• It's a tough job market out there, and experienced workers are not exempt.
• Some older Americans just want a few more years of work to boost retirement savings or stay busy.
• The jobs that are available don't pay enough to make them worthwhile, job seekers said.

Gino Marconi is struggling to secure full-time work, and it's messing with his retirement plans.

Marconi, who's 64 and lives in Plantation, Florida, earned $60,000 annually as a sales representative for an outdoor supply company until two years ago, when he resigned due to the stress of working long days on the road. Marconi previously held engineering jobs that paid more.

Since then, he said he's applied to over 600 remote and in-person roles across various industries and skill levels. He suspects many positions have rejected him because he's overqualified, and he's removed the years he's completed some degrees and certifications from some applications.

Marconi said he hopes to retire in a few years and rely on Social Security income, but his plans could change if he's unable to find higher-paying work.

"My home is paid off, my cars are paid off," Marconi said. "But I need to keep going until I get back to work."

Are you an older American who is still working or looking for work? Please fill out this quick Google Form.

As many Americans reach retirement age, they don't find themselves coasting into their golden years as easily as they may have hoped. Instead, as hundreds of older Americans told Business Insider in responses to reader surveys about work and retirement, they find themselves once again on the job market. Maybe they got laid off or quit a career due to health issues. Either way, they need just a few more years to reach a comfortable financial position — and it's tough out there for job seekers.

To be sure, the unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older was just 3% as of January, compared to 4% for all workers. But for people of all ages who don't have jobs, the hiring landscape has become more challenging in recent years. Excluding a two-month pandemic-related dip in 2020, US businesses are hiring at nearly the lowest rate since 2013, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

In response to his job search struggles, Marconi is working part-time with a transportation company for a hotel chain and said he's taken steps to become a full-time insurance agent. He said he's grown frustrated with the application process — he recalled getting stood up at an interview — but is remaining optimistic while cutting back on unnecessary spending.

"I don't know when I'll retire because Social Security is not going to be enough," Marconi said, adding he's pickier about the roles he applies for. "My wife used to say I should do whatever increases my income, but I'm not going to work as an engineer making no money."

Working later in life for extra security

Some older Americans told BI that even though they could technically retire, they're holding out because they fear their savings and retirement income won't be sufficient if unexpected costs arise.

David F., 67, has been looking for work since last October — when he anticipated he would soon be laid off from his aerospace industry job. The layoff ultimately came in January.

Of the nearly 1,700 submitted applications he's tracked since beginning his job search, only 4% have yielded interviews, and none have amounted to a job offer yet. He said he's frequently encountered ghost jobs or positions with similar job descriptions to previous roles but significantly less pay.

"They're either looking for a unicorn and never finding it, or there's not really a position there, but they want to look like they're hiring," said David, who lives in Washington and asked to withhold his last name due to ongoing late-stage job interviews.

David doesn't have a firm retirement goal, but he hopes to retire within the next 5 to 10 years, assuming he finds a suitable position. After working in project management for nearly three decades, David briefly retired but returned to work to bolster his finances when the pandemic caused economic uncertainty. He said he's looking for work now because earning additional income would help him live more comfortably and stress less about retirement savings.

"My situation is not desperate, and although I've made mistakes in my retirement savings in the past, I'm not making those mistakes," David said.

David said he also wants to keep working to stay busy. He's among the older Americans who desire to keep working for reasons other than finances.

"There are the people that love their job, working or even volunteering," said Deb Whitman, AARP's chief public policy officer, adding, "There's sort of a social connection, a sense of purpose and meaning that people get."

Some older Americans' jobs are more crucial. While they hope to retire in the next few years, it's far from guaranteed.

In December 2022, David Schanen was laid off from his network engineer job. Over the last three years, he's struggled to find high-paying work in his industry.

"There's a lot of work for things that I'm qualified for, but people are paying like $25 an hour," said Schanen, who's 64 and based in Seattle. He said his network engineer job paid about $200,000 annually.

