Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: DC. AI-related work made up the largest share of job postings in the US capital, putting it at the top of such rankings, according to UMD-LinkUp. Washington state and Virginia round out the top three, as of June.

➘ BREAK THINGS: CA. Elon Musk is making more threats to move his companies out of the Golden State. Angered by a new law that bans school policies requiring teachers to notify parents if their kids identify as gay or transgender, he says X and SpaceX will be headquartered in Texas.

There she is, Miss AI. Moroccan lifestyle influencer Kenza Layli recently took the crown in the first AI beauty pageant. She was chosen out of 10 AI-generated contestants submitted by programmers, and the judges were both human and digital in the competition organized by creator platform Fanvue. The contenders were judged on their makers’ use of AI tools and, well, looks. Myriam Bessa, founder of the Phoenix AI agency, who is behind Layli, received $5,000 and other perks.

“Winning Miss AI motivates me even more to continue my work in advancing AI technology,” Layli said in a video. “I am committed to promoting diversity and inclusivity within the field, ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table of technological progress.”

Meanwhile, for some real people, beauty is in the eye of the robot. Customers are flocking to AmorePacific’s AI beauty lab in Seoul, where machine learning matches people to the right tone from 205 different skin foundations or the best shade from 366 different lip colors. Robots at the cosmetics firm then mix the products to come up with the perfect shade. “Knowing more data about my own skin, and seeing the before-and-after firsthand, is a very good experience,” Kwon You-jin, a 32-year-old customer, told Reuters.

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The maximum number of questions that companies must prepare to test AI models to satisfy the Cyberspace Administration of China, according to the Wall Street Journal. The regulator has the authority to approve models before they are released to the public, with companies also having to submit up to 10,000 questions that their model will refuse to answer — about half of them focused on politics. If a user asks three improper questions in a row, a company must halt services.

In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump, national media outlets sprang into action to cover the misinformation and disinformation spreading across social media.

Social media companies then sprang into action to label this content as such, or take it down.

I have some bad news for those efforts. I was exposed to raw misinformation without any labels.

Before I had a chance to read anything about the shooting, I received a text message from a trustworthy, highly educated person who had already come up with a theory on why the whole thing had been faked. It HAD to be an exploding ketchup packet hidden behind his ear, or something.

Inventing wild conspiracy theories about assassinations is a national pastime that goes back at least 60 years to the death of President John F. Kennedy, long before algorithms could spread them.

I have always wondered who we’re trying to protect by playing whack-a-mole with online disinformation — those who believe the crazy things they read or those who don’t.

When warning labels are slapped on wild theories on the internet, the camp that actually believes them will likely assume those safeguards are part of the conspiracy and disregard accordingly.

Is it time we move past the denial phase of social media and move on to acceptance? Of course, content harmful to children and other obvious red lines like terrorist postings should be taken down. But fighting misinformation seems like a losing battle.

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HP said this week it plans to release what it calls “the world’s highest performance AI PC,” the latest salvo in the battle among tech giants to infuse their technology with artificial intelligence, my colleague J.D. Capelouto reported.

More tech companies are hoping hardware ingrained with AI will lead to a big upgrade cycle. Apple and Microsoft have both bragged about their respective AI hardware capabilities in recent weeks, while HP competitors like Samsung and Dell also rolled out their own AI-ready, Windows-based laptops.

AI computers are expected to make up nearly 60% of all global PC shipments by 2027, IDC data shows.

But so far, the AI computer market has been an “if you build, they will come” gamble. There really aren’t any clear use cases yet. Some people may feel more comfortable processing AI locally for privacy and security reasons. But we know the mass market prefers free over private and secure.

Back when people (other than gamers and multimedia professionals) still bought PCs based on how powerful they were, it was because they wanted to run specific software that took advantage of that capability. AI PCs need a developer community to create software that requires that kind of processing power. Right now, that community doesn’t exist.

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