Fears of upheaval in the AI gold rush rocked Wall Street on Monday following the emergence of a popular ChatGPT-like model from China, with US President Donald Trump saying it was a “wake-up call” for Silicon Valley.Last week’s release of the latest DeepSeek model initially received limited attention, overshadowed by the inauguration of Trump on the same day.However, over the weekend, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup’s chatbot surged to become the most downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store, displacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT.What truly rattled the industry was DeepSeek’s claim that it developed its latest model, the R1, at a fraction of the cost that major companies are investing in AI development, primarily on expensive Nvidia chips and software.The development is significant given the AI boom, ignited by ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, has propelled Nvidia to become one of the world’s most valuable companies.The news sent shockwaves through the US tech sector, exposing a critical concern: should tech giants continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI investment when a Chinese company can apparently produce a comparable model so economically?DeepSeek’s apparent advances were a poke in the eye to Washington and its priority of thwarting China by maintaining American technological dominance.Trump reacted quickly on Monday, saying the DeepSeek release “should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.”He argued that it could be a “positive” for US tech giants, adding: “instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with hopefully the same solution.”The development also comes against a background of a US government push to ban Chinese-owned TikTok in the United States or force its sale.David Sacks, Trump’s AI advisor and prominent tech investor, said DeepSeek’s success justified the White House’s decision to reverse executive orders, issued under Joe Biden, that established safety standards for AI development.The regulations “would have hamstrung American AI companies without any guarantee that China would follow suit,” Sacks wrote on X.Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the tech industry trade group Chamber of Progress, echoed the sentiment: “Now the top AI concern has to be ensuring (the United States) wins.”Tech investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen declared “Deepseek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” referencing the 1957 launch of Earth’s first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union that stunned the Western world. “If China is catching up quickly to the US in the AI race, then the economics of AI will be turned on its head,” warned Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, in a note to clients.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to social media hours before markets opened to argue less expensive AI was good for everyone.But last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Nadella warned: “We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously.”Microsoft, an eager adopter of generative AI, plans to invest $80 billion in AI this year, while Meta announced at least $60 billion in investments on Friday.- ‘Outplayed’ -Much of that investment goes into the coffers of Nvidia, whose shares plunged a staggering 17 percent on Monday.The situation is particularly remarkable since DeepSeek, as a Chinese company, lacks easy access to Nvidia’s state-of-the-art chips after the US government placed export restrictions on them.The esteemed Stratechery tech newsletter and others suggested that DeepSeek’s innovations stemmed from necessity, as lacking access to powerful Nvidia-designed chips forced them to develop novel methods.The export controls are “driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate in ways that prioritize efficiency, resource-pooling, and collaboration,” wrote the MIT Technology Review.Elon Musk, who has invested heavily in Nvidia chips for his company xAI, suspects DeepSeek of secretly accessing banned H100 chips — an accusation also made by the CEO of ScaleAI, a prominent Silicon Valley startup backed by Amazon and Meta.But such accusations “sound like a rich kids team got outplayed by a poor kids team,” wrote Hong Kong-based investor Jen Zhu Scott on X.In a statement, Nvidia said DeepSeek’s technology was “fully export control compliant.” 

US President Donald Trump once again hinted at the idea of serving a third term, saying he was “not 100 percent sure” he was barred from doing so under the Constitution, which forbids it.Trump has repeatedly alluded to the possibility that he might go beyond the current two-term limit for US presidents — but while he often strikes a light-hearted tone the remarks remain provocative.”I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure, because I don’t know… I think I’m not allowed to run again,” Trump told an audience of Congressional Republicans in Miami.To laughter, Trump turned to Republican House Leader Mike Johnson and added: “I’m not sure, am I allowed to run again? Mike? I better not get you involved in that argument.”Trump was inaugurated for his second spell in the White House a week ago, becoming just the second president in US history to serve two non-consecutive terms.US presidents are limited to two terms in office by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1951 — partly as a response to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unprecedented four terms as president from 1933-1945.A Republican in the US House introduced a super-long-shot resolution last week to change the constitution to allow Trump to get another term.Trump has alluded to extending his stay on a number of occasions and joked about it as recently Saturday, during a rally in Nevada.”It will be the greatest honor my life to serve not once, but twice — or three times or four times,” he said with a laugh, before adding to cheers from the audience: “Headlines for the fake news.”In November, in another speech to House Republicans shortly after his election win, Trump said: “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else.'”Trump told an audience of conservative Christians in July: “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time… Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”

