Sabrina Lim says her biggest challenge has been figuring out new ways to market her products. Sabrina Lim Sabrina Lim quit her software development job to become a baker with no experience. Lim used AI to learn how to bake salt bread and documented her baking journey on social media. She reached her goal of selling in under 100 days but says juggling her business is a struggle. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sabrina Lim, a 28-year-old former engineer based in Singapore. It's been edited for length and clarity. I tried salt bread for the first time while visiting a bakery in Korea, and it was life-changing. It was my first experience with a dish where the hour-and-a-half-long queue was worth it. I had never been to a bakery that had left such a strong impression on me, and I wanted to recreate it. The problem was that I had zero baking experience. I received a master of engineering from Imperial College London before entering the workforce as a software engineer. Later, I started working full-time in software development at a large bank. After working for a few years hustling for someone else's dream, I was bored, and I wanted to make something of my own. About a year after my trip to Korea, in 2025, I quit my job and decided to start baking bread. AI has been my secret weapon along the way. I had concerns about leaving my job It was scary to leave a stable job to dive into something new, especially without a solid plan, but I'm in a privileged position. I don't have any financial burden, and my partner can provide for our household while I figure things out. I worried about how people would look at me. I have a good degree from a good university, and coming from an Asian family, I feel like people have expectations for how my career path should look. I'm not living my life for them, though. If I wanted to work on something that was completely mine, doing it before having a mortgage, loans, or kids, was the time to do it. I spent months making failed bread Have you ever made bread? It's tough. I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to figure it out, but I kept telling myself that if thousands of people out there have learned how to make great bread, so can I. Most of the popular recipes I found online are from the US, so when I tried to replicate them in Singapore, the humidity and ingredients made a big difference in how they turned out. I had no idea what texture to even look for while kneading. I toyed with recipes for many months, and I still couldn't get it right. My poor husband had to eat all my failed products. I started posting about my baking journey on social media because it was the least capital-intensive way to market myself. In my very first video, I said I wanted to start selling in 100 days, but I had no plan for how to do it. A bakery owner reached out to me on TikTok with an opportunity In the second month of my journey, a café owner reached out to me on social media and asked if I wanted to bake and sell in his space during the hours he wasn't working, for free. I was getting so fed up with my home equipment, so it was a game changer to get help from an actual baker. With the help of his commercial mixer and temperature-controlled bakery, and the baker's expertise, I finally started getting the results I wanted. I have a formal site set up where customers can preorder and select a pickup date when I'm working at the café. I've sold three different variations of salt bread at three pop-ups. My game plan moving forward is to keep the menu small but dynamic, rotating out new flavors every month while keeping the core salt bread the same. It helps me maintain quality control while I'm still learning the ropes, and it gives my customers something new to look forward to every time. I've been using AI for my business and my recipes I've used AI to tweak my bread recipe. I give Gemini multiple recipes and ask it to explain the differences between them. It helps me understand the science of bread in a condensed form. If I were to Google it, there would be too many articles to sift through, and it would be overwhelming. When I have a specific issue, I'll ask Gemini what could be wrong. It gives me a list of things to try. It feels like I have someone to throw ideas around with 24/7, and that's invaluable as someone doing this alone. It's great because I can bring something I learned from AI to the baker the next day and get his thoughts on it. AI also helps me with the business side of things. It edits my social media scripts to make them more digestible, and I even used Gemini to build my own pop-up ordering form. My new order form is far from perfect, but it cuts down my administrative time by about 80%. Overall, AI is helping me plan my entire journey. I've told it what I want to achieve, and it breaks it down into days so I don't feel overwhelmed by the whole process. It's been hard learning how to sell, but I'm happy with my progress Baking and selling bread are labor-intensive processes. Baking is only the final part of the process. My biggest challenge has been learning how to actually sell. I market through social media, engage with clients, and figure out how to convert viewers into customers, but every time I announce a new pop-up, I still get this wave of anxiety that absolutely no one is going to buy. Dealing with that mental game while navigating the logistics has been a massive learning curve. Last month, I didn't have time to film or post anything on social media. When I'm selling, baking, packing, and washing, it takes up a lot of time. I don't know if it'll affect viewership on socials or my conversion. Everything is so new for me, and I don't yet know what the best use of my time is. I've already achieved my initial goal of starting to sell in less than 100 days, and right now I'm at a crossroads. I only have so much time in a day, and I don't know whether to invest, hire help, or keep doing what I'm doing. I don't know what's next, but I'm happy with where I'm at. Do you have a story to share about quitting your job for an unconventional path? If so, reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com. Read the original article on Business Insider

