Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang described robots as “AI immigrants” on Tuesday, arguing they could solve a global labor shortage that is hampering manufacturing.Addressing concerns about machines replacing human workers, the leader of the world’s dominant AI chip company took the opposite stance.”Having robots will create jobs,” Huang told 200 journalists and analysts during a 90-minute session at a Las Vegas hotel on the sidelines of the CES technology show.”We need more AI immigrants to help us on manufacturing floors and do work that maybe we’ve decided not to do anymore,” said Huang, whose off-the-cuff remarks have become a popular CES tradition.The gathering runs through Friday, with some 130,000 attendees.Like every year, robots are a major presence at CES, with companies hoping they will break into the mainstream as useful devices instead of novelties.A “robotics revolution” will compensate for labor losses from aging populations and demographic decline while boosting the economy, Huang argued.”When the economy grows, we hire more people,” he said, sporting his signature black leather jacket.Huang, who leads the world’s most valuable company at roughly $3.5 trillion, estimated the worker shortage reaches “tens of millions,” not thousands, due to demographic shifts.His comments align with other Silicon Valley leaders, particularly Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who frequently cite population decline and workforce aging as reasons to embrace automation.Nvidia is investing heavily in providing the foundational software that can make robots work across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail, and healthcare.

Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez insisted Tuesday no foreign power was governing her country, even as US President Donald Trump announced Caracas will be swiftly turning over millions of barrels of oil to the United States.Rodriguez, who was vice president under toppled leader Nicolas Maduro, has given mixed signals about how much she is prepared to cooperate with Trump, at times sounding conciliatory, at others defiant.Speaking three days after US special forces snatched Maduro and his wife in a stunning raid in Caracas, Rodriguez said: “The government of Venezuela is in charge in our country, and no-one else.””There is no foreign agent governing Venezuela.”Trump insists Washington is now “in charge” of the Caribbean country but has said he is prepared to work with Rodriguez — provided she submits to his demand for access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.The US leader was startlingly direct about his intent regarding the South American country’s reserves, announcing on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday that Rodriguez “will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil” to the United States.”This oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me” as president, Trump said, adding that he has tasked Energy Secretary Chris Wright with “immediately” executing the plan.- No surrender -Rodriguez has offered an olive branch but also appeared anxious to keep on her side the hardliners who control the security forces and paramilitaries, which have patrolled the streets since Maduro’s capture.”We are a people that does not surrender, we are a people that does not give up,” she declared, paying tribute to the “martyrs” of the US attacks.She said the country is holding seven days of mourning for those killed.In its first confirmation of losses, Venezuela’s military on Tuesday published a list of 23 troops, including five generals, killed in the US strikes.Top ally Havana separately issued a list of 32 dead Cuban military personnel, many of whom were members of Maduro’s security detail.Venezuela has not yet confirmed the number of civilian casualties in the operation in which US forces grabbed Maduro and Flores and took them to the United States to face trial.Attorney General Tarek William Saab spoke Tuesday of “dozens” of civilian and military dead, without giving a breakdown.- ‘Trump, murderer’ -Thousands of supporters of the presidential couple, including powerful Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, marched through Caracas demanding their release.Fear of state repression has made it so the unpopular Maduro’s many detractors loathe to celebrate his downfall.Maduro and Flores appeared in court Monday in New York, where they pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called on the United States to ensure they receive a fair trial.- Interim president’s challenges -Rodriguez has sought to project unity with Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, two hardliners seen as the main powerbrokers in the Maduro administration.Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, sidelined by Washington in the post-Maduro transition, warned in a Fox News interview that Rodriguez was not to be trusted.”Delcy Rodriguez as you know is one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narcotrafficking,” she said.”She’s the main ally and liaison with Russia, China, Iran, certainly not an individual that could be trusted by international investors.”In a sign that a repressive security apparatus remains in place, 16 journalists and media workers were detained in Venezuela on Monday, according to a journalists’ union.All were later released.Trump has warned that Rodriguez will pay “a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she does not comply with Washington’s agenda.A retired general who held high-ranking positions in the military predicted that Rodriguez would throw open Venezuela to US oil and mining companies and perhaps resume diplomatic ties, broken off by Maduro in 2019.He also believed she would seek to appease criticism of Venezuela’s dire rights record by releasing political prisoners.Trump told Republican lawmakers Tuesday that Maduro was a “violent guy” who “killed millions of people” and claimed that Rodriguez’s administration was “closing up” a torture chamber in Caracas.The constitution says that after Maduro is formally declared absent — which could happen after six months — elections must then be held within 30 days.Machado told Fox News she was confident the opposition, widely seen as the real victors of 2024 elections, would win “over 90 percent of the votes.”

The self-described “animal” behind a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor admitted to the crimes in a video made after the spree but gave no motive, authorities said Tuesday.Gunman Claudio Neves Valente killed two people and wounded nine at the Ivy League school before also killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with whom he had previously studied, two days later.The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said that while searching a storage unit to where Neves Valente apparently fled and later killed himself, they found a video of him admitting to the shootings.”I particularly like Trump’s shit, to have — have called me an animal, which is true. I am an animal and he is also, but uhm, I have no love — I have no hatred towards America,” he said according to the DOJ transcript translated from Portuguese.At the height of the days-long manhunt for the shooter, US President Donald Trump told reporters “hopefully, they’re going to catch this animal.”The gunman did not state a motive for the bloodshed but did complain about injuries sustained during the attacks — a shell casing he said struck him in the eye.Neves Valente carried out the college mass shooting on December 13 before heading to the home of renowned MIT professor Nuno Loureiro and killing him two days later.”Neves Valente admitted that he had been planning the Brown University shooting for a long time,” the DOJ said.”Although Neves Valente stated that Brown University was his intended target, based on initial review of the evidence collected, he did not provide a motive for targeting students at Brown University or the professor at MIT. (He) showed no remorse during the recordings.”The clips have not been publicly released.He blamed the two student victims from Brown — Ella Cook, vice president of the university’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, originally from Uzbekistan — for their deaths, according to the statement.”The only objective was to leave more or less on my terms,” Neves Valente said in the transcript in which he apparently claims to have had multiple opportunities to execute the mass shooting but “always chickened out.”The Justice Department said the investigation was ongoing and there was not believed to be any threat to the public.