AI

AI Reshaping Employment Structures

DeepSeek AI is transforming the job market, with examples ranging from AI-powered consultation at Beijing Children's Hospital to zero-error anchors at Hangzhou News. The impact of AI on various professions raises questions about how individuals should adapt to this shift.

AI Model Development

Foundation Model Innovation

The success of DeepSeek, MiniMax open-source models, and Alibaba's Qwen series highlights that underlying innovative capabilities are crucial in the AI industry.

Figure's Helix Control System for Humanoid Robots

Figure has introduced Helix, a "vision-language-action" (VLA) model designed for controlling general-purpose humanoid robots. Helix unifies perception, language understanding, and learning control, addressing multiple challenges in robotics. Key features include upper body control, multi-robot collaboration, object recognition, and placement. Unlike traditional methods, Helix uses a single set of neural network weights for all behaviors, eliminating task-specific fine-tuning and enabling operation on low-power GPUs. At its core, the "System 1, System 2" VLA model facilitates rapid reactions and high-level goal comprehension, ensuring quick and generalized robot movements.

Beauty & Cosmetics

L'Oréal's AI Strategy in Beauty

L'Oréal's Global Managing Director of Digital Beauty and Open Innovation, Guive Balooch, shared insights on the significance of AI in the beauty industry. L'Oréal's beauty tech products and technologies are categorized into three main areas: diagnostic products, digital services, and efficacy-enhancing devices. The company's core focus is addressing consumer pain points, with technology considered as a solution. AI enables more personalized consumer interactions, providing precise information, recommending suitable products, and helping consumers understand and predict their skin and hair conditions before purchase. L'Oréal Beauty Tech provides the technology, other teams provide formulas, and project management is a collaborative effort. AI presents two major opportunities: biotechnology and data efficiency.

AI

AI Benchmark Debate

A debate has emerged regarding AI benchmarks, with an OpenAI employee accusing Elon Musk's xAI of publishing misleading benchmark results for its Grok3 model. The controversy centers on xAI's graph showing Grok3's performance on the AIME 2025 math question set, where it appeared to outperform OpenAI's o3-mini-high model. However, it was pointed out that xAI's graph omitted o3-mini-high's score at "cons@64," a method that significantly boosts benchmark scores. Despite the debate, xAI is advertising Grok3 as the "world's smartest AI."

Retail

The Allure of Discontinued Products

The New York Times delves into the phenomenon of discontinued products and the online communities that have sprung up around the search for them. Factors such as low sales, evolving consumer habits, and production expenses often lead to the discontinuation of items. This, in turn, has fueled the growth of online platforms where consumers seek out their favorite products that are no longer available through traditional channels. These platforms, exemplified by Discontinued Beauty, offer items like a Redkin protein restructurizer at elevated prices. Despite worries related to storage conditions and product safety, some shoppers place a high value on acquiring discontinued items, such as a NARS lip pencil, even if it means overlooking concerns about optimal storage.