For President Donald Trump’s allies, his crackdown on the “illegal and immoral discrimination” of equal opportunities programs reflects a shifting US electorate that has lost patience with ineffective and performative political correctness.For Trump critics, however, it is a frontal assault on civil rights that will chill efforts to create a fairer country, dismantling decades of affirmative action that they argue led to a more skilled, representative workforce. Trump repeatedly previewed his plan to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) during his election campaign, but the breakneck pace of the changes — and the extent of their reach — has caught many off guard.  Since his return to office last week, administration officials have been racing to prosecute Trump’s war on DEI across the federal bureaucracy — dismantling training initiatives, scrapping grants and sidelining hundreds of workers.”Woke is not inevitable. It is not invincible. It is not indestructible. The counter-revolution is coming,” anti-DEI crusader Christopher Rufo wrote on X in a post marking Trump’s first week in office.The evil of DEI is an article of faith in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, but the Republican leader is banking on growing skepticism in the broader public over cultural liberalism in government, education and business.  The enmity is premised on the suspicion that people employed through DEI do not merit their success, and are depriving more deserving candidates who are denied opportunity because they are not in a minority.- Virtue-signaling -DEI came to the fore during mass protests against the 2020 murder of African American George Floyd by a white police officer, as institutions scrambled to signal that they were on-message when it came to racism.Largely focused on hiring practices and corporate culture, DEI has gone from being a marker of professionalism before the Trump era to a bogeyman, held up as an example of counterproductive virtue-signaling. Rufo was celebrating after websites and social media accounts related to diversity went dark last week, while officials directed agencies to close their DEI offices and place staffers on paid leave, in advance of being laid off. Federal workers have also been ordered to report colleagues who hide DEI efforts with “coded or imprecise language,” and the State Department is freezing passport applications with “X” designated as the gender instead of “M” or “F.” Among the casualties of the new regime was Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan, the first woman to lead a branch of the US military, who was fired after being accused of an “excessive focus” on DEI. There were further ructions in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was accused of quietly changing the job title of its “chief diversity officer” to “senior executive” in a bid to save her job.In the corporate world, top brands from Target and Walmart to Meta, Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s have taken similar measures since Trump’s election as they face pressure from conservatives to roll back DEI efforts.- ‘Old-boys’ network’ -In education, Trump has instructed federal officials to investigate DEI programs at schools with endowments of more than $1 billion — which includes Harvard, Stanford, Yale and dozens of other institutions.Last month, the University of Michigan — facing accusations that it had wasted a quarter of a billion dollars in failed DEI initiatives — announced that it would no longer demand diversity statements as a part of hiring, promotion and tenure decisions.Although DEI hate didn’t start with Trump, he made it a popular applause line at campaign events, vowing to purge the military of generals he accused of being overly focused on social justice, and planning a crackdown on transgender recruitment.Liberals argue that diversity and inclusion policies — such as a 2022 FBI recruitment drive at historically black universities — help ensure the best and brightest rise to the top when they might otherwise be denied the opportunity. “DEI programs, of course, do not do what Trump imagines,” Elie Mystal, bestselling author of “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution,” said in a commentary for progressive magazine The Nation.”If anything, the country is beset by mediocre white men who got their positions through an old-boys’ network of family, friends, connections, and frat buddies who now gum up and dumb down the system at every level.”

Survivors of the Holocaust have entrusted their memories of the Nazi death camps to artificial intelligence to ensure that generations to come can access recollections of the genocide of six million Jews.The project at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (MJH) in New York saw 10 survivors undertake interviews on a range of topics to allow future visitors to question their virtual likenesses about their experiences.Artificial intelligence will be used to interpret questions from members of the public, who will be played a fixed set of pre-recorded responses to “answer” their questions.”Somebody will survive because we have to tell the world what happened — and maybe it’s us,” said Toby Levy, in her 90s, who was born in a region of Poland in 1933 that is now Ukraine.”I remembered (my father’s) words, ‘you will be the one who will have to tell the world.’ Seventy-five years later, here I am in the United States.”Levy looked at herself on a screen as the technology was demonstrated at the museum, located on Manhattan’s southern tip, in view of Ellis Island where many Holocaust survivors first arrived in the United States by sea.She was among 200 Holocaust survivors who gathered Monday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.They assembled to watch the live commemoration ceremony in front of the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland, and several denounced the resurgence of anti-Semitic hatred around the world.- ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ -“We all survived,” said Levy, who arrived first in New Orleans before building a life in New York. “Let’s do our share, what we have to do.”The project will protect the memories of the survivors forever, said Mike Jones, the brains behind the project, a collaboration between the University of Southern California Libraries and the MJH. “There’s a timelessness that it’s always going to be important and urgent until the day that there’s simply just peace on Earth,” he said.The ten survivors underwent extensive video interviews in the summer of 2024, touching on their childhoods prior to the Holocaust, survival in the camps, and their recollection of liberation and resettlement.Visitors to the museum or its website can then “converse” with them on screen, and the survivors respond interactively according to the pre-recorded answers.Alice Ginsburg, born in 1933 in what was then Czechoslovakia, now Hungary, recounted her deportation in 1944 to Auschwitz where she almost died from hunger and forced labor before the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945. She arrived in the United States two years later.”It’s important to publicize it so it should never happen again,” she told AFP. “This is man’s inhumanity to man.”Eighty years on from the horrors of the Holocaust, Ginsburg said she worried about the increase “of Holocaust deniers, which is a form of anti-Semitism.”Jerry Lindenstraus, who was born in Germany in the early 1930s and has lived in New York since 1953 after exile in Shanghai and South America, said he wanted to speak out “so that we never forget what happened.””I give talks here to high school students who have no idea what happened,” he said.