Schanen said he hopes to sell the two side businesses he started over the past decade and retire sometime in the next couple of years. However, he said his real estate photography and virtual concert businesses have only generated roughly $100,000 in combined revenues to date — not nearly enough to make his significant financial investments in them feel worthwhile.

Schanen's uncertain retirement outlook is why he's continued exploring other job opportunities. About six months ago, he began driving for Uber about 40 hours a week. He said he's frustrated with the gig's pay, but that it's given him the flexibility to control his own working hours and dedicate time to his businesses.

"Right now what I'm doing is just kind of keep helping me stay afloat," he said.

In 2023, not long after ChatGPT made generative AI mainstream, a poll on the anonymous workplace forum Blind asked, bluntly, whether young software engineers were "fucked." Some 42% of the more than 13,000 respondents picked the response "Yes? U guys are pretty much fucked."

This past October, Sundar Pichai proudly announced on an earnings call that AI was writing more than 25% of new code at Google. Mark Zuckerberg has said that Meta will build an AI engineer to write code. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a hiring freeze for engineers in 2025, saying AI had increased productivity by 30% — and then news broke that Salesforce planned to lay off 1,000 workers. (It's still hiring salespeople for AI-powered products.) Stripe intends to cut some engineers while also growing its overall head count this year.

All of this raises the question of what junior engineers will take on if some basic tasks become automated. Some product managers have speculated that AI will increasingly take on some technical coding tasks and circumvent their need for engineers. Overall, job postings for software engineers on Indeed are at a five-year low.

Are engineers really coding themselves into obsolescence?

AI is knocking down the career ladder by doing more of the coding work of entry-level engineers, but, at least for now, the increased coding output from AI is also increasing the demand for and value of experienced, creative developers to interpret and put the AI's work to good use.

While many obituaries have been written to mourn the death of coding, engineering is more than writing code: It requires creative thinking to solve problems and expertise to read code. As it is now, AI isn't an original thinker.

"AI can't support what it doesn't know," says James Stanger, the chief technology evangelist at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. "I still don't think that it is something that can fully replace a good developer." He adds, though, that "if a developer is not creative, then you can replace them very easily."

---

oftware engineering has been around since the 1960s, but hiring boomed in the '90s with the dot-com era. Coding boot camps became common in the 2010s as the demand for engineers outpaced the supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.9 million people worked as software developers, quality-assurance analysts, and testers in 2023. The bureau projected that the industry would grow by 17% from 2023 to 2033, outpacing the national average of 4% for all jobs.

An analysis from CompTIA found that the rate of job postings for software engineers fell by 50% from January to December 2023, recovering slightly by the end of 2024. While posts for jobs across tech, finance and accounting, and marketing, communications, and creative roles all fell as well, the dip for software engineers was the sharpest. But CompTIA says the reason for the fall wasn't clear. Tech companies — including some that acknowledged overhiring during the pandemic — laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023, with many citing economic uncertainty.

But there's a widening divide within software engineering regarding experience level. CompTIA found that the proportion of open software engineering roles seeking entry-level workers had dropped since January 2023, to just over 20% from nearly 30%, while job postings for those with seven years of experience or more increased to make up nearly 40% of the open roles, up from just over 30%.

The experienced engineers I talked to seemed confident that AI wouldn't come for the jobs anytime soon.

Jeremy Chua, a software engineer for the AI Lab at the venture firm Georgian, turns to chatbots when he hits issues with coding. He may prompt ChatGPT or Claude to cull answers from the depths of Google and Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for programmers, or to help him write in coding languages he's less fluent in. Chua, who has more than a decade of experience, says he was skeptical about whether gen AI could help him at work. He says that now he can sometimes complete projects that would have taken a week in a day or two, and he thinks of the chatbots he uses as coding partners. "It's not like it will replace me — it augments the way that I work," Chua tells me.

Caleb Tonkinson, an engineer at a clinical AI company called SmarterDx, tells me that AI is changing programming through two paths: "I can deliver the same thing faster, or I can deliver something better in the same period of time." He views AI as similar to other tech tools that became available to engineers — except more exciting as it advances rapidly. "There have been tons of tools for 20 years now" to debug software, generate code, or evaluate code, he says. "Your best companies and best software engineers are almost always leveraging those tools."

