Latest news with #CNBC
Ya Libnan
an hour ago
- Automotive
- Ya Libnan
Tesla's Robotaxi service is coming to Austin on June 12: Report
File Tesla Model Y which will be used for Robotaxi service in Austin , TX starting June 12 By: Suvrat Kothari A new chapter in Tesla's story is set to begin in a few days as the automaker pivots away from its core passenger vehicle business towards self-driving taxis and artificial intelligence. After years of promises, Tesla will begin its driverless ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, on June 12, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday citing a person familiar with the matter. We knew that self-driving Tesla taxis were coming to Austin in June, but this is the first time that a publication has reported a final date on when that actually might happen. CEO Elon Musk previously said that Tesla would begin its robotaxi service with only about 10 Model Ys ferrying passengers around the 'safest areas of Austin' in the beginning, followed by a cautious and gradual increase in the number of deployed vehicles. The service won't immediately be available to the public, but instead be offered to an 'invite-only' group of riders. However, Musk reiterated in an interview with CNBC recently that Tesla plans to scale to thousands of robotaxis 'within a few months' and then expand to other cities depending on how fast the permits are granted. It's worth noting that Musk has himself previously acknowledged that he tends to be overly optimistic with timelines and targets. The State of Texas has relatively simple rules around autonomous vehicles. The rules state that 'AVs must adhere to the same regulations as cars in which a driver is present (e.g., insurance, registration). State law also requires AVs to comply with all traffic laws.' Austin has formed a task force to collect information about incidents and communicate with AV operators. As of the time of publication, the city of Austin has not listed Tesla as an AV operator. In the initial phase of the rollout, Tesla is expected to employ remote human operators . The automaker has been hiring 'teleoperations' specialists who can intervene remotely, sitting thousands of miles away in California, if the vehicle encounters complex traffic situations. We'll see how effective this approach will be, especially after the company scales up. Tesla will also compete with Waymo, which recently began its robotaxi service in Austin with Jaguar I-Pace EVs and is now clocking over 250,000 driverless rides per week across four U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Tesla, however, says that it can scale up faster than its rivals because it already has millions of cars on the road equipped with the Full-Self Driving (FSD) software. However, the true safety of Tesla's camera- and AI-based system is yet to be proven on a large scale as FSD's safety data isn't publicly available yet. And Tesla's advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have been linked to hundreds of crashes and multiple fatalities. Inside
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Education secretary says universities must follow the 1964 Civil Rights Act
May 28 (UPI) -- Federal funding could be withheld from U.S. universities that don't abide by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Wednesday. McMahon was interviewed by CNBC on Wednesday morning regarding President Donald Trump's call to withhold all federal funding to Harvard University, threatening to revoke its non-profit status for failing to protect Jewish students and halting its intake of international students. "When we looked at different aspects of what Harvard was doing relative to anti-Semitism on its campuses, they were not enforcing Title VI the way it should be," McMahon told CNBC. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," according to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. "If a recipient of federal assistance is found to have discriminated and voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, the federal agency providing the assistance should either initiate fund termination proceedings or refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate legal action," the DOJ says. McMahon said the Trump administration had conversations with Harvard President Alan Garber and anticipated more conversations, but the university filed a federal lawsuit against the administration. McMahon said it's important for the administration to "call attention" to what Harvard and other universities are doing Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that it has invested and draws annual returns of between 5% and 10%, she said. "That's billions of dollars," McMahon said, adding that Trump might consider increasing the endowment tax on universities. "That's something that the American public can wrap its head around," she said. "There are a lot of issues that we'd like to look at, and we'd like to continue to talk to Harvard." The CNBC interviewer asked McMahon if she agrees the federal government should vet international students by reviewing their social media posts, which the Trump administration has proposed. McMahon said she doesn't know the criteria that the State or Homeland Security departments are considering to vet international students seeking visas to study in the United States. "The president certainly has great concerns," she said. "There are foreign students who come to this country ... who help create this unrest," McMahon explained. "There are activists who come in," she continued. "There are professors that are hired and brought in who are teaching ideology more than they are subject matter." She said it's important to know what the backgrounds and ideologies of international students and professors might be prior to the arrival at college campuses in the United States As the interview opened, McMahon said universities "should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and are in sync ... with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish, but primarily abiding by the laws. That comment drew strong rebukes from some media outlets. Gizmodo accused the Trump administration of continuing an "attack on higher education." Rolling Stone ran a headline claiming McMahon said Harvard needs to be in sync "with Trump's political goals" after the Trump administration cut off all contracts with Harvard. "The Trump administration is warning the nation's universities that their federal funding and research grants will only remain safe if the school is compliant with the goals of the Trump administration," Rolling Stone reported. The entertainment magazine accused the administration of attempting to "force Harvard -- and other prominent American universities -- to surrender their academic independence and accept government oversight in respect to their curriculums, staffing decisions and student body."