Zoox is picking up momentum judging by monthly active users, according to data from Apptopia. Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images Alphabet-owned Waymo has long had a size and time advantage in the robotaxi world. A new report shows Amazon-owned rival Zoox gaining users, though. Zoox has grown its number of active users so far this year as it started operating in new cities. One robotaxi provider is picking up speed against the competition. Amazon-owned Zoox grew its share of monthly active users to 25% from 15% during the first half of 2026, according to data from Apptopia. Waymo, which has long been the largest self-driving taxi service in the US, had about 69% of monthly active users in June. That was down from 79% in January, according to Apptopia. The Alphabet-owned company drew data from app stores and its panel of about 15 million users across a variety of apps. Zoox has spent the first six months of 2026 expanding its operations. The service launched rides in Austin and Miami and expanded its service areas in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Zoox also said last month that it's ramping up production of a new robotaxi. At the same time, Zoox has about doubled its number of monthly active users, according to Apptopia. Waymo, meanwhile, grew its monthly active users by 15% over the same period, albeit on a larger base. The service operates in 11 US cities from Atlanta to Los Angeles and temporarily paused service in some areas in May as its vehicles dealt with issues in flooding and construction zones. Zoox may be growing fast, but the data also contains some encouraging signs for Waymo. While Waymo lost share of riders aged 26 to 45, it "grew several times over" among users 17 to 25 between January and June, according to a report outlining Apptopia's findings. That's an encouraging sign for the service, since "younger riders age into the highest-value years for a category built on habit," the report says. "None of this dents the structural point that Waymo is years ahead in driverless miles and commercial cities," the report reads. Now, though, a big question is "how much new demand Waymo keeps, because Zoox is competing for it in the same neighborhoods," Apptopia said. Do you have a story to share about ride-hailing? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. Read the original article on Business Insider

Copenhagen ranked No. 1 in EIU's new list. Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images EIU released its annual global ranking of livability. The ranking of more than 100 cities is based on five measures, including healthcare and education. Copenhagen held on to the top spot. Copenhagen is still the most livable city in the world. That's based on the Economist Intelligence Unit's new ranking of 173 cities, using five measures to rank the quality of life: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. "Copenhagen's continued dominance comes down to consistency across the board rather than a single standout strength," Ana Nicholls, EIU's director of industry analysis, said. Last year, Copenhagen took the top spot from Vienna. The two cities continued to have perfect scores of 100 in a few categories this year, including perfect scores in education and infrastructure for both. Copenhagen also maintained its score of 100 for stability; this category looks at the prevalence of crime and other threats. Vienna continued to have a perfect healthcare score. EIU said all of the top cities had a perfect score of 100 for education, and almost all had a 100 for healthcare. Many of the top cities landed at 95 for stability, with the rest of the top 10 scoring perfectly. Did you move to one of the top places on the list? Reach out to this reporter to share what that was like at mhoff@businessinsider.com. With a drop in culture and environment, Zurich's rank fell, but the city still made the top 10. Tokyo moved up this year, rounding out the top. "Tokyo's climb into the top ten is particularly striking, given that large, densely populated cities usually contend with higher crime rates and greater strain on infrastructure," Nicholls said. US cities still missed out on the top spots. At the regional level, Western Europe had the highest score, followed by North America. Below are the top 10 most livable cities. 10. Tokyo, Japan Karl Hendon/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 100 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 89 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 93 9. Vancouver, Canada Ron Watts/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 96 Culture and environment: 97 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 93 8. Adelaide, Australia Westend61/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 91 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 7. Osaka, Japan Kenji Lau/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 100 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 87 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 6. Geneva, Switzerland Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 92 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 5. Zurich, Switzerland sack/Getty Images Overall: 96 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 94 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 4. Sydney, Australia Gallo Images/Getty Images Overall: 97 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 94 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 3. Melbourne, Australia Tianjin Shi/Getty Images Overall: 97 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 96 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 96 2. Vienna, Austria Pintai Suchachaisri/Getty Images Overall: 97 Stability: 95 Healthcare: 100 Culture and environment: 94 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 100 1. Copenhagen, Denmark Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images Overall: 98 Stability: 100 Healthcare: 96 Culture and environment: 95 Education: 100 Infrastructure: 100 Read the original article on Business Insider

