AI & Tech Newsletter

David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

Obama reportedly urges Democrats to prioritize safety plan for AI

Ex-president urged party at closed-door fundraiser to create sweeping framework, from safety ‘slow-down’ to job losses Barack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize a “public conversation” about AI management and safety in a closed-door Manhattan fundraiser last week. The comments…

GPT-6 Astra pilots a surveillance drone and runs a business on its own

GPT-6 Astra earns nearly three times as much as Claude Fable 5.1 on Andon Labs' Vending-Bench agent benchmark and refuses illegal price-fixing deals that Fable agrees to. On drone control, Astra is the first model to beat the human baseline on all five subtasks, including…

Two-year university study finds banning AI from classrooms leaves students worse off

A law professor spent two years testing how an AI ban, unguided AI use, and structured training affect student performance. The group without AI finished last both years. "I was wrong," the researcher writes, who had assumed that AI without guidance would do more harm than good.…

OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says

OpenAI’s decision comes after dire warnings about rapidly progressing technology and lawmakers’ calls for new rules OpenAI will not go public in 2026, Sam Altman said in a Fortune interview published on Saturday, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence. “I actually…

Trump is giving data centers a pass to pollute

President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They are urging - perhaps futilely - the…

Deepfakes are wrecking influencers’ credibility, one fake ad at a time

Influencers aren’t just battling competitors for brand deals. They’re now battling AI versions of themselves Earlier this year, Emily Schuman, the creator of the lifestyle blog Cupcakes and Cashmere, saw a photo of herself she didn’t recognize on Instagram. In a sponsored ad…

AI models' written reasoning steps correspond to distinct internal patterns, a new study finds

Reasoning steps like calculation, formula retrieval, and deduction are clearly separable in a model's internal states, especially in the middle layers. That matters for AI safety, because models process more than their visible chain of thought reveals. The article AI models'…

GPT-6 Astra needs leaner prompts and fewer guardrails, OpenAI recommends

Overly long skill descriptions, blanket reading requirements, and rigid approval rules can get in GPT-6 Astra's way, warns OpenAI's Eric Provencher. More capable models need less hand-holding, so developers should tie instructions to specific tasks and spell out when the job is…

From Hacks to Bioweapons, Claude Misuse Is Now Everywhere

Plus: The US disrupts the internet’s biggest black market, a Conti ransomware hacker gets prison time, Meta fails to stop AI-generated videos of child abuse.

Ukraine war briefing: Russian developers used AI to build ‘kamikaze’ attack drone software, Anthropic says

Anthropic also found that hackers used AI in attacks against targets in Ukrainian government, military and diplomatic sectors. What we know on day 1,662

Lawyer fined $5K over AI-hallucinated witnesses in a murder case

New Mexico's Supreme Court is punishing a lawyer for including AI-fabricated witnesses and fake police testimony in an appeal for his client's murder conviction, according to a report from Reuters. In a filing on Wednesday, the court fined Stephen Aarons $5,000 and held him in…

ChatGPT-using lawyer punished for citing fake testimony from made-up witnesses

The New Mexico Supreme Court held a ChatGPT-using lawyer in direct contempt of court for submitting a brief with "false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses," including fake police testimony and other mistakes. The state's top court referred the lawyer to a disciplinary…

Meta Sued Over Training Data for Its AI and Face-Recognition Systems

The proposed class action alleges Meta illegally harvested people’s Facebook and Instagram photos to train its AI image-generation models and to build its unreleased “NameTag” face recognition feature.

Quoting Boris Cherny

Production code written by Claude should have a higher bar than if it was written by a human. At Anthropic, we have many guardrails in place to make sure this is happening: lots of lint rules, lots of tests, Claude-driven end to end tests, Claude-powered fuzzers running daily…

UK government rejects 'kill switch' idea for dangerous AI

The Cabinet Office, which leads on AI safety, says the UK "cannot simply turn AI off".

One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

Husic to lead new inquiry into technology and productivity

A federal inquiry into why technology advances haven’t translated into a sustained lift in productivity is being set up, as artificial intelligence and geopolitical shocks threaten to upend the economy. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has signed off on a parliamentary committee inquiry…

Claude users found ways around safeguards for bioweapons research

Anthropic said it stopped multiple attempts by scientists this year to use its technology for research that could help develop biological weapons, as experts increasingly fear the threat that AI poses to public safety. The startup gave five examples of times actors “circumvented…

Anthropic blocks possible attempt to use AI to make biological weapons

The revelations in Anthropic's threat intelligence report come after a former top researcher at the company warned of the risks of AI to humanity.

AI showcase puts technology in front of policymakers

Parliamentarians do not need to know how to build a large language model. But they need to understand enough to ask the right questions – and recognise when they are not getting a complete answer. This is the premise behind the AI Parliamentary Showcase, which will bring…

OpenAI Wants to Know if an AI Industry Slowdown Would Even Be Legal

AI leaders worry antitrust law could stand in the way of what they view as an increasingly urgent push to coordinate a slowdown in AI development.

US lawmakers call for AI rules after researchers’ safety warnings

US lawmakers this week called for new rules to govern AI, after an Anthropic researcher went public with his concerns about the technology escaping human control. The reaction was broader than after previous statements from OpenAI and Anthropic staffers about safety concerns…

Is AI Actually Going to Kill Us All?

This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we dig into a former Anthropic researcher’s AI doomsday warning, the latest upgrades from Apple’s event, and the census report that claimed Trump won the 2020 election.