Cody Stewart, a principal software engineer at the software company CallRail, says he doesn't use gen AI for everything at work but might use it to get answers to "stupid questions" that he could spend a long time looking for on Google or Stack Overflow. He began using chatbots at work in 2022. "I read something that was like, you either learn to adopt new tools and figure out how they can enhance your day-to-day life and you stay with the times, or people are going to outlevel you," he said. "I saw that and thought I should probably give this a shot."

While more-experienced engineers are optimistic about AI, young engineers have more reason to worry.

The startup Cognition AI last year widely released an AI-powered software engineer called Devin, designed to work on bugs and small feature requests. In a December video, it described it as "a junior engineer" who "works best with a great manager." Cognition AI and its CEO, Scott Wu, did not respond to questions about whether it's meant to replace engineers or reduce the number the companies need.

Jayesh Govindarajan, a Salesforce executive vice president focused on AI, told my colleague Ana Altchek that the company was building "a system that can pretty much solve anything for you" but "just doesn't know what to solve," making knowing how to code less important. "I may be in the minority here," Govindarajan said, "but I think something that's far more essential than learning how to code is having agency."

Alexander Petros, a freelance open-source software engineer, is an AI holdout; he tells me he doesn't use generative AI to code. "I do worry that because AI is in many ways doing things that you used to hire junior developers to do, it does remove the ladder upon which junior developers would try to do those things, make those mistakes, and then learn," he says. Petros says he tried ChatGPT but found that the code could be clunky. If something in that code breaks, humans may not know how to fix it. "The process of producing code with LLMs, for the foreseeable future, is almost entirely distinct from the process of producing good software systems that last for a very long time," he says. Plus, using AI to solve problems means he may not learn how to get through those roadblocks on his own.

Chatbots lack creativity — that's where engineers, especially those who have been doing the job for a while, have an in-demand advantage. Stanger says he hopes companies use AI not as justification for cutting back on engineers but as a way to help them "get deeper into this code and get more creative."

Stanger says that treating engineers as a faucet that can be turned on and off as a business needs, or even replaced with AI, is likely to backfire in the long term. "If you've got toxic companies that are interested in that binge-and-purge, on-and-off hiring of developers, I'm not sure they're going to create very good products," he says.

People have long panicked that technology will take their livelihood. But even as automation eliminates some jobs, tech often creates a demand for new roles; most people today are working jobs that didn't exist before 1940.

The wholesale elimination of software engineers likely won't come to fruition in the near future, but the picture for more-experienced engineers is brighter. In the best-case scenario, AI will mean they get more time to flex their muscles and solve deep problems.

---

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

Their role in technology and the global economy has made countries with rare earths a key focus in geopolitical discussions.

Vice President Vance said that "in Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat" at Munich Security Conference.

The USS Harry S. Truman is back at sea after being damaged in a collision with a cargo ship near Port Said, Egypt.

The U.S. military has shot down four high-altitude balloons flying over North America in February 2023.

• Ukraine's military intelligence chief said North Korea is covering 50% of Russia's war ammo needs.
• Kyrylo Budanov said it's another sign of how heavily Pyongyang is contributing to the war.
• His comment also comes as Ukraine has been trying to hit Russia's ammo supply.

North Korea is providing Russia with half of the ammunition used by Moscow against Ukraine, the head of Kyiv's military intelligence agency said on Sunday.

"They heavily rely on — well, we can now say it — their strategic ally, North Korea, that is covering for practically 50% of Russia's need for munitions," Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, told reporters. "Artillery shells, in particular."

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, Budanov said Pyongyang was also providing Russia with 155mm self-propelled howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems. He has previously said that these were the M1989 "Koksan" howitzer and the M1991 system.

Over the last year, North Korea has increasingly dedicated resources to help Russia sustain its war against Ukraine. It deployed an estimated 11,000 to 12,000 troops in Kursk late last year.