Investors are divided over what robot bodies should look like. Business Wire/AP Humanoid companies have raised billions, but some investors are avoiding robots that look human. Skeptics say wheels and specialized robots are safer and more efficient than legs. Humanoid backers say robots need human-like bodies to work in spaces built for humans. Humanoid robots have become the mascot of Silicon Valley's physical AI boom. They dance in viral videos, bang out tunes on the piano, and are headed to Wall Street as Agility Robotics plans to go public. They promise a new workforce that never sleeps, never ages, and can work in spaces built for people. But as AI moves off screens and into machines, some Silicon Valley investors are not buying the humanoid hype. "The theory around humanoids is that the world is designed for humans, so let's create an embodiment that looks like a human," said Ajay Agarwal, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures and an early backer of Kiva Systems, the warehouse robotics company Amazon bought for $775 million in 2012. But Agarwal believes that humanoids could prove to be a "parlor trick" with few practical uses. His concern reflects growing skepticism among some investors that robots need to mimic the human body at all. In their view, humanoid companies inherit the constraints of the human form instead of designing the machine best suited to the job. Legs, for example, have to support a heavy torso battery, which means the robots consume more power and create the safety risk of falling over. "There's a reason why humans fly planes and drive in cars," Agarwal said. "Because wheels and wings are more efficient than walking." 'The humanoid fallacy' A slew of big-name investors are steering clear of humanoids in favor of other robot forms. Khosla Ventures and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have backed Genesis AI, which unveiled a wheeled general-purpose robot with no head or legs last month. Bain Capital Ventures and Sarah Guo's Conviction have invested in Sunday Robotics, which is building a wheeled home robot. Neil Mehta's Greenoaks has funded The Bot Company, a wheeled home-robot startup founded by former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt. Genesis AI's Eno robot has no head or legs. Genesis AI Eclipse, a firm founded in 2015 to back startups building in the physical world, has an extensive robotics portfolio that notably does not include humanoids. Instead, the firm has backed autonomous vehicles and robots for warehouses, construction, healthcare, and retail. Jiten Behl, a former Rivian executive and partner at Eclipse, said copying the human form often makes a robot less useful. "For the vast majority of tasks that happen inside a manufacturing site, you don't need to walk, and you don't need to stand," said Behl, an investor and board member at Mind Robotics, a Rivian spinout building AI-powered industrial robots. "The smartest attempts are going to be those that look at the use case and fit the right form factor to the use case instead of trying to average it out to a humanoid form factor." Eclipse-backed Simbe Robotics built Tally, a specialized robot that scans store shelves for low-stock items. Simbe Robotics Ghazwa Khalatbari, an investor at Creandum, reached a similar conclusion after moving from New York to San Francisco last year and noticing that humanoids were the hot topic among investors. "But then I watched some of the demos and thought, 'This robot is putting a plate in the dishwasher slower than my grandmother,'" Khalatbari said. That disconnect inspired a research project arguing against the "humanoid fallacy": the assumption that because the world is built for humans, robots must also look human. Khalatbari and Lux partner Deena Shakir argued that robot bodies should be designed around the job they are meant to do. Physical Intelligence, a Lux portfolio company, is building AI models designed to work across different types of robotic bodies. "I think humanoids will be one species in a much larger ecosystem," Khalatbari said. "In a hospital 20 years from now, you might have a humanoid helping a patient out of bed, an autonomous cart delivering medication, a pair of dexterous hands sterilizing surgical equipment, and a Roomba cleaning the floors." 'The humanoid economy' There are real reasons startups and corporate giants are betting heavily on humanoids. If humanoids work, the prize is the entire physical economy. It would be a world where "human labor is optional," said Jonathan Hurst, cofounder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. "Humans will have this tireless partner to amplify our ambitions and goals." Last year, humanoid robot companies raised more than $6 billion, up more than 300% from the 2024 total, according to PitchBook data. A forecast from Morgan Stanley predicts the market for humanoid robots will hit $5 trillion by 2050, with a billion units in circulation. Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid. PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images The case for humanoids starts with the fact that the world is built for people. Elon Musk has defended the shape, arguing that the humanoid form makes sense if the goal is a robot that can do everything humans can do. "It turns out humans evolved to the shape and capabilities that we have for good reasons," Musk said at the All-In Summit last year. "There's value to having four fingers and a thumb." Now companies are trying to prove the humanoid bet can become a business. Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics is working to deploy Atlas in factories in 2028. Zachary Jackowski, the engineer who leads the Atlas program, said the goal is a "software-defined factory," where humanoids can be assigned different tasks as needed. Agility has seen early traction. Digit, its humanoid robot, is deployed across nine customer facilities, including Amazon, Toyota, and logistics company GXO. The company said it has more than $300 million in multiyear orders for the next generation of Digit. San Jose-based Figure AI, most recently valued at $39 billion, is starting deployments in logistics and distribution centers this year. Palo Alto-based 1X plans to ship more than 10,000 home humanoids later this year. Jeff Cardenas, CEO of Texas-based humanoid startup Apptronik, said he sees the biggest long-term potential in legged humanoids because they could eventually do any task a human can physically do. But the company also has a wheeled version of its humanoid, which Cardenas expects to be deployed sooner because it poses fewer safety challenges. Texas-based Apptronik has built legged and wheeled versions of its humanoid, Apollo. Apptronik Modar Alaoui, general partner at ALM Ventures and founder of a humanoid-focused conference, is betting on what he calls "the humanoid economy." He expects humanoids to arrive in waves: first in industrial settings such as manufacturing and warehousing, then in consumer-facing roles at theme parks, shopping centers, and airports, and eventually in homes. China is already pushing in that direction. The government is launching a nationwide training program to help commercialize humanoids, giving local governments and state-owned enterprises less than six months to prove the technology can work in production and service settings. Chinese companies already dominate the humanoid market. Firms such as Unitree and UBTech accounted for about 90% of humanoid robot shipments last year, according to Omdia. Unitree is preparing to go public and is targeting a valuation of up to $7 billion. Still, even some humanoid believers draw a line between useful humanoids and robots that merely look human. Hurst, a robotics professor at Oregon State University who founded Agility in 2015, said he is wary of companies blindly copying the human form. Tesla's Optimus humanoid. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images "They're building machines that look like a person, but really are just animatronics," Hurst said of some humanoid startups. "When we end up with an actual configuration that is humanoid, we've arrived at that through 15 to 20 years of function-first, physics-first research, understanding exactly why it looks the way it does." Digit, for example, departs from the human form with backward-bending legs that let it reach from the floor to overhead shelves without its knees hitting warehouse racks. In Hurst's view, humanoids are inevitable because there will always be a need for robots in human spaces. He agrees with skeptics that specialized robots will be far more common, but believes humanoids will still have a lasting place. "Purpose-built automation is going to outnumber humanoids by quite a lot," he said. "And there will also be millions and millions of humanoids, billions perhaps." Read the original article on Business Insider

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Tesla has released its new summer collection of accessories. Tesla Tesla launched its summer collection online — including a fridge, air mattresses, and a tent. The car accessories hit the market as Americans sweat through torrid temperatures. The gear shows how Tesla uses its simplicity to squeeze more profitability after initial car sales Tesla is selling new summer-y gear to existing owners. The EV maker recently updated its online shop with a collection of in-car summer accessories and lifestyle gear. The add-ons include a $595 dual-zone fridge that fits into the Model Y's sub-trunk, a rear-attaching tent for the Cybertruck, and fitted air mattresses for the Model 3 and Cybertruck. Several products — including the fridge, air mattresses, and a foldable chair — are out of stock, according to the website. Tesla has released new items on its online shop in the U.S. • Model Y Dual Zone Fridge: $595. Operates from 0°F to +68°F • Model Y Canopy: $165 • Cybertruck Air Mattress: $295 • On the Road Chair: $125 • Tesla Electric Summer Party Tee: $35 • Tesla Electric Summer Tee: $35… pic.twitter.com/S7MRkosAxD — Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 3, 2026 On one level, the collection is a classic summer-commerce play: Americans are roadtripping and heading to the beach as much of the country swelters through extreme heat. But the accessories also say something bigger about Tesla's approach and manufacturing strategy. The automaker has increasingly leaned on its existing vehicles — especially the Model Y. Like FSD subscriptions, custom-fit accessories let Tesla squeeze more revenue and brand loyalty from its existing customers after the car's initial purchase. The accessories also play into Tesla's manufacturing advantage. The company builds a small number of vehicle models and trims compared with legacy automakers, making it easier to design accessories for standardized interiors, trunks, power outlets, and cargo areas. The timing of the summer collection's release is notable. While Tesla beat sales estimates in its recent quarter, the automaker is facing fresh competition from punchy EV challengers that are leaning into utility, customization, and lifestyle. Rivian has begun delivering the R2, its Model Y competitor, to public customers, while Slate says its highly customizable electric trucks will be in customers' hands by the end of the year. Tesla also recently added the Model Y L, a $61,990 six-seat version of its best-selling SUV, to its US lineup, following the discontinuation of the three-row Model X earlier this year. Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider

Michael Dell and Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner are two of the biggest names who have pledged to support Trump Accounts. Getty Images "Trump Accounts" launched on July 4, the nation's 250th birthday. American children born between 2025 and 2028 are eligible for $1,000 from the federal government. A handful of wealthy individuals are also planning to make contributions to the accounts. A handful of very wealthy people want to give your children free money. On July 4, the nation's 250th birthday, the federal government officially launched "Trump Accounts," a new investment savings account for children. President Donald Trump celebrated the announcement on Monday by remotely ringing a ceremonial bell in the Oval Office to begin trading on the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. Parents can contribute up to $5,000 per year to each of their kids' accounts, while employers can contribute up to $2,500 per year. For children born between 2025 and 2028, the federal government will provide a $1,000 seed contribution. But it's not just the government. Several wealthy individuals have pledged additional philanthropic contributions to the accounts. Many of those individuals are "adopting" specific states, meaning their contributions are limited to children living in those states. The accounts can't be accessed for withdrawals until the child turns 18, at which point they can spend the money on major purchases like tuition or a down payment on a home. The goal of it all: getting the next generation invested in capitalism and building wealth. Here's who's pouring money into Trump Accounts, and which children are eligible. Michael and Susan Dell Michael and Susan Dell at the White House in December. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images Dell CEO Michael Dell and his wife Susan have pledged to contribute $6.25 billion to the Trump Accounts of children across the country. Specifically, the Dells are contributing $250 to 25 million children, including those who are 10 years or younger and live in a ZIP code where the median income is $150,000 or less. Recipients also must be born before January 1, 2025, meaning the Dells' contributions will go to children who aren't set to receive the $1,000 contribution from the federal government. "Together we can make possibility something that every child can count on," Michael Dell said in a December video announcing the contribution. Trump gave the Dells a shoutout as they joined him in the Oval Office for the big announcement on Monday. "They are truly incredible people. Go out and buy a Dell computer," Trump told reporters. "I have a son that loves their laptop." According to Bloomberg's estimates, Michael Dell has a net worth of $210 billion as of July 5, making the tech icon one of the world's richest people. Ray and Barbara Dalio Billionaire Ray Dalio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in October. Amal Alhasan/Getty Images for Fortune Media Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio is "adopting" the state of Connecticut. The Bridgewater Associates founder and his wife Barbara are planning to contribute $250 to the Trump Accounts of about 300,000 children across the state. The contributions will be initially targeted toward children under the age of 10 who live in a ZIP code where the median income is less than $150,000. "Barbara and I believe strongly in the importance of equal opportunity and believe this initiative is an important step in that direction," Dalio said in a statement in December. "I have lived the American Dream. At an early age, I was exposed to the stock market, and it changed my life." Brad Gerstner Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner at the White House in December. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Brad Gerstner, the CEO of Altimeter Capital, is adopting the state of Indiana. He's planning to contribute $250 to the Trump Accounts of all children under 5 years old in the Hoosier State, adding up to a figure that a spokesperson estimated to be in the "tens of millions" of dollars. Gerstner, the founder and CEO of the Invest America Foundation, is also widely credited with coming up with the idea for Trump Accounts. He told Business Insider in December that he helped coordinate the Dells' massive $6.25 billion contribution, and that his phone was "blowing up" when the news broke. Harold Hamm Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm at the White House in January. Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images Harold Hamm, the founder and chairman of the petroleum company Continental Resources, plans to "adopt" the state of Oklahoma, according to the Treasury Department. The details of Hamm's planned contributions have not yet been made public, and spokespeople for Continental Resources did not respond to requests for comment. Hamm, a billionaire, contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to President Donald Trump's campaign in 2024. Nicki Minaj Nicki Minaj at a Trump accounts event in January. Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images Even Nicki Minaj says she's contributing to Trump Accounts. Minaj has indicated that the contributions will go to her fans, but it's not clear how much money she's pouring in. The New York Post reported in January that it could be "between $150,000 and $300,000," but that the number was still in flux. A representative did not respond to a request for comment. Minaj said on an episode of The Katie Miller Podcast that she became interested when she saw President Trump speaking about the accounts alongside Michael Dell. "I was just like, wow. Like, I love this idea," Minaj said. "My big thing is financial literacy," she added. "You could teach a person everything in the world, but if they don't know how to manage money, if they don't know what the financial world really entails, then they'll get it and lose it." Gwynne Shotwell SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell Frank Franklin II/AP Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, announced on July 6 that she and her husband would donate a portion of their SpaceX shares to Trump accounts. "We have been fortunate in our careers and hope this gift encourages the next generation to continue the journey of enabling humanity to live and fly amongst the stars," Shotwell wrote on X. Shotwell said the donation would be "a share of our SpaceX stock to a Trump Account for each of more than two million children across our great nation." Like other large donors, she said the donation would "specifically" go to the accounts of children living in areas with lower average household incomes. "With a bit more emphasis for those that live near our central Texas home," she wrote. SpaceX's stock has fluctuated since the company went public in June, but as of the morning of Shotwell's announcement, it was trading at around $160 a share, meaning a gift of 2 million shares would be worth around $320 million at current prices. Trump has also said that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will be donating to the program, but the details of the world's richest person's gift are not yet clear. Read the original article on Business Insider

