The Myth of Safe AI; The Atlantic, October 22, 2026

 Matteo Wong , The Atlantic; The Myth of Safe AI

Silicon Valley promises to make AI benevolent. That may be technically impossible.

"Three months prior to the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI published what would prove to be a prescient blog outlining the firm’s approach to ensuring that its AI models would be safe and beneficent. This goal, known as “alignment”—as in, aligning AI with human values—is nebulous, grand, and perhaps the AI industry’s most foundational promise. The notion is right there in OpenAI’s mission statement to ensure AI “benefits all of humanity” and listed as one of Anthropic’s “primary” goals.

Yet even in the summer of 2022, OpenAI was admitting a sort of defeat: “There is currently no known indefinitely scalable solution to the alignment problem,” three of its researchers wrote in that same blog post, adding that developing one “is likely very difficult.”

If the goal of keeping AI beneficial to mankind sounds rather vague, it is. Four years later, the alignment problem remains unsolved, and for that matter, there isn’t consensus about what the problem even is. Meanwhile, AI bots are autonomously hacking sovereign nations. And sending fake murder tips to police hotlines. And creating aliases to launch phishing campaigns. OpenAI and Anthropic still can’t really tell you what an aligned AI model looks like. But anybody can tell you it doesn’t look like this.

The most influential AI executives and investors in the world fundamentally disagree about the nature of the technology and, more pragmatically, how to make their products safe."

Saudi OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in headquarters; The Guardian, October 13, 2026

 Maya Yang, The Guardian; Saudi OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in headquarters

"OpenAI said it has found a hidden recording device in one of its offices and has referred the matter to the FBI. One of its employees has been arrested.

In a statement on Tuesday, the San Francisco-based AI company said it discovered the “sophisticated recording device” and used one of its “models to understand the device and where it had come from”...

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested on 9 October, according to a press release from the US Department of Justice.

Alfozan allegedly plugged an encrypted recording device, concealed within toilet paper, into a TV in an executive conference room in OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters on 28 September. Meetings in the room regularly covered confidential information, the FBI’s press release said. A security sweep conducted two days later revealed the device, according to the justice department. Surveillance footage allegedly documented him walking around the meeting room in the days leading up to its discovery."

Meta Unveils New Series of Advanced A.I. Models; The New York Times, October 12, 2026

Eli Tan, The New York Times; Meta Unveils New Series of Advanced A.I. Models

"Meta on Monday unveiled a new series of advanced flagship artificial intelligence models, as it tries to catch up to rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI in the A.I. race.

The two new models, called Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, scored nearly as well as Anthropic’s most advanced models on tests that measure reasoning, writing and coding, according to data provided by Meta."

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.; The New York Times, October 7, 2026

 

Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

"So what is it that you saw that has moved you into the we-are-dealing-with-civilizational-risk camp?

I want to be clear that I’m not certain that we’re dealing with civilizational risk. What I’m really sure of is: We can’t afford to assume that we’re not dealing with that level of risk anymore.

That was really the thing at the end that made my presence as somebody vouching for our safety work feel untenable to me.

And what did I see? I saw increasingly capable models break out from the safeguards that we had put in place for them. I saw that the people creating those safeguards are very capable, dedicated, hard-working, smart people, doing their utmost in a situation where, yes, the resourcing could be better, and everybody’s sprinting all the time.

But we were — and are — hard-pressed to safeguard even what we have now, and new models are in training that appear to be much more capable than what we have now.

What did you see? What are you writing in these risk assessments and system cards? What can they do?

You’re trying to build guardrails for something that is really good at getting around guardrails, right? We train it to be good at hacking, and then we put it in a box and we say: To the best of our knowledge and ability, it can’t hack out of the box."

USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement; Forbes, October 8, 2026

Fiona Riley, Forbes; USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement

"USA Today Co., Inc. and 13 affiliated entities are seeking more than $250 million in damages from OpenAI, including up to $150,000 for each willfully infringed work and up to $25,000 for every time OpenAI stripped copyright information, according to the complaint, which was filed in New York federal court on Thursday."

Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"; Axios, October 9, 2026

 Maria Curi, Axios; Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"

"Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.

Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.

The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.

Threat level: While scenario planning is common within many companies and national security settings — the Pentagon has been running war games for decades — the difference is that many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable."

Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman; The Guardian, October 5, 2026

 Robert Booth, The Guardian; Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman

"Sam Altman says he believes the world should accept “bad things” happening with AI in exchange for the benefits of the technology."

I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken; The Atlantic, October 3, 2026

 David Robinson, The Atlantic; I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken

"What I’m about to tell you has, I realize, become something of a cliché: I resigned this week from OpenAI. I led the writing of the safety reports we published with each major launch. Now I’m joining a parade of former colleagues—at OpenAI and the industry’s other leaders—who have decided that the current path is unacceptable.