Pyongyang's involvement comes as Moscow and Kyiv focus on outlasting each other along the largely stagnant front lines and as Russia digs deep into its economy to maintain recruitment and weapons production.

North Korea isn't giving its resources away for free. Its leader, Kim Jong Un, is reported by South Korean intelligence to be receiving technological assistance from Russian experts, as well as food and cash from Moscow.

Large-scale ammunition shipments from Pyongyang could especially frustrate Ukraine's effort to exhaust Moscow's supply by targeting factories and depots deep inside Russian territory with drone strikes.

Ukraine's military chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in January that Russia was expending about 40,000 artillery rounds per day, but that the strikes had pushed that count "significantly lower."

Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine's foreign intelligence, Oleh Ivashchenko, also said at the Sunday press conference that Russia plans to locally manufacture 7 million artillery rounds and mines in 2025.

"Russia clearly understands that it produces more of those than the rest of the European countries together," Ivashchenko said.

He added that Russia intends to produce 3,000 long-range precision missiles this year.

In comparison, the US is planning to produce 100,000 shells a month by the summer of 2025, or 1.2 million a year. And that's already a ramped-up production cycle.

The European Union has said that it hopes to produce 2 million shells in 2025.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

• A top nutrition scientist keeps his kitchen stocked with nutritious foods.
• These include frozen spinach, lentil pasta, kimchi, and miso paste.
• Having healthy foods on hand makes it easier to whip up gut-friendly meals.

Tim Spector, a top nutrition scientist, tries to eat 30 different plants a week for his gut health — but they're not all fresh, as you might expect.

In his cookbook, "Food For Life," which is due to be published in the US and Canada on May 27, Spector calls jarred, tinned, and frozen foods the "unsung heroes of eating well," because they are affordable and nutritious.

So Spector not only stocks his fridge with whole foods that make healthy eating easy, but his pantry, freezer, and kitchen counters, too.

Here's what the epidemiologist at Kings College London and the cofounder of the nutrition company ZOE keeps in his kitchen.

Grains, tinned vegetables, and healthy flavorings in his pantry

Spector's cupboards always contain a variety of grains, such as buckwheat, spelt, pearl barley, and quinoa, which are great alternatives to rice and pasta, he wrote in the cookbook. But he keeps wholegrain and lentil pasta on hand because he's a "big pasta fan," he told Business Insider.

As many varieties of beans and pulses as he can find are also on his grocery list, because they are affordable sources of protein, fiber, and nutrients.

Spector's recipes often call for tinned and jarred vegetables, such as tomatoes, sweetcorn, olives, and artichokes, which tend to be cheaper than fresh vegetables and have a longer shelf life. But watch out for additives, Spector said, such as salt or preservatives.

Spector also keeps miso and nutritional yeast to hand as alternatives to bouillon cubes, which tend to be highly processed. He previously told BI that he tries to avoid ultra-processed foods to care for his gut health.

Vegetables, fruits, and fermented foods in his fridge

There are always plenty of vegetables, fruits, and leafy greens in Spector's fridge, as well as a small amount of "traditional cheese," he wrote, which is fermented. More research is needed to confirm the health benefits of fermented foods, but a 2022 review of studies linked them to a lower risk of type two diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Fermentation "experiments," such as homemade kefir and pickles, can also be found in his fridge, as well as miso and gochujang: two flavorful fermented pastes that add flavor to dishes.

Spector recommends stocking the "four Ks" in your fridge — kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and 'kraut (sauerkraut). He previously shared three tips for eating more fermented foods with BI.

Berries, soup, and soffritto in his freezer

There are yet more vegetables in Spector's freezer, including frozen cubes of spinach, peas, and mushrooms.

He also has a bag of soffritto — which is chopped vegetables (usually onions, carrots, and celery) that can be used as a base for many dishes — and frozen herbs to flavor his home-cooked meals.

Spector keeps mixed berries and fruit in the freezer too, which he uses in his go-to healthy breakfast of yogurt with toppings.