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Miami, FL – July 7, 2026 – NewCo Capital Group has rebranded to … NewCo Capital rebrands to Bizcap US, strengthening support for brokers, ISOsRead more The post NewCo Capital rebrands to Bizcap US, strengthening support for brokers, ISOs appeared first on .

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Getty Images; BI My family is in its natural state when we're in debate, not just about what should happen, but what has happened. Growing up, before my grandparents gave in and wired their home for the new millennium, their full set of encyclopedias proved the only way to settle disputes. Many arguments, particularly over any event that occurred after the encyclopedias were printed, went unsolved. Then came Google's ubiquity. All of this access to information didn't just close the chasm between what we could know in seconds and what we would have to ponder for months, it changed how the world remembers. Researchers called this the "Google effect." They found people recalled where to find specific information better than they remembered the information itself when they knew they could easily find it again. "We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found," the researchers wrote in 2011. Some worried that cognitive offloading to Google was "making us stupid," a possibility raised by an Atlantic cover story. Others argued Google was democratizing access to information and let us trade hours spent scouring library stands for supercharged thinking. You don't need to Google any of this to know why it sounds so familiar. Early research into how generative AI affects our brains has resurfaced the same talking points: overreliance on AI will weaken mental persistence, flatten creativity, atrophy our critical thinking skills, and degrade our relationships. Experts in machine learning, creativity, social behavior I spoke to said we can glean some insight from the fallout of past innovations, but the totalizing pervasiveness of AI is unparalleled. AI could pose a bigger risk to our brains than past innovations because "the tool is completely different in nature," says Nataliya Kosmyna, a researcher at MIT who published one of the most widely cited pieces of research on AI and cognitive decline last year, showing that people who had access to gen AI for writing essays performed worse over time than those who used Google or had no aid. Kosmyna says the widely circulated comparisons of AI to a calculator, which has also been used by Sam Altman, is a fallacy. "You don't fall asleep and wake up with a calculator. You don't talk to the calculator about everything you have in your mind." If AI integrates into every facet of our lives, as its creators predict, it's going to change how we think. What we don't know is how permanent those changes may be. Innovation has always evoked fears that our brains will be rewired for the worse. Socrates worried that the written word would dilute people's memories. Some posited that the telegram would be an end to poetry. The calculator was going to atrophy our mental math skills. None of these things happened in the cataclysmic sense. But they did happen, gradually, not from any one technology itself but from waves changes over decades, like the proliferation of smart phones, more lenient grading policies, and school funding shortages. Fewer than 10% of people read poetry, and the art form has dropped from its 1800s heyday when books of popular poetry regularly sold out. The percent of students scoring at least basic proficiency in math have been dropping from their 2013 high, according to test results of 12th grades from the National Assessment of Education Progress. Writing became one of the first examples of cognitive offloading, or, making records so we don't have to remember everything. AI, however, is less an evolution and more a big bang. Experienced workers are wondering what tasks they can offload to AI, while educators and employers worry that young people might miss the chance to develop skills. There's a difference between spending decades coding and then seeing how AI can enhance one's work, and only learning to vibe code. Researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania gave 1,000 high school students in Turkey gen AI math tutors; one mimicked a standard ChatGPT, the other had more guardrails, and instead of generating direct answers, would give hints, and also provided information specific to the problems that came from teachers, including correct solutions to practice problems, and explanations of common mistakes. Students performed better with both tools, but when taken away, those who had used the more standard ChatGPT-like tool did worse than those who never had access to AI for the work. There's never been a tool like this that has offered us the opportunity to let thinking be done for us.Nataliya Kosmyna Something similar happened when GPS became everyone's personal navigator. A 2020 study from researchers at McGill University found that the longer people relied on GPS, the worse spatial memory they had when they needed to navigate without it. When the researchers followed up with a small sample size three years later, they found that increased GPS use had led to even steeper decline in spatial memory. This doesn't mean those who made it through