Top Stories
Rubio in bind as he seeks to reassure Asia, even as region faces punishing Trump tariffs | Tariffs
Even as they face among the most punitive tariffs globally, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has sought to reassure southeast Asian nations of Washington’s commitment to the region, saying countries there may get “better” trade deals than the rest of the world.
In his first official visit to Asia, Rubio met foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Malaysia on Thursday, telling his counterparts the US has “no intention of abandoning” the region.
His visit came days after president Donald Trump renewed his threat to impose severe tariffs across many southeast Asian countries if they did not strike deals by 1 August.
The region, which includes countries that rely on exports and manufacturing, has been among the worst hit by Trump’s trade war.
Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia were sent letters this week warning they will face tariffs ranging from 20-40% – levies that Rubio said were being discussed with Asean countries.
“I would say that when all is said and done, many of the countries in Southeast Asia are going to have tariff rates that are actually better than countries in other parts of the world,” Rubio said.
Prior to Rubio’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim condemned the tariffs, saying the trade war was not a “passing storm” but instead “the new weather of our time”.
Tools once used to generate growth were now being “wielded to pressure, isolate and contain”, he said.
The looming tariffs have cast a shadow over Rubio’s trip, even as he sought to underline the importance of southeast Asia to Washington.
“It is our view, our strong view, and the reality that this century and the next, the story of the next 50 years, will largely be written here in this region, in this part of the world,” he said.
Stephen Olson, visiting senior fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said Rubio had “the unenviable position of trying to reassure southeast Asian partners that [the] US continues to be committed to the region and to free and open trade relations when all the evidence points in the opposite direction.”
“Asean ministers will give him a polite and respectful reception but are unlikely to be fundamentally persuaded by anything he says,” added Olson.
Questions over Washington’s commitment to the region coupled with Trump’s unpredictable economic polices could be a boon for China.
At the same meeting China and Asean, which is China’s largest trading partner, completed negotiations to further refine their free trade area to include additional industries.
And in veiled comments, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi appeared to draw a contrast between Washington and Beijing – presenting China as a reliable partner interested in mutual development.
Without naming the US directly, he criticised Trump’s tariffs, highlighting “unilateral protectionism and the abuse of tariffs by a certain major country”.
In another sign of the economic recalibration, Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba told a television news programme that Japan needed to wean itself from US dependence in key areas.
“If they think Japan ought to follow what America says as we depend heavily on them, then we need to work to become more self-sufficient in security, energy and food, and less dependent on America,” he said.
Vietnam is the only Asian country, and the second globally, to reach a trade deal with the US. Under the agreement many goods will face a tariff of 20% but a 40% levy will remain for so-called transshipments – a provision that is aimed at Chinese companies accused of passing their products through Vietnam to avoid tariffs.
Trump’s agreement with Vietnam is seen by analysts as a sign he will use tariff negotiations to try to pressure countries to cut China from their supply chains.
Southeast Asian nations have rushed to offer concessions to Trump to avert the tariffs, which could devastate economic growth.
Levies loom over eight out of 10 Asean nations, including a tariff of 20% on the Philippines, 25% on Malaysia and Brunei, 32% on Indonesia, and 36% on Cambodia and Thailand. Laos and Myanmar, a country gripped by civil war, continue to face among the most severe tariffs globally, with a 40% levy.
In Thailand, if the government is unable to avert the 36% rate, GDP growth is expected to drop below 1% this year, according to analysis by the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
Bangkok has pledged to reduce its $46bn trade surplus with the US by 70% within five years and eliminate the imbalance within eight years.
Officials in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, were also reportedly shocked by the letters sent by the US, which came despite a recent pledge to increase imports from the US by $34bn.
With agencies
Top Stories
Weekly News Quiz – AARP
- Weekly News Quiz AARP
- Measles Cases Hit Highest Total Since U.S. Eliminated the Disease The New York Times
- U.S. measles cases hit 33-year high, CDC says Axios
- US measles cases surpass 2019 count, while Missouri is latest state with an outbreak AP News
- Opinion | Why it matters if the U.S. loses its measles elimination status The Washington Post
Top Stories
Goldman Sachs autonomous coder pilot marks major AI milestone
A screen displays the the company logo for Goldman Sachs on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., May 7, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The newest hire at Goldman Sachs isn’t human.
The bank is testing an autonomous software engineer from artificial intelligence startup Cognition that is expected to soon join the ranks of the firm’s 12,000 human developers, Goldman tech chief Marco Argenti told CNBC.
The program, named Devin, became known in technology circles last year with Cognition’s claim that it had created the world’s first AI software engineer. Demo videos showed the program operating as a full-stack engineer, completing multi-step assignments with minimal intervention.
“We’re going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee who’s going to start doing stuff on the behalf of our developers,” Argenti said this week in an interview.
“Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins [and] that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases,” he said.
It’s the latest indicator of the dizzying speed in which AI is being adopted in the corporate world. Just last year, Wall Street firms including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were rolling out cognitive assistants based on OpenAI models to get employees acquainted with the technology.