"I always try to make sure I have a nice, thick, Italian-style vegetable soup in the freezer that I can simply defrost and reheat when I'm pressed for time," he wrote. For example, the Minestrone soup recipe in his book.

Fruit and nuts on the counter

Spector keeps a fruit bowl where he can see it on his kitchen counter, as well as containers of mixed nuts. That way, if he's tempted to snack, he's more likely to go for the healthy ones that he can see.

He previously told BI about his "diversity jar" that is full of different nuts and seeds, which he keeps on hand to sprinkle on his meals and help him eat 30 plants a week.

Cricket fans will want to tune in to Willow TV on Tuesday morning to catch the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy match between South Africa and Australia.

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the imprisoned former FTX chief, had an inactive X account for two years.
• But on Monday, 10 posts giving advice on firing employees appeared on that account.
• It comes as Elon Musk's DOGE ramps up efforts to slash head count in the federal workforce.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former FTX chief sentenced to 25 years in prison in March last year, disappeared from X for two years. A series of 10 posts on Monday night from his account broke that spell.

The posts gave his followers leadership advice about firing employees and talked about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Bankman-Fried's last X post before Monday was on January 20, 2023.

Some of the posts on Bankman-Fried's account give tips about how to fire people.

"I'd tell this to everyone we let go: that it was as much our fault for not having the right role for them, or the right person to manage them, or the right work environment for them," read one post.

Other posts voiced support for DOGE and its rounds of firing. One post read: "There's no point in keeping them around, doing nothing."

It is unclear if Bankman-Fried wrote the posts himself. His lawyer did not respond to a request from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

The posts come nearly a year after he was convicted of taking $8 billion from his customers in his FTX cryptocurrency exchange. he was sentenced to 25 years in prison by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

He has been serving his sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Musk's DOGE is doubling down on its plan to slash the size of the US federal workforce as part of its larger aim to weed out government inefficiencies.

The Office of Personnel Management wrote federal workers an email on Saturday, asking them to turn in a list of their achievements within the last week and giving them a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Musk wrote in a Saturday X post about the new directive, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

However, at least eight federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, have asked their workers not to respond to the email.

A government watchdog special counsel who oversees federal workers' whistleblower reports said Monday his office is seeking to halt some of the Trump administration's mass firings of federal workers.

The big picture: Hampton Dellinger, who's suing the administration after President Trump tried to remove him from his role leading the Office of Special Counsel, said he's requested that the firing of six probationary agency workers be halted due to concerns the action may violate the law — and he indicated he may intervene in more cases.

---

Driving the news: Dellinger filed a request on Friday for a 45-day stay in the probationary workers' firings "across various executive branch agencies" with the independent agency the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews the Office of Personnel Management actions, per a statement from the special counsel's office.

• "Firing probationary employees without individualized cause appears contrary to a reasonable reading of the law, particularly the provisions establishing rules for reductions in force," Dellinger said in a statement.
• "I believe I have a responsibility to request a stay of these actions while my agency continues to investigate further the apparent violation of federal personnel laws," he added, citing a Congressional direction for watchdogs to protect government employees from prohibited personnel practices.
• "The Special Counsel believes other probationary employees are similarly situated to the six workers for whom he currently is seeking relief. Dellinger is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings."
• Representatives for the Trump administration did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment in the evening.

Go deeper: Supreme Court delays Trump's firing of agency head

Stellantis is calling its upcoming Ram 1500 extended-range Ramcharger the Goldilocks of pickup trucks — an electric truck with a backup gas-powered generator good for nearly 700 miles of worry-free driving.

Why it matters: Extended-range EVs, already popular in China, are a bridge technology for consumers who aren't ready to commit to a fully-electric vehicle whether because of cost, charging access or other concerns.

---

• And, because they use a much smaller battery, they're also thousands of dollars cheaper than a fully-electric equivalent model.
• The Ramcharger will be the first extended-range pickup for sale in the U.S.

