produce the work. Professionals also have to judge whether it is accurate, appropriate, ethical and useful. The value does not disappear, but it transforms. The problem is that many workplace cultures have not caught up. They may encourage employees to use AI while still rewarding visible busyness and constant output. Workers are told to be efficient, but are still expected to prove their worth through effort. Invisible work This pressure may not be felt equally. Employees in roles built around responsiveness, support and availability may find saved time particularly hard to protect. Research on emotional labour suggests that workers already expected to manage the feelings of others may be less likely to experience efficiency gains as relief. For them, saved time may simply become an invitation to do more invisible work. Efficiency gains can therefore become a new source of pressure. If a task now takes 30 minutes instead of three hours, what happens to the remaining time? Does it become space for reflection, learning and recovery? Or does it simply become capacity for more tasks? AI may place more demands on experts, not fewer. Tero Vesalainen Too often, saved time becomes capacity for more work. As tools make work faster, expectations rise. What once seemed impressive becomes normal. What once counted as efficient becomes the baseline. So AI may not remove pressure. It may simply move it. That is not a technology problem alone. It is a cultural problem. If organisations want AI to improve working life, they need to be clearer about what saved time is for. It should not automatically disappear into an expanding workload. It could support better judgement, deeper thinking, collaboration, development or recovery. These are not luxuries. They are part of sustainable work. Workers also need to rethink the relationship between effort and worth. Using AI does not automatically make work less legitimate. The key question is not whether a tool helped, but whether the person using it exercised judgement, responsibility and care. AI is not just changing how quickly tasks can be completed. It is challenging an older belief that effort is the main proof of value. That may be why saved time can feel so uncomfortable. If workplaces use AI only to squeeze more output from the same people, productivity guilt will not be a strange side effect. It will be the system working exactly as designed. Paul Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Ukraine is hitting more strategic targets with new incentives and coordination from its new "e-Points" system. Wojciech Grzedzinski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Ukraine's e-Points system is pushing soldiers toward higher-value Russian targets. Units earn points for confirmed hits and use them to buy drones, robots, and other gear. The system shows how Ukraine is using incentives, data, and decentralization to fight faster. Ukraine's "e-Points" system, which rewards soldiers for hitting prized targets, is doing more than rewarding battlefield kills. It is helping steer soldiers toward higher-value Russian targets. The system rewards units that eliminate Russian soldiers or destroy military equipment and upload video confirmation to the military, which awards them points they can use to buy drones, ground robots, electronic warfare systems, and other gear from the government's Brave1 Marketplace. Officials have said it works "like Amazon," but for military technology. Updates to what the system rewards have worked to "incentivize all of the units along the entire front line to strive to go after targets that are more challenging to pursue. And I think that's having effects," Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russian warfare expert at the US-based Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider. Ukraine unveiled the system last year, initially offering the largest rewards for strikes on valuable equipment such as tanks and launchers. It was later widened to reward reconnaissance missions and operations that involved ground robotic systems, as well as actions by snipers and mobile air-defense teams shooting down Shahed attack drones. Previously, soldiers could easily focus on "things that are really in front of you," like infantry and tanks, Stepanenko said. Now, soldiers are incentivized to "go after these very complex and more challenging targets," including rear-area infrastructure, barracks, and trucks more than 100 kilometers from the front. Ukraine's soldiers have new tech and incentives to hit more strategic Russian targets further from the front lines. Yevhen Titov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images She characterized the point system as one of several factors contributing to Ukraine's newfound momentum on the battlefield, as Kyiv uses new drones and better planning to hit Russian logistics and other targets in areas that were once safer for Moscow. Dmytro "Liber" Zhluktenko, a former drone pilot who is now a lessons-learned analyst with Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "RAID," told Business Insider that the system was "absolutely" encouraging Ukrainian soldiers to go after different types of targets than they were before. "That's the whole point of the system," he said. It's not perfect, but it "really creates the incentive for more strategically viable targets" identified by Ukraine's general staff, Zhluktenko said. Rather than hitting what's readily available, soldiers are pursuing targets that better align with Ukraine's overall strategy and work together more cohesively. The points system gives Ukraine's command a way to shift battlefield behavior quickly. If the military decides it needs more of a certain target destroyed, it can raise the reward. Units then have a direct reason to adjust because the points help them get the equipment they need. "It's like a lifeline for us," Zhluktenko said. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's defense minister, said in March that the system had "changed the approach to warfare." "This is about clear incentives, fair rewards, and the rapid scaling of effective solutions," he explained. "Military units receive resources based on results: the more targets they destroy, the more points they earn. This is a direct incentive that enables units to strengthen their capabilities with new technologies." Ukraine's defense ministry said in late April that more than 181,000 drones, ground robots, electronic warfare systems, and other equipment had been supplied to the front via the e-Points system since the start of the year. At the command level, the points system is part of a broader Ukrainian effort to hit deeper, plan better, and coordinate more of its forces around bigger battlefield goals. Ukraine has been leveraging new types of drones to strike Russian logistics and other targets farther from the front, while its Delta battlefield-management system fuses intelligence from satellites, combat units, and drone feeds so commanders can look beyond immediate targets and plan more deliberately. Ukraine has a new system that allows it to see a big picture of the battlefield, from what its drones are observing to what Russian targets it can hit. Ivan Antypenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC "UA:PBC"/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images For troops, Zhluktenko said, the system lets units use points to buy the gear they actually want, rather than take what the military assigns them. If they take out a Russian soldier, for example, "we would be able to buy a drone for that money, but this specific drone that we like and need that our operators are used to, it's not something that would be pushed onto us from the Ministry of Defense." Ukraine's military has worked in a way that is far more decentralized than its Western counterparts. Units often work directly with weapons makers, buying, testing, and helping develop their technology instead of waiting for the central military to decide what they get. Soldiers and arms makers say that is one reason Ukraine has been able to develop and field new weapons so quickly. Scott Boston, a land warfare expert at RAND Corporation, said last month at a drone summit in Latvia that the marketplace that soldiers use with their points also helps Ukraine innovate quickly and know what weapons front-line soldiers actually want. Commanders can "bring something in, they can experiment with it, they can see how it works." It also sends a "marketplace signal," he said, telling the military and industry what gear there's demand for and what is unnecessary. Read the original article on Business Insider