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Don't ever say that': Donald Trump erupts over claim that he ‘always chickens out'
Donald Trump has reacted furiously to a theory, currently gaining traction on Wall Street, that he 'always chickens out' instead of following through on his threats to impose tariffs. Mr Trump took questions from reporters during an event at the White House today, where his selection to be the interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, was sworn in. One question in particular, from CNBC journalist Megan Casella, displeased him. She brought up a term first coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, which has reportedly taken hold among traders on Wall Street. 'The recent rally has a lot to do with markets realising that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,' Mr Armstrong wrote on May 2. 'This is the TACO Theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.' The idea here is that the markets have taken note of Mr Trump's constant vacillation on his tariff policies. The President has repeatedly announced severe and sweeping tariffs, only to back away from them after the inevitable financial hyperventilation, usually by lowering the tariff rate or by agreeing to large carve-outs for affected industries. Mr Trump argues that is a negotiating tactic. Wall Street, however, appears to be coming around to the view that it is weakness; that when confronted by a tanking stock market, Mr Trump tends to lose his nerve. That has implications for Mr Trump's negotiating strategy going forward. Threats only work, of course, if their target believes they are credible. If other countries follow Wall Street's lead, concluding Mr Trump is brittle and easy to scare into backing down, his threats inevitably become much less effective. Mr Trump seemed to sense that when Ms Casella brought up the 'TACO' theory today. He was quick to reject it. 'Mr President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called 'TACO trade'. They are saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats. And that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?' she asked. 'You mean because I reduced China from (a tariff rate of) 145 per cent, that I set down to 100 per cent, and then down to another number?' Mr Trump responded. 'And I said, 'You have to open up your whole country.' And because I gave the European Union a 50 per cent tax tariff? And they called up and they said, 'Please, let's meet right now please. Let's meet right now.' And I said, 'OK, I'll give you until June 9.' I actually asked them, I said, 'What's the date?' Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, 'We'll meet any time you want. And we have an end date of July 9.' 'You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing when Biden didn't have practically anything.' Mr Trump gave two different dates for the European Union's deadline to reach some sort of trade agreement. The actual date is July 9. Last month, the US President announced a 20 per cent tariff on most goods from the EU, before lowering it to 10 per cent, pending a deadline for trade negotiations on July 8. Then, last week, he announced it would rise to 50 per cent, due to his frustration at the pace of those trade talks. That 50 per cent rate was set to take effect on June 1, before Mr Trump had a phone call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which he described as 'very nice'. So now we have the July 9 deadline. That all sounds quite convoluted. We're back where we started, essentially, with Mr Trump's original deadline shifted back by one day. For what it's worth, the '$14 trillion now invested' figure Mr Trump cited appears to have been plucked out of thin air. Here's a fact check from ten days ago, when his chosen number was fluctuating between $US6 and $US10 trillion. Anyway Mr Trump ended his answer with a potshot at Ms Casella. 'Six months ago, this county was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country – people didn't think it was going to survive,' he said. 'And you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation. Don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. 'To me, that's the nastiest question.' Ms Casella was asked about the exchange on air a short time later. 'You might have heard the term 'TACO trade', Trump Always Chickens Out. That is what some analysts, some commentators have been using to talk about this,' she said. 'So I asked the President directly, what's his response to that, and he had a long answer.' She noted, wryly, that Mr Trump 'did not like this question', but did nevertheless give an illuminating answer on 'whether he's bluffing too much and it's hard to take seriously now on the global stage'. 'Wall Street loves an acronym, and the idea here is just, yes, the markets will go down when he makes a threat only to rebound, often higher, once the threat is back off the table,' said Ms Casella. 'And so far, where we are in sort of this tariff limbo right now, many of, if not most of the tariff threats that have been levelled so far are not yet in effect. 'That could be a different story six months from now. But the question now being: will other countries still take him seriously and come to the negotiating table if this pattern continues?' 'I hear he called that a 'nasty question', Megan,' anchor Kelly Evans said. 'He sure did. A badge of honour, I guess,' Ms Casella quipped.
