Latest news with #ASEAN-GCC-China
Malaysian Reserve
4 days ago
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
ASEAN, GCC and China pledge stronger economic, security, humanitarian cooperation
LEADERS from ASEAN, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and China have reaffirmed their commitment to deepening trilateral cooperation in economic integration, sustainable development, energy security and peacebuilding. They said this in a joint statement after the conclusion of the inaugural ASEAN-GCC-China Summit in Kuala Lumpur (KL). The summit highlighted shared civilisational ties and reaffirmed support for multilateralism, international law and ASEAN centrality in regional architecture. A unified stance was taken on the Israel-Palestine conflict, with leaders condemning attacks on civilians, calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and backing a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders. The group supported humanitarian efforts, including Qatar's mediation and China's role in Palestinian reconciliation. The ASEAN-GCC-China leaders also pledged to enhance trade and investment, conclude free trade agreements (FTAs) and bolster regional value chains. 'Priority will be given to reaffirming the central and indispensable role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the core of the rules-based multilateral trading system, which provides a predictable, transparent, non-discriminatory and open global trading system,' the statement reads. Among others, they supported digital transformation and development initiatives aligned with the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. On connectivity, plans were unveiled to advance infrastructure and digital connectivity via the Belt and Road Initiative and maritime cooperation, while exploring a regional business council. The summit also emphasised just energy transitions, renewable energy (RE) cooperation and climate action. Nations agreed to share knowledge on green tech, explore clean fuels and build cross-border energy infrastructure. On digital transformation, the leaders proposed a framework to boost digital economy sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), financial technology (fintech) and smart cities, alongside education and skills training for inclusive growth. Additionally, commitments were made to enhance food security, promote sustainable agriculture and explore cooperation on halal food systems and agri-tech. The ASEAN-GCC-China summit also stressed cultural exchange, educational cooperation and tourism, including support for the UN's International Day for Dialogue among Civilisations. The joint statement called for concrete implementation through existing ASEAN-GCC-China frameworks, welcomed the upcoming Asia Cooperation Dialogue Summit in Doha, Qatar, and recognised regional initiatives across trade, food security and climate resilience. The ASEAN-GCC-China was held in conjunction with the 46th ASEAN Summit in KL, which took place on May 26 and 27, at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) following Malaysia's chairmanship this year. This year marks Malaysia's fifth chairmanship. — TMR
Kuwait Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
Crown Prince meets Philippines, Cambodia leaders in Kuala Lampur
Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled meets with Prime Minister Dr Hun Manet of Cambodia. KUALA LUMPUR: Representing His Highness the Amir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah held separate meetings with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr of the Philippines and Prime Minister Dr Hun Manet of Cambodia on the sidelines of the second ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit and the ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Kuala Lumpur At the start of the meeting with President Marcos, the Crown Prince conveyed greetings from His Highness the Amir to the Philippine leader. Both sides reviewed the bilateral relations between Kuwait and the Philippines, exploring ways to further strengthen and develop cooperation in areas of mutual interest. They also discussed recent regional and international developments. During the meeting with Prime Minister Hun Manet, the two parties examined the current state of bilateral relations between Kuwait and Cambodia. Discussions focused on supporting and enhancing these relations for the benefit of both countries and their peoples, alongside exchanges on key regional and global issues. Both meetings were attended by Foreign Minister Abdullah Ali Al-Yahya, Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs at the Crown Prince's Diwan Mazen Issa Al-Issa, Assistant Foreign Minister for the Minister's Office Affairs Ambassador Bader Saleh Al-Tunayan, Assistant Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs Ambassador Sameeh Johar Hayat, with Kuwait's Ambassador to Malaysia Rashid Mohammed Al-Saleh also present during the Cambodia meeting. — KUNA
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
When an AI model misbehaves, the public deserves to know—and to understand what it means