In an interview with Crunchbase News, Vikram Taneja, head of AT&T Ventures, shares why he believes that while AI has drastically lowered the barrier to building software, it has also shifted the definition of seed-stage technical risk.

Boards should not wait for poor performance before confronting disruptive technologies like AI and quantum computing. Instead, writes guest columnist and strategic adviser Itay Sagie, they should evaluate the cost of inaction, challenge successful business models while they are still thriving, and proactively imagine how a technology-driven competitor could disrupt their company.

Higgsfield chief strategy officer Mahi De Silva (left) and CEO Alex Mashrabov. Higgsfield Higgsfield is a San Francisco startup that makes tools for easily creating AI-generated videos. It told Business Insider its revenue run rate has reached $500 million, up from $50 million last September. It doubled revenue this year, becoming one of the few AI companies to be cash-flow positive. Higgsfield, a San Francisco startup that makes tools for easily creating AI-generated videos, told Business Insider its revenue run rate has reached $500 million, up from $50 million last September. It doubled revenue this year, becoming one of the few AI companies to be cash-flow positive. With that kind of growth, Higgsfield wants to be in the same conversation as Cursor and Lovable, two companies that have become shorthand for the rapid speed of AI software adoption. AI coding platform Lovable said this month that it reached $500 million in ARR, the revenue a company expects to collect over a year. Fellow AI coding startup Cursor, which was just acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion, said last year it had surpassed $500 million in ARR and now has reportedly reached $4 billion in ARR. Higgsfield is on pace to reach a $1 billion dollars in run rate as soon as the end of this year, Mahi de Silva, Higgsfield's chief strategy officer, told Business Insider. He said the main driver of growth was making AI media creation easier for nontechnical users. The company is also betting heavily on AI agents and says it now works with 390 Fortune 500 companies. It says commercial advertising accounts for 70% of activity on the platform. "The democratization of these tools is drawing a ton of people into the platform," he said. Higgsfield has raised $150 million from investors, including Accel and Menlo Ventures, reaching a $1.3 billion valuation earlier this year. De Silva said the company's growth has attracted attention from VCs. "We were cashflow positive at the end of May, so we are quite the exception to most AI companies," he said. "We're not hemorrhaging money, but we are raising a Series B because of inbound interest." "I'm a fan of the adage that when dinner is served in financing terms, you should sit down and eat," he added. Concerns about AI slop Higgsfield, founded in 2023, has been criticized for creating AI slop, or worse, videos that are obscene or racist. The company's own survey found that nearly 30% of creators do not disclose their use of AI tools to clients. De Silva pushed back on the idea that AI-generated media should be treated as inherently suspect, comparing it to the long-standing use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in movies. "When Scarlett Johansson appears in an Avengers movie, and she flies through the sky, there isn't a disclaimer that says, 'This movie was built with CGI. It wasn't real,'" he said. "For the last 20 years, we've lived with media that is digitally created and manipulated." Asked whether OpenAI or Anthropic could threaten Higgsfield by offering their own image and video tools, de Silva argued that they have a more symbiotic relationship than a competitive one. "We bring the best out of each model to our customers," he said. De Silva also pointed to OpenAI's retreat from Sora as evidence that building a standalone AI video product is harder than just owning the underlying model. "It's admirable that they realized their mistake and decided to focus their efforts elsewhere," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider

Swiss electronicsstartup Minysa has secured €163,000 (CHF150,000) from Venture Kick toaccelerate the development of its next-generation gallium nitride (GaN) controlchips for high-performance power el...

Learn how GPT-5.5 Instant improves ChatGPT’s health and wellness responses with stronger reasoning, better context, clearer communication, and physician-informed evaluations.

Discussion | Link

HSBC has entered a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to develop and deploy artificial intelligence tools across its global operations. Announced at Google Cloud Summit London 2026, the agreement covers work in wealth management, financial crime risk management, and internal decision support. HSBC will work with Google Cloud and Google DeepMind engineering teams on AI […] The post HSBC expands AI banking partnership with Google Cloud appeared first on AI News.

Solar geoengineering is often portrayed as a sort of emergency brake. Something along the lines of Pull in case of climate emergency to scatter light-reflecting particles to bounce sunlight out of the atmosphere and cool the planet. But it might be less like a simple brake and more like a complicated, entirely unsolved puzzle. Some…

An SQL ETL pipeline is one of the most foundational components in any modern analytics stack...

Underneath an Apennine massif, below the Jinping Mountains of Sichuan, and at the bottom of a South Dakota mine, there is a cosmic hunt afoot. Isolated deep beneath these rocky shields, massive detectors filled with liquid xenon aim to make the first direct detections of dark matter, the long-sought invisible substance whose gravity has sculpted…

PLUS: Build and host a custom CRM with Google Antigravity