Driving the news: Amid slowing demand for electric pickups, Stellantis in December shuffled its product plans, pulling the Ramcharger ahead of the Ram 1500 REV, its first battery-electric truck.

• The Ramcharger will be available for sale in the second half of 2025, while the fully-electric version is pushed to 2026.

Zoom in: The Ramcharger's 92-kw battery is good for 145 miles of pure electric driving, after which a 3.6-liter gasoline engine kicks on to power an onboard generator.

• Total range is expected to be up to 690 miles.
• The truck only runs on electricity; the engine powers the generator, but not the wheels.

Between the lines: One of the complaints about electric pickup trucks is that the driving range drops significantly when towing or hauling, or climbing up a steep grade.

• The advantage of the backup generator is that performance doesn't suffer, Stellantis said.
• The Ramcharger can tow 14,000 pounds and carry more than 2,600 pounds of cargo.
• "There are absolutely no downsides," Ram brand CEO Tim Kuniskis said.

What to watch: Pricing has yet to be announced.

• In a briefing for reporters Monday, Kuniskis floated a hypothetical price of $69,995.
• That's higher than a typical gasoline pickup, but would be $8,000 to $14,000 below a fully electric model with a larger battery, he said.

Denny's is temporarily adding an egg surcharge at some of its restaurants because of the nationwide egg shortage and increased prices, the chain confirmed to Axios Monday.

Why it matters: The bird flu has ravaged the nation's supply of eggs, leading to shortages and higher prices at grocery stores and restaurants.

---

• Avian influenza has affected at least 18.9 million birds in the last 30 days, according to USDA data.

State of play: Denny's would not say how many of its 1,500-plus restaurants are adding the "surcharge to every meal that includes eggs" and how much the fees are.

• "Our pricing decisions are being made market-by-market, and restaurant-by-restaurant due to the regional impacts of the egg shortage," Denny's said in a statement.
• "We understand our guests' desire for value, and we will continue to look for ways to provide options on our menu, including our $2 $4 $6 $8 value menu, while navigating these rapidly changing market dynamics responsibly," the company said.

The big picture: Restaurants are starting to crack under the weight of the nation's egg crisis.

• The Waffle House became the first national restaurant chain to add a temporary surcharge earlier this month. Its fee is 50 cents per egg.
• Smaller, more local chains and individual restaurants have also added surcharges for eggs, said Amanda Oren, a vice president at supply-chain platform RELEX Solutions.
• Many stores have instituted limits on how many eggs consumers can buy each day, including Trader Joe's, Costco and Sam's Club.

More from Axios:

• Crafts retailer Joann going out of business; 19,000 jobs lost
• Starbucks menu cuts starting soon, layoffs announced
• Dunkin' joins Starbucks in dropping nondairy milk fee

• China has officially praised its rising star, DeepSeek, as a success.
• But instead of framing DeepSeek as a challenger, Beijing said it would "complement" American firms.
• While DeepSeek upended beliefs about AI costs, US firms are focused instead on a race to reach AGI.

China on Monday lauded DeepSeek's much-hyped AI model, but said the Hangzhou-based company isn't competing with America's leading AI firms.

"As AI continues to reshape industries and everyday life of humanity, DeepSeek complements, rather than competes against, existing AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind," Beijing's embassy in Washington said in a statement seen by Business Insider.

DeepSeek has continued to raise its profile in Beijing since its reportedly low-cost AI model stunned the tech world. It's quickly become a star at home, with the startup's founder, Liang Wenfeng, given a front-row seat at a symposium hosted last week by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The symposium has been a rallying point for the tech scene in China, which saw Xi's supportive remarks — and the attendance of once-shunned Alibaba founder Jack Ma — as a positive sign after years of industry crackdowns.

In yet another moment of official recognition for DeepSeek, the Chinese embassy's statement on Monday praised the company as a success, saying it "significantly lowered AI development costs."

DeepSeek has said that it spent less than $6 million on "official training" for its latest model, but the scope of those expenses isn't clearly defined. SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor analytics firm, estimated in late January that the company may possess $500 million worth of GPUs.