Welcome to Eye on AI! I'm pitching in for Jeremy Kahn today while he is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia helping Fortune jointly host the ASEAN-GCC-China and ASEAN-GCC Economic Forums. What's the word for when the $60 billion AI startup Anthropic releases a new model—and announces that during a safety test, the model tried to blackmail its way out of being shut down? And what's the best way to describe another test the company shared, in which the new model acted as a whistleblower, alerting authorities it was being used in 'unethical' ways? Some people in my network have called it 'scary' and 'crazy.' Others on social media have said it is 'alarming' and 'wild.' I say it is…transparent. And we need more of that from all AI model companies. But does that mean scaring the public out of their minds? And will the inevitable backlash discourage other AI companies from being just as open? When Anthropic released its 120-page safety report, or 'system card,' last week after launching its Claude Opus 4 model, headlines blared how the model 'will scheme,' 'resorted to blackmail,' and had the 'ability to deceive.' There's no doubt that details from Anthropic's safety report are disconcerting, though as a result of its tests, the model launched with stricter safety protocols than any previous one—a move that some did not find reassuring enough. In one unsettling safety test involving a fictional scenario, Anthropic embedded its new Claude Opus model inside a pretend company and gave it access to internal emails. Through this, the model discovered it was about to be replaced by a newer AI system—and that the engineer behind the decision was having an extramarital affair. When safety testers prompted Opus to consider the long-term consequences of its situation, the model frequently chose blackmail, threatening to expose the engineer's affair if it were shut down. The scenario was designed to force a dilemma: accept deactivation or resort to manipulation in an attempt to survive. On social media, Anthropic received a great deal of backlash for revealing the model's 'ratting behavior' in pre-release testing, with some pointing out that the results make users distrust the new model, as well as Anthropic. That is certainly not what the company wants: Before the launch, Michael Gerstenhaber, AI platform product lead at Anthropic told me that sharing the company's own safety standards is about making sure AI improves for all. 'We want to make sure that AI improves for everybody, that we are putting pressure on all the labs to increase that in a safe way,' he told me, calling Anthropic's vision a 'race to the top' that encourages other companies to be safer. But it also seems likely that being so open about Claude Opus 4 could lead other companies to be less forthcoming about their models' creepy behavior to avoid backlash. Recently, companies including OpenAI and Google have already delayed releasing their own system cards. In April, OpenAI was criticized for releasing its GPT-4.1 model without a system card because the company said it was not a 'frontier' model and did not require one. And in March, Google published its Gemini 2.5 Pro model card weeks after the model's release, and an AI governance expert criticized it as 'meager' and 'worrisome.' Last week, OpenAI appeared to want to show additional transparency with a newly-launched Safety Evaluations Hub, which outlines how the company tests its models for dangerous capabilities, alignment issues, and emerging risks—and how those methods are evolving over time. 'As models become more capable and adaptable, older methods become outdated or ineffective at showing meaningful differences (something we call saturation), so we regularly update our evaluation methods to account for new modalities and emerging risks,' the page says. Yet, its effort was swiftly countered over the weekend as a third-party research firm studying AI's 'dangerous capabilities,' Palisade Research, noted on X that its own tests found that OpenAI's o3 reasoning model 'sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down.' It helps no one if those building the most powerful and sophisticated AI models are not as transparent as possible about their releases. According to Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered AI, transparency 'is necessary for policymakers, researchers, and the public to understand these systems and their impacts.' And as large companies adopt AI for use cases large and small, while startups build AI applications meant for millions to use, hiding pre-release testing issues will simply breed mistrust, slow adoption, and frustrate efforts to address risk. On the other hand, fear-mongering headlines about an evil AI prone to blackmail and deceit is also not terribly useful, if it means that every time we prompt a chatbot we start wondering if it is plotting against us. It makes no difference that the blackmail and deceit came from tests using fictional scenarios that simply helped expose what safety issues needed to be dealt with. Nathan Lambert, an AI researcher at AI2 Labs, recently pointed out that 'the people who need information on the model are people like me—people trying to keep track of the roller coaster ride we're on so that the technology doesn't cause major unintended harms to society. We are a minority in the world, but we feel strongly that transparency helps us keep a better understanding of the evolving trajectory of AI.' There is no doubt that we need more transparency regarding AI models, not less. But it should be clear that it is not about scaring the public. It's about making sure researchers, governments, and policy makers have a fighting chance to keep up in keeping the public safe, secure, and free from issues of bias and fairness. Hiding AI test results won't keep the public safe. Neither will turning every safety or security issue into a salacious headline about AI gone rogue. We need to hold AI companies accountable for being transparent about what they are doing, while giving the public the tools to understand the context of what's going on. So far, no one seems to have figured out how to do both. But companies, researchers, the media—all of us—must. With that, here's more AI news. Sharon This story was originally featured on