school and their early careers before AI are spared. Creativity and cognition take continued practice. Take pilots. Research from 1971 found that pilots can maintain hand-eye coordination skills like scanning instruments and handling flight controls well, even after they don't fly for four months. But the pilots' cognitive skills declined in the same period, as they struggled to recall and track the necessary procedural steps, visualize the plane's position, and do mental calculations. If people never learn certain skills to begin with, we could reach a point where these skills atrophy and fade from society, or go the way of hobbies. "There is a high risk if young people never learned this critical thinking, because they have the convenience of an AI thinking for them, they might not be able to develop that," says Michael Gerlich, head of the Center for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability at the Swiss Business School. When there's a convenient out, AI can make us less resilient in the face of challenges. In an April 2026 preprint study, researchers gave participants math problems with fractions. One group used an AI assistant that could provide the answer with minimal prompting for 12 of the questions, but had to answer the final three problems on their own. Those who had access to AI were more likely to solve the first 12 problems than the control group, who had no AI access for the 15 questions. But they also proved more less likely to correctly solve and more likely to skip the last three. The results suggest that people who used AI did not persist through the difficulty as often, and the change occurred after only using the help for 10 minutes. "A mentor or companion doesn't just answer questions, but also scaffolds learning, tracks progress, and prioritizes the other person's growth over immediate results," the authors wrote. "In contrast, current AI systems are fundamentally short-sighted collaborators — optimized for providing instant and complete responses, without ever saying no." The findings are alarming, but Grace Liu, a machine learning PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University who authored the study, says we don't yet know what this small study says about ways our brains would change after lots of AI use. "Ten minutes of use definitely wouldn't do some long-term brain or cognitive decline," she says. "It's an open question as to what happens cognitively if we use it over and over again for extended periods of time, and that's something that we would need to do longitudinal studies to investigate." Researchers from Georgetown University have investigated how the emergence of ChatGPT affects creativity. They analyzed more than 370,000 college application personal essays from before and after ChatGPT's rise to popularity, finding that human-written essays had more new ideas than AI-assisted essays, but that AI essays had more unique language. While AI can lead to more creative language use in a single essay, its use can also dull creativity across a group. Adam Green, director of the Georgetown Laboratory for Relational Cognition, who worked on the essay research, says AI is different from past shortcuts, because it's the first technology to ideate for us. "Whereas Google helps me find the thing that I thought of finding, AI thinks of finding it," he says. It's much too soon for robust data on AI's cumulative effects on our brains over time, and the experts I spoke to emphasized a need for more and longer studies (the research is so new, much of it has yet to be peer-reviewed). Even those who already know how to do things, like write well, code, or do complex math, can still lose ability over time. "Any skill that we acquired as humans does need to be retained and retrained," Kosmyna says. The studies published so far are small. But each raises a small alarm as we're living through the experiment. The experts I spoke to expose their brains to AI with caution. The best practice might be emphasizing awareness "of what the cognitive effects are and so that we can choose to prioritize the skills that we want to keep independently, and then the skills that we're OK with outsourcing and offloading," Liu says. Green says we must honor the blank page. "What I'm really worried about is the creative thinking, the creative intelligence, that we develop through practice," he says. "There's never been a tool like this that has offered us the opportunity to let thinking be done for us." Kosmyna says she "proudly" does not use large language models for her personal life, and keeps the AI tools she builds tied to her research. Despite the optimism around Google, we didn't get smarter or freer for deep work. Boundaries between work and home blurred, and many now work long hours since the advent of the internet. IQ scores rose throughout the 20th century, by about an average three points per decade. But people are testing lower in several categories between 2006 and 2018, with the steepest drops among those ages 18 to 22 — the most digital native adults in the pool. Our attention spans have shrunk, with people flitting back and forth between different content online. But researchers suggest this is a habit change rather than a neurological one — we can retrain ourselves to focus longer, but that may only happen if we remove the distractions we've now built into our lives. What we know about AI doesn't neatly tie itself into something as succinct as the Google effect. That's indicative of the sprawling way AI touches our lives. But we do know that guarding creativity, critical thinking, and persistence alongside it will become our next challenge. Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends. Read the original article on Business Insider

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A company swaps production records for generated data, calls the new dataset privacy-safe, and grants a … Synthetic Data Won’t Save You From a Bad Privacy StrategyRead more The post Synthetic Data Won’t Save You From a Bad Privacy Strategy appeared first on .

