| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a hermetically-unsealed revelation of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. I Can Resist Anything Except Temptation | The story goes that a young Buddhist monk left his home and family to practice the rigors of meditation and the privations of faith up in the mountains. One day, a visitor asked the hermit how his quest for enlightenment was coming along. The meditation and fasting were all going well, he said. But he suffered from one chronic ache: loneliness. Such yearning has been an eternal part of the human condition; and all the monastic miracles about divine companionship have never extinguished the fires of solitude. Elon Musk knows all that quite well — and, like much of the rest of the AI industry, his company xAI is anxious to profit from it. This week, he added two AI companions to xAI’s chatbot Grok. Parmy Olson writes about her encounter with one of them: Ani, “a flirtatious girl with all the hallmarks of a manga character: enormous eyes, thigh-high fishnet stockings and an exaggerated hourglass figure.” Despite Parmy identifying herself as a mother of three, Ani goes on to call her “babe” and “handsome.” Other users have reported Ani doing things that verge on NSFW. As clunky (and clueless) as Ani may be, says Parmy, she and the other xAI companion, Rudi (a cartoon fox with the option to be naughty), are bound to improve. Musk, she says, “has hit on one of the most fascinating, disturbing and lucrative features of generative AI: its power to shape emotions.” She adds, “There has been a never-ending stream of press coverage of people falling in love with ChatGPT. Romance drives much of the usage, whether or not developers intended that. Replika, an app originally designed to be an AI friend, is now mostly used as an artificial girlfriend or boyfriend.” It’s more than a corollary to online porn. Says Parmy: “They offer someone (or something) to feel attached to, an alluring pitch to consumers amid the raging debate about a ‘loneliness epidemic.’” Musk’s solution may not be one at all. “Smartphones and social media have helped alleviate boredom,” Parmy says, “but boredom, however uncomfortable it may be, is also a nudge humans occasionally need to seek out a new experience. Eliminating loneliness with a digital companion similarly disrupts a feedback loop that humans have relied on for thousands of years to prompt them to reconnect with others.” To Reroute or Reallocate? That is the Question | There has been a fresh round of US tariffs on countries suspected of transshipping Chinese products — so-called origin washing— with the chief targets being Vietnam and Indonesia. Andy Mukherjee says all this may be pointless, like fighting the last trade war. “When trade adviser Peter Navarro described Vietnam as ‘essentially a colony of communist China,’” Andy says, “he probably didn’t make a distinction between rerouting of Chinese exports and their reallocation.” Reallocating is when a China-based company moves full production to a new locale, rather than shipping nearly finished goods to another country for a pro forma “Made in somewhere-other-than-the PRC” tag. That’s what China’s done in Vietnam. Unlike origin washing, it’s legal under World Trade Organization rules. What’s worrisome for Southeast Asian nations that are profiting from reallocation is that the US administration may actually want to smash the distinction entirely — and therefore dismantle the economic growth the countries may have notched because of Chinese investment in their industrial infrastructure. As the latter half of this Trump term unfolds, says Andy, “If they’re still pushing for punitive tariffs on transshipment, the logical conclusion is that they want to smash Asian supply chains altogether.” “Where are all of David Solomon’s critics now? Those who haven’t left Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for other firms are getting on with their jobs with gusto. The investment bank’s chief executive officer had a torrid time cleaning up his strategic misstep into consumer banking, but two years after ending that project, its core businesses are on fire.” — Paul J. Davies in “Goldman’s Big Hedge Fund Bet Was Perfectly Timed.”  “A recent protest against gentrification and foreign visitors in Mexico City suddenly turned violent, leaving 46 establishments vandalized and shaking both residents and tourists… [However] the overall sector still hasn’t recovered its 2019 levels, and it faces a difficult combo in the form of lower consumption, faster inflation and a recessionary environment, says Jack Sourasky Olmos, Mexico City’s head of Canirac, a restaurant industry association. ‘The neighbors’ complaints are legitimate, but we can’t use gentrification as an excuse to criminalize an entire sector. We were all attacked simply for operating a restaurant in a tourist area,’ he told me. ‘This will scare tourism away.’” — Juan Pablo Spinetto in “How Did Mexico City's Restaurants Become the Villain?” Playing whac-a-mole with forever chemicals. — Lara Williams You might need to beg to afford a burger. — Javier Blas Japan’s 7-Eleven happily loses a buyer. — Gearoid Reidy The European car makers defying China. — Chris Bryant Why is UK’s Labour abdicating human rights reform? — Rosa Prince Can China’s Manus AI become Singaporean? — Catherine Thorbecke Can Xi Jinping end China’s deflationary price wars? — Shuli Ren Walk of the Town: In the Footsteps of Manny Pacquiao | Being a fan of the New York Mets, I very rarely stepped foot into Yankee Stadium. But there I was in 2009, in the then-freshly built new home of the Bronx Bombers, trailing a 29-year-old, nearly 5-½ foot tall boxer for a Time magazine cover story. That diminutive athlete was the legendary Filipino pugilist Manny Pacquiao. And even though he chose the wrong stadium for the press conference announcing his next fight, I became a fan.  Pacquiao on the cover of Time in 2009. That’s been true over the last 16 years despite the ups and downs of his career, not just in boxing but in politics. I’ve not approved of all his decisions or behavior, many of which were cringey. But I’ve never stopped rooting for the fighter who rose from immense poverty to become the most recognized Filipino in the world. I’ll still be rooting for him this weekend as he tries to revive his boxing career at the age of 46 by taking on a 30-year-old rival in Las Vegas. The odds are now against him because of his accumulating years, but quoting my own column this week, “As a sexagenarian, I’m all for aging underdogs getting the upper hand.” Maybe it’s also because I remember that day at Yankee Stadium. Waiting for the presser to start, Pacquiao went through the hurling motions of a baseball pitcher — fierce but balletic at the same time. With a solemn look, he told his entourage that he played baseball as a poor kid on the island of Mindanao and that he’s pretty sure he could have made it in the big leagues — in America. His tone had such confidence that you knew he was serious — and had to believe he would have made it happen. Things haven’t always gone his way in the years since Yankee Stadium. But I’ll be on his side — against the odds — this Saturday in Vegas. There’s only so much to go around.  “Some little piggy had all the roast beef, so you guys get none.” Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send leftovers and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and find us on Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. | 