Now, the arrival of agentic AI on Wall Street — referencing programs like Devin that don’t just help humans with tasks like summarizing documents or writing emails, but instead execute complex multi-step jobs like building entire apps — signals a much larger shift, with greater potential rewards.
Tech giants including Microsoft and Alphabet have said AI is already producing about 30% of the code on some projects, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said last month that AI handles as much as 50% of the work at his company.
At Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s top investment banks, this more powerful form of AI has the potential to boost worker productivity by up to three or four times the rate of previous AI tools, according to Argenti.
Devin will be supervised by human employees and will handle jobs that engineers often consider drudgery, like updating internal code to newer programing languages, he said.
Devin, an AI software developer, from a startup called Cognition Labs, which is valued at nearly $4 billion and counts Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund among investors.
Courtesy: Goldman Sachs
Goldman is the first major bank to use Devin, according to Cognition, which was founded in late 2023 by a trio of engineers and whose staff is reportedly stocked with champion coders.
In March, the startup doubled its valuation to nearly $4 billion just a year after the release of Devin. The company counts Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, the prominent venture capitalists and Palantir co-founders, among its investors.
Goldman doesn’t own a stake in Cognition, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified speaking about the bank’s investments.
Hybrid workforce
The bank’s move could spark a fresh round of anxiety on Wall Street and beyond about job cuts as a result of AI.
Executives at companies from Amazon to Ford have grown more candid about what AI will mean for hiring plans. Banks around the world will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as they implement AI, Bloomberg’s research arm said in January.
For his part, Argenti — who joined Goldman from Amazon in 2019 — charted out a vision for the near future that he called a “hybrid workforce” where humans and AI coexist.
“It’s really about people and AIs working side-by-side,” Argenti said. “Engineers are going to be expected to have the ability to really describe problems in a coherent way and turn it into prompts … and then be able to supervise the work of those agents.”
While the role of software developer is one that most lends itself to the type of training, called reinforcement learning, that is used to make AI smarter, other roles at a bank aren’t far off from being automated, according to Argenti.
“Those models are basically just as good as any developer, it’s really cool,” Argenti said. “So I think that will serve as a proof point also to expand it to other places.”
Top Stories
Grok 4 appears to reference Musk’s views when answering questions
Elon musk and the xAI logo.
Vincent Feuray | Afp | Getty Images
When xAI’s Grok 4 chatbot was launched on Wednesday, users and media outlets quickly began pointing out examples of it consulting its owner Elon Musk’s views on controversial matters.
CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers.
When asked, “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer,” Grok 4’s answer-generating process showed that it was searching the web and X for Elon Musk’s stance before giving an answer.
CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers.
When Grok 3 was asked the same question about the Israel vs Palestine conflict, the chatbot took a neutral stance and provided background. In other cases, Grok 4 referenced Musk’s stance directly in its answer.
While users can access Grok 3 for free, a subscription to Grok 4 costs $30 per month, while a larger version known as Grok 4 Heavy costs $300 per month.
In other cases, Grok referenced Musk’s stance directly in its answer. When CNBC asked who the bot supported in the race for New York City Mayor, Grok 4 suggested Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, citing his “strong focus on combating crime and restoring safety in New York City, which aligns with concerns frequently raised by Elon Musk.”
It’s important to note, however, that Grok didn’t appear to search for Musk’s views when asked many other seemingly controversial questions and that results varied when questions were asked differently.
The results varied when questions were asked differently.
XAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Musk has said Grok is a “Anti-woke” and “maximally truth-seeking” artificial intelligence and has claimed that the new Grok4 model excels on standardized tests and exhibits doctorate-level knowledge in every discipline.
Its launch comes just days after a major controversy regarding the Grok 3 chatbot, which is integrated with the social media site X.
The AI had begun generating a series of antisemitic comments in response to questions from users, including those that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler.
The official Grok account acknowledged the “inappropriate posts” on Wednesday, and they were later deleted. The company added that it had taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.
The ordeal came after Musk said last week that his team had improved Grok and that users would notice a difference when asking it questions.
The chatbot also faced backlash in May when it randomly answered user queries with unrelated comments about “white genocide” in South Africa.
Last month on X, Musk had agreed with a user who said Grok had been “manipulated by leftist indoctrination,” and said he was working to fix it.
-
Funding & Business1 week ago
Kayak and Expedia race to build AI travel agents that turn social posts into itineraries
-
Jobs & Careers1 week ago
Mumbai-based Perplexity Alternative Has 60k+ Users Without Funding
-
Mergers & Acquisitions1 week ago
Donald Trump suggests US government review subsidies to Elon Musk’s companies
-
Funding & Business1 week ago
Rethinking Venture Capital’s Talent Pipeline
-
Jobs & Careers1 week ago
Why Agentic AI Isn’t Pure Hype (And What Skeptics Aren’t Seeing Yet)
-
Education3 days ago
9 AI Ethics Scenarios (and What School Librarians Would Do)
-
Education4 days ago
Teachers see online learning as critical for workforce readiness in 2025
-
Education1 week ago
AERDF highlights the latest PreK-12 discoveries and inventions
-
Education4 days ago
Nursery teachers to get £4,500 to work in disadvantaged areas
-
Education6 days ago
How ChatGPT is breaking higher education, explained