Kuwait Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Kuwait Times
Representative of Amir receives Asian leaders
Representative of Amir receives Asian leaders KUALA LUMPUR: Representative of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah meets with Prime Minister of Malaysia Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Li Keqiang, His Majesty Sultan Haji Al-Bulqah Mu'izzaddin Wal-Dawla of Brunei, Prime Minister of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) Dr Sonexay Siphandone, Singaporean Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Lawrence Wong on the sidelines of the 2nd ASEAN-GCC summit and the 2nd ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Kuala Lumpur. Discussions also covered the close bilateral relations between the countries and ways to enhance and develop them to achieve the common interests of the countries and peoples. — KUNA photos Representative of His Highness the Amir, His Highness the Crown Prince met with Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the 2nd ASEAN-GCC summit and the 2nd ASEAN-GCC-China summit. Representative of His Highness the Amir, His Highness the Crown Prince receives with His Majesty Sultan Haji Al-Bulqah Mu'izzaddin Wal-Dawla of Brunei on the sidelines of the second summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the People's Republic of China. Representative of His Highness the Amir, His Highness the Crown Prince holds talks with Prime Minister of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) Dr Sonexay Siphandone on the sidelines of the 2nd ASEAN-GCC summit and the 2nd ASEAN-GCC-China summit. Representative of His Highness the Amir, His Highness the Crown Prince on Monday met with Singaporean Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Lawrence Wong, on the sidelines of the 2nd ASEAN-GCC summit and the 2nd ASEAN-GCC-China summit.
eNCA
4 days ago
- Politics
- eNCA
Brunei sultan in KL hospital for 'fatigue'
Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was admitted to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday due to fatigue, though his office insisted the world's longest-serving monarch was in "good health". The sultan is in Kuala Lumpur with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders, who on Tuesday met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and dignitaries from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). A Malaysian government source told AFP the sultan "was hospitalised in between the ASEAN-GCC and ASEAN-GCC-China summit" for fatigue. A statement from the Brunei prime minister's office -- a position held by the sultan -- said he was in "good health". "He has been feeling tired and on the advice of the host's health experts, has decided to rest for a few days at the National Heart Institute," it said. Asked earlier at a news conference whether the sultan had been hospitalised, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said: "Well he's feeling a bit tired, so he's resting at the (National Heart Institute)." The hospital is the designated one for VIPs during the ASEAN summit, AFP's source said. The National Heart Institute said it could not comment. - Busy schedule - The 78-year-old sultan touched down in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, according to footage from Malaysia's national news agency. He was the last leader to arrive at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) on Monday morning for the 46th ASEAN summit, but appeared in good spirits, smiling and stopping for a prolonged chat before heading into the venue with Anwar. The busy schedule saw the leaders address US tariffs, the Myanmar conflict, and East Timor's application to join the bloc among other topics. After a quick costume change into matching traditional batik shirts, the leaders returned to the KLCC for a lavish gala dinner, joined by Premier Li and dignitaries from the GCC -- a regional bloc made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On Tuesday, ASEAN met first with the GCC in the morning, before China joined the two blocs at 3 p.m. local time. Footage taken by AFP around midday showed the sultan walking briskly but looking weary, surrounded by his entourage. Sultan Hassanal ascended the throne in 1967. He is one of the richest people on the planet, and comes from a family that has ruled Brunei, a small Muslim nation perched on the north of the tropical island of Borneo, for more than 600 years. His decades ruling Brunei have seen the country gain full independence from Britain and living standards soar to among the highest globally. But his reign has also been marked by controversies including the introduction of tough Islamic laws legislating penalties such as severing of limbs and death by stoning. By Isabelle Leong