CNBC
3 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains why chip exports to China are strategically important
In a Wednesday interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explained why he thinks it's necessary to export his company's artificial intelligence technology to China, saying trade with the country is vital if the U.S. wants to be a global leader in AI. "That's probably the most important strategic reason to be in China," Huang said. "Because there are so many developers there and because the world is going to adopt technology from one country or another — and we prefer it to be the American technology stack." Nvidia posted better-than-expected earnings and revenue Wednesday night, sending shares up in extended trading. While the quarter showed that demand for Nvidia's technology continues to grow, Huang said on the call that President Donald Trump's restrictions on its chips mean that the "$50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry." Huang told Cramer the regulations will lead to the loss of billions in revenue to Nvidia and tax revenue to the U.S. But more importantly, he emphasized, losing out on the Chinese market has lasting global ramifications for the U.S. Historically, he said, the platform that succeeds is the one that has the most developers — and China is home to 50% of the world's AI researchers. "We want every developer in the world to prefer the American technology stacks," Huang said. Once that happens, he continued, "American technology stacks will run AI the best all over the world." Huang claimed Nvidia will "keep our dialogue going" with the Trump administration. "We understand the technology best, and we understand how computing works," Huang said. "We understand how AI works, and we've been in China for 30 years, and so this is an area that we have a lot of, a lot of expertise, and we're going to continue to share that." Click here to download Jim Cramer's Guide to Investing at no cost to help you build long-term wealth and invest The CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust owns share of Nvidia.
UPI
3 hours ago
- Politics
- UPI
Education secretary says universities must follow the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the nation's universities must abide by the Civil Rights Act and do a better job of vetting international student activists and professors who teach ideology instead of subject matter during a Wednesday morning interview with CNBC. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo May 28 (UPI) -- Federal funding could be withheld from U.S. universities that don't abide by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Wednesday. McMahon was interviewed by CNBC on Wednesday morning regarding President Donald Trump's call to withhold all federal funding to Harvard University, threatening to revoke its non-profit status for failing to protect Jewish students and halting its intake of international students. "When we looked at different aspects of what Harvard was doing relative to anti-Semitism on its campuses, they were not enforcing Title VI the way it should be," McMahon told CNBC. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," according to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. "If a recipient of federal assistance is found to have discriminated and voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, the federal agency providing the assistance should either initiate fund termination proceedings or refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate legal action," the DOJ says. McMahon said the Trump administration had conversations with Harvard President Alan Garber and anticipated more conversations, but the university filed a federal lawsuit against the administration. McMahon said it's important for the administration to "call attention" to what Harvard and other universities are doing Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that it has invested and draws annual returns of between 5% and 10%, she said. "That's billions of dollars," McMahon said, adding that Trump might consider increasing the endowment tax on universities. "That's something that the American public can wrap its head around," she said. "There are a lot of issues that we'd like to look at, and we'd like to continue to talk to Harvard." The CNBC interviewer asked McMahon if she agrees the federal government should vet international students by reviewing their social media posts, which the Trump administration has proposed. McMahon said she doesn't know the criteria that the State or Homeland Security departments are considering to vet international students seeking visas to study in the United States. "The president certainly has great concerns," she said. "There are foreign students who come to this country ... who help create this unrest," McMahon explained. "There are activists who come in," she continued. "There are professors that are hired and brought in who are teaching ideology more than they are subject matter." She said it's important to know what the backgrounds and ideologies of international students and professors might be prior to the arrival at college campuses in the United States As the interview opened, McMahon said universities "should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and are in sync ... with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish, but primarily abiding by the laws. That comment drew strong rebukes from some media outlets. Gizmodo accused the Trump administration of continuing an "attack on higher education." Rolling Stone ran a headline claiming McMahon said Harvard needs to be in sync "with Trump's political goals" after the Trump administration cut off all contracts with Harvard. "The Trump administration is warning the nation's universities that their federal funding and research grants will only remain safe if the school is compliant with the goals of the Trump administration," Rolling Stone reported. The entertainment magazine accused the administration of attempting to "force Harvard -- and other prominent American universities -- to surrender their academic independence and accept government oversight in respect to their curriculums, staffing decisions and student body."