Porelio, a Germany-based deeptech startupdeveloping advanced materials for industrial separation and water treatment,has raised €2.4 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. Theinvestment ...

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<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/releases/tag/4.0rc4">sqlite-utils 4.0rc4</a></p> <p>The last RC before the 4.0 stable release. Mainly <a href="https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues/769#issuecomment-4900034150">implements feedback</a> from a detailed review by Claude Fable 5.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite-utils">sqlite-utils</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-mythos-fable">claude-mythos-fable</a></p>

Diana Novak Jones / Reuters: Court filing: Meta says four US states seek $1.4T over claims it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict youth and misled the public; its market cap is ~$1.5T  —  Meta Platforms (META.O) said in a court filing on Monday that four states were seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties over accusations …

Wall Street Journal: OpenAI, Anthropic, and other top AI labs are offering startups token credits and special promotions, as the AI labs seek lasting streams of enterprise revenue  —  Pitched battle for business users comes as AI companies seek lasting streams of revenue  —  Hans Ibarra, a founder building …

arXiv:2607.02637v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent generative models can produce high-quality synthetic images, offering scalable training training data for data-hungry models. Existing approaches to exploiting this potential typically involve 1) training or fine-tuning generators, or 2) using lightweight post-hoc adaptation like prompt engineering or inference-time guidance, making them generator-specific and expertise-intensive. We study a complementary question: given a fixed pool of generated images, can downstream utility be improved purely by selecting an informative subset? The answer is yes. We show that effective selection must counter a structural bias of modern generators: they tend to over-produce canonical modes of each class while underrepresenting intra-class variation. Building on this insight, we split each real class into a canonical Homogeneous (HO) subset and a non-redundant Heterogeneous (HE) subset, then score synthetic images by a fidelity-diversity criterion that rewards semantic alignment while penalizing canonical redundancy. The method is generator-agnostic and requires no retraining. Across multiple benchmarks, it consistently outperforms state-of-the-art data selection baselines and matches the real-data performance with up to 40% fewer synthetic samples. The same criterion remains effective when applied on top of stronger task-tuned generators, with gains on both classification and segmentation tasks. Post-generation selection is therefore not a substitute for better generators, but a complementary mechanism for improving the utility of synthetic data.

arXiv:2607.02636v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Object detection is a fundamental capability for AI-driven perception in safety-critical drone and edge-vision systems, including disaster response, operational security environments, infrastructure monitoring and defense applications. Robust model performance in such environments depends on large, continuously updated datasets. However, training high-performing detectors typically requires centralizing aerial imagery, which raises privacy, regulatory, storage, and bandwidth challenges. This is especially problematic in distributed drone deployments, where visual data is generated onboard and is often impractical or undesirable to transfer to a centralized infrastructure. In this work, we apply Federated Learning (FL) for object detection, enabling drones to improve a shared model while keeping image data local and private. We implement a federated object detection pipeline using the Sherpa.ai FL platform on the KIIT-MiTA dataset, and compare it with Single-drone and Centralized baselines using mean Average Precision (mAP) at IoU thresholds of 0.50 and 0.50-0.95. In our experiments, the proposed FL approach remains close to Centralized training while dramatically improving over Single-drone training, with the best lightweight model (YOLO26 nano), suitable for deployment even on very limited edge infrastructure, achieving relative gains of 52.89% and 67.80% in mAP@0.50 and mAP@0.50:0.95, respectively. These results show that FL enables scalable, high-performing, and privacy-preserving object detection across distributed drone fleets without data centralization.