While the impact of AI on tech hubs like San Francisco and Boston is already being felt, AI proponents believe it will transform work everywhere, and in every industry. The report uses various proxies for what the researchers call "AI readiness" to document how unevenly this supposed transformation is taking place. Here are four charts to help understand where that could matter. Brookings divides US cities into five categories based on how ready they are to adopt AI-related industries and job offerings. To do so, it looked at local talent pool development, innovations in local institutions, and adoption potential among local companies.

Despite suggestions it has been losing its edge, California is way ahead of others when it comes to the hottest technology right now: artificial intelligence. The regions around San Francisco, San José and Los Angeles are among the best prepped for AI in the country, according to a report released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution. The Washington think tank dubbed the San Francisco and San José metropolitan areas "superstars" when it comes to AI readiness. Three out of the top 10 city regions most ready for AI are in California, according to the report. No other state has more than one region in the top 10.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has called China's open-source artificial intelligence a "catalyst for global progress" and says it is "revolutionising" supply chains. In a speech during Wednesday's opening ceremony of the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, Huang – whose firm last week became the first to touch 4 trillion in market value – hailed China's role in pioneering AI, describing Chinese AI startup DeepSeek as "giving every country and industry a chance to join the AI revolution". Huang made the comments a day after Nvidia announced it will resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China after the United States government pledged to remove licensing restrictions that had halted exports. "AI is transforming every industry from scientific research and healthcare to energy, transportation and logistics," said Huang, who also praised China's "super-fast" innovation, powered by its "researchers, developers and entrepreneurs". The California-based company produces some of the world's most advanced semiconductors but cannot ship its most cutting-edge chips to China due to Washington's concerns that Beijing could use them to enhance its military capabilities.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes explains how drones are frequently used at the southern border to transport drugs, raising concerns from both sides of the aisle. As reported crossings have dropped dramatically at the border, there is still work to be done on matters of stopping drugs from making their way into the United States, especially in the border state of Arizona, a top state official says. One of the ways that cartels transport drugs is by using drones, a tactic that gained attention after bipartisan legislation signed in the Grand Canyon State gave law enforcement the power to shoot down the small aircraft. "I think what has changed is that we have gotten more control over people crossing over the border, but unfortunately what has not changed is we still have a huge amount of fentanyl that is coming across our border here in Arizona, and that is being flown over the by the Mexican drug cartels with drones," Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said. Fentanyl is being delivered across the border by cartels on drones.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. As a classically trained singer preparing for a professional career, Erin Perry can see quite clearly how artificial intelligence is upending her field--all the way down to the classroom. Perry just completed her first year as a graduate student in voice performance at the Peabody Institute, the prestigious music conservatory run by Johns Hopkins University. It's been rewarding so far: She's been learning how to navigate the modern classical music sector and confronting the relevant impacts of generative A.I., having taken on a project to study the major record labels' lawsuit against the Amazon-backed A.I. startup Anthropic, which trained its models on songwriters' lyrics sans permission or compensation. Understandably, Perry's rather skeptical of A.I.'s artistic applications, and fearful of the sweeping effects it could have on her chosen field, especially as generative-music startups like Suno and Udio are programmed to replicate specific artists and musical styles.

Fox News senior national correspondent William La Jeunesse reports on proposed changes to California's electric bills on'Special Report.' Power saver programs are utility-sponsored demand response initiatives that help reduce electricity usage during periods of peak demand. These programs typically target central air conditioners (AC) and heat pumps, since cooling equipment drives spikes in summer energy demand. In exchange for incentives such as bill credits or rebates, participating homeowners allow the utility to temporarily adjust or cycle their HVAC systems on hot days. I recently received an email from Leah, an HVAC professional based in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

"I'm not going to respond to that," Siri responded. I had just cursed at it, and this was my passive-aggressive chastisement. The cursing was, in my view, warranted. I was in my car, running errands, and had found myself in an unfamiliar part of town. I requested "directions to Lowe's," hoping to get routed to the big-box hardware store without taking my eyes off the road.

Elon Musk's latest business venture just rolled out an updated service map that has all of social media convinced he's trolling his critics with a juvenile image. Over the weekend, Musk's electric car company Tesla unveiled the expanded area where Robotaxi will be operating in Austin, Texas. Robotaxi launched in June in a small, geofenced portion of the city, meaning the self-driving cars could not operate anywhere else. It's not Robotaxi's expansion that's raising eyebrows, but the oddly shaped coverage zone, which many on social media insist resembles a phallus. Musk himself posted an enlarged image of the new Robotaxi map on X Monday morning with no comment. While Tesla CEO wouldn't say this phallic-shaped map was done intentionally as a joke, his followers on X quickly pounced on the alleged prank.

California's statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned. At an industry summit in Minneapolis tomorrow, the California Independent System Operator is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights. Why it's so hard to make welfare AI fair There are plenty of stories about AI that's caused harm when deployed in sensitive situations, and in many of those cases, the systems were developed without much concern to what it meant to be fair or how to implement fairness. But the city of Amsterdam did spend a lot of time and money to try to create ethical AI--in fact, it followed every recommendation in the responsible AI playbook. But when it deployed it in the real world, it still couldn't remove biases.

For years, so-called "nudify" apps and websites have mushroomed online, allowing people to create nonconsensual and abusive images of women and girls, including child sexual abuse material. Despite some lawmakers and tech companies taking steps to limit the harmful services, every month, millions of people are still accessing the websites, and the sites' creators may be making millions of dollars each year, new research suggests. An analysis of 85 nudify and "undress" websites--which allow people to upload photos and use AI to generate "nude" pictures of the subjects with just a few clicks--has found that most of the sites rely on tech services from Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to operate and stay online. The findings, revealed by Indicator, a publication investigating digital deception, say that the websites had a combined average of 18.5 million visitors for each of the past six months and collectively may be making up to 36 million per year. Alexios Mantzarlis, a cofounder of Indicator and an online safety researcher, says the murky nudifier ecosystem has become a "lucrative business" that "Silicon Valley's laissez-faire approach to generative AI" has allowed to persist.