American firms at the forefront of AI have also called the Western panic over DeepSeek overblown.

Google DeepMind's CEO, for example, said that the Chinese model is impressive but showed "no real new scientific advance" toward the true goal among AI leaders — reaching artificial general intelligence.

Still, DeepSeek is seriously undercutting pricing models for American AI firms like OpenAI, with Bernstein tech analysts estimating that DeepSeek's prices are 20 to 40 times cheaper.

But Beijing's official line adopted a conciliatory tone, framing China's foray into AI as a chance for collaboration rather than outmuscling US firms.

"AI companies across different regions contribute unique strengths, leading to better, more inclusive solutions for users everywhere," the embassy said in its statement. Emphasizing a desire to collaborate and avoid conflict has long been central to China's public image.

On the other hand, the US has warned that its race with China to develop more sophisticated AI would be a difference-maker in Beijing's push for superiority.

The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for additional comment sent by BI outside regular business hours. DeepSeek and the startup's parent company, HighFlyer, did not respond to similar requests for comment.

• Ayesha Curry says she prioritizes her relationship with Stephen Curry over their four children.
• "And that works for us because then you have two happy people raising the kids in the house," she said.
• Prioritizing each other involves making time for each other, such as going on date nights, she said.

Ayesha Curry believes that partners should put each other first in order to be good parents.

In an interview with People, Curry spoke about prioritizing her relationship with her husband, NBA player Stephen Curry, over their kids.

"I think for us, our relationship always comes first. Then we're parents," Curry told People. "And that works for us because then you have two happy people raising the kids in the house. So the family sector in our lives always comes first."

The couple, who tied the knot in 2011, share four kids: Riley, Ryan, Canon, and Caius — whom they welcomed in May.

This isn't the first time that Curry has spoken about how she and her husband make their marriage work.

In a 2019 interview with HelloGiggles, Curry shared that her parents and her in-laws were the ones who showed the couple the importance of prioritizing each other.

"And then also the biggest thing, both of our parents are still married and have been married for 30-plus years, and the one thing that they both shared with us — some through learning it the hard way, some through just making sure that they do it — is just making sure that we put each other first, even before the kids, as tough as that sounds," Curry told HelloGiggles.

This involves making time for each other, including date nights, she said.

"Because when you become a parent, you want to put your kids first, and we do, but we do it second to our relationship. Because ultimately, when our relationship is good, the kids are happy, and they're thriving, and our family life is good," Curry said.

At the end of the day, their relationship sets the basis for their family life.

"We have to put that into perspective and realize that it's not us being selfish, it's making sure we set a strong foundation," she said.

The Currys aren't the only celebrity couple who've spoken about making time for each other despite their busy schedules.

Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan, shared that they don't go more than two weeks without seeing each other and being together as a family.

Gordon Ramsay's wife, Tana, says that she and her husband often get dressed up to go out on dates without their kids.

"In our relationship, having little kids again, our present to each other on our last anniversary was, we have to go to the theater once a month, and we have to go out three times a month, and we're not allowed to wear trainers," Tana said.

A representative for Curry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.

"Wordle" creator Josh Wardle once told Newsweek he's "not very good" at solving the puzzle.

Today's "Connections" word puzzle is hard, but with Newsweek's helpful tips and hints, you are sure to solve it.

Opinion polls suggest that potential cuts to programs like Medicaid and Medicare are deeply unpopular.

• Federal workers were told to send a list of their accomplishments by midnight on Monday or lose their jobs.
• Some federal agencies told their employees not to respond.
• President Donald Trump and Elon Musk appeared intent on moving forward with the request.

The deadline for federal employees to email in their lists of personal accomplishments has passed.

In the lead-up to the deadline, federal employees received conflicting guidance from President Donald Trump, DOGE leader Elon Musk, and government agencies on how — and if — they should respond to the request from the Office of Personnel Management.

Here's the latest.

What Trump is saying

On Saturday, the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to federal workers asking them to send an "email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week" by Monday 11:59 p.m. ET.

At a press conference on Monday, Trump said he thought OPM's email was "great."

"So by asking the question, 'Tell us what you did this week,' what he's doing is saying, 'Are you actually working?'" Trump said.

Trump wasn't clear on what happens if federal workers don't send in their emails.

"And then, if you don't answer, you are sort of semi-fired, or you're fired," Trump said.

When asked about the conflicting guidance agencies have given on the request, Trump said the State Department and FBI were "working on confidential things."

Guidance from the departments had been given "in a friendly manner" and not "in any way combatively with Elon," Trump added.

In a Truth Social post published on Saturday, hours before OPM sent out its email, Trump praised Musk's work with DOGE but said he would like to see Musk "get more aggressive."

Musk's latest comments on the DOGE ask

In an X post on Saturday, Musk wrote that failure to respond to OPM's email "will be taken as a resignation."

By Monday, Musk's wording had changed.

Musk wrote in an X post on Monday that federal workers who have yet to respond to the request "will be given another chance."

"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk wrote.

In a Monday morning X post responding to Garry Tan, the president and CEO of Y Combinator, Musk said the DOGE request was "basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email."

"This mess will get sorted out this week," Musk wrote. "Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don't get it yet, but they will."

The request echoes one that Musk made to employees at X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Shortly after he bought the social network in October 2022, Musk asked software engineers to print out their latest code for review.

Representatives for the White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Guidance varies across departments

In a memo to heads of departments and agencies on Monday, OPM reiterated its deadline for employee emails and said all emails should be addressed to agency heads with OPM copied.

At least eight agencies, including the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services, have told workers they don't have to respond to DOGE's email.

Some government departments have told workers that responses about productivity will be handled by the agencies, not staff.

Other departments have told employees they can respond to OPM if they wish, but that not responding will not incur penalties.

The Social Security Administration reversed course on its messaging to employees. A day after telling employees the OPM email was a "legitimate assignment," it said on Monday that responding is "voluntary."

"Non-responses are not considered a resignation," the agency's email to employees read.

It's unclear how the White House and DOGE plan to reconcile the conflicting guidance.

The turmoil comes after a chaotic few weeks for government employees as Musk's DOGE cuts head count across government agencies.

Thousands of federal workers have been fired. Some of these workers received termination notices saying the job cuts were based on performance, per documents BI viewed.

• Alex Karp said if he were not running Palantir, he'd move to his "hermit-like location."
• At the Economic Club of New York, Karp said he'd lean into hobbies like Tai Chi, shooting guns, and reading.
• Karp, known for being an eccentric leader, has run Palantir since 2004.

Alex Karp said if he were not running Palantir, he probably wouldn't be running another company — he'd be living like a "hermit" and focusing on his hobbies.

The billionaire CEO of the big-data analytics company made the comments on Monday while speaking at the Economic Club of New York.

When asked what he'd be doing if he wasn't leading Palantir, Karp said that while he is suited to running the defense contractor, he wasn't "built to run another company."

"I am a little bit of a hermit, and the minute they fire me, I'm going to be moving back to my hermit-like location and doing my hermit dance," he said, adding that involved things like reading, shooting guns, Tai Chi, and cross country skiing.

Karp also said he's an "introvert" and is not interested in running for office.

He added that he'd also spend time with some friends and might engage in some "debaucherous behavior," prompting laughter from the crowd.

Karp has gained a reputation as an eccentric leader in Silicon Valley known for being a health and wellness fanatic who keeps Tai Chi swords in his office.

Karp has been CEO of Palantir, which he cofounded, since 2004, building it into a multi-billion-dollar company and major government contractor.

During its earnings call earlier this month, the company reported US revenue growth of 52% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, beating analyst expectations. However, Palantir's stock has taken a hit over the past week due to the possibility of defense spending cuts.

During the talk on Monday, Karp also shared why he left academia. After attending law school at Stanford University, Karp pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy at a university in Germany.

"I left academia because I felt like I was almost always right, and it didn't matter because it was all politics," Karp said. "So I had to go into business because in business there is a deliverable."