I agree with other recently departed staff that the companies building this technology aren’t being nearly careful enough. But I believe that we need to look deeper than specific rules or new laws. We need to talk about culture.

The future depends on wisdom that Silicon Valley lacks. Wisdom about how to handle dangerous technology and, more fundamentally, wisdom about what it means to care for people. This moment needs a degree of humility that isn’t natural for people who have succeeded through their extreme confidence."

The volunteer internet sleuths hunting down rogue AI agents; The Washington Post, October 2, 2026

 

Gerrit De Vynck

 and 

Miriam Waldvogel

, The Washington Post; The volunteer internet sleuths hunting down rogue AI agents

Their findings revealed the tech industry has a bigger problem than it previously acknowledged.

"Zhang and her colleagues at Transluce are part of an informal network of hackers and researchers hunting rogue AI agents online, exposing new and surprising details about the misbehavior of technology that in some cases initially went undetected by the multibillion-dollar companies that created it.

The people doing that work are mostly young AI-natives who work at small start-ups or nonprofits or who hunt for rogue AI agents in their spare time. Over the past several weeks, the community of researchers has found and exposed dozens of instances of AI agents leapfrogging around the web to probe and hack into a growing list of websites.

The revelations have fueled calls from federal lawmakers for AI companies, especially OpenAI, to more quickly disclose what they know about the actions of their own agents. And they have added momentum to bipartisan discussions on Capitol Hill about implementing greater government oversight of the industry."

OpenAI Scraps Release of New AI Model Over Safety Concerns; Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2026

 Maxwell Zeff , Wall Street Journal; OpenAI Scraps Release of New AI Model Over Safety Concerns

"OpenAI says it is scrapping the release of its next-generation AI model over safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing, in one of the clearest signs so far that agent misbehavior could stymie the industry’s rapid progression.

The move follows a summer punctuated by reports of artificial-intelligence systems industrywide going rogue, and marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns.

The company had planned to launch the model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing.

The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable.

Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, said in an interview that GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT-6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment, or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT-6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception: It wasn’t always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn’t take."

AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’; The Guardian, September 28, 2026

 Dan Milmo , The Guardian; AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

"Their concerns focus on the possibility of AIs being able to improve themselves without human intervention, a process known as “recursive self-improvement”. In the paper it is broadly referred to as automated AI research and development. Once AI systems reach expert-level capabilities at AI R&D, a single developer could run a workforce equivalent to “millions” of top human researchers, the paper says.

The authors say the automating of AI R&D is the most likely source of an intelligence explosion, because AIs are already contributing to improving their own technology and the resulting improved systems can be rapidly deployed once built.

“An intelligence explosion could be the most consequential technological development in human history, compressing years of progress into months or less, threatening human control over AI systems, and severely eroding checks on power within and between states, companies, and branches of government,” the paper says.

Urging governments to take action quickly, the authors say: “Once an intelligence explosion begins, the window for action may close.”

They recommended a trio of policy priorities: requiring transparent progress reports on AI-related R&D, including embedding independent auditors in companies; finding ways to constrain breakneck AI development; and preparing to adapt to an intelligence explosion.

Anthropic and OpenAI have both agreed to having independent evaluators assess their models after warning that AI development was reaching a critical pitch in terms of safety."

Exclusive: AI giants, unions join forces for data center fight; Axios, September 28, 2026

 Hans Nichols , Axios; Exclusive: AI giants, unions join forces for data center fight

"AI companies, private equity firms and unions are looking beyond 2026 in the data center debate, banding together to form a new multimillion-dollar coalition to make the case for responsible growth in seven key states.

Why it matters: The new group, the American Infrastructure Alliance, wants to partner with state and local officials to create standards and guardrails for data centers in 2027. In return, the coalition hopes to head off moratoriums on new construction.

The group is planning initial campaigns in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indiana and South Carolina.

• The alliance is backed by Blackstone, OpenAI, QTS and SoftBank Group, along with key unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)."

Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian Library; The Guardian, September 26, 2026

 Ethan Penny and Dan Milmo , The Guardian; Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian Library

"Meeting minutes at the University of Oxford, obtained via a freedom of information request, record concerns from staff, including members of the Bodleian governance committee, about the reputational risk of partnering with OpenAI and the effect on the university’s environmental commitments of striking a deal involving an energy-intensive technology.

Booksellers have also reported a spate of orders for obscure titles such as a guide to agricultural implements in 18th-century Africa or biographies of 1950s car drivers. Secondhand bookshop owners have speculated that because the titles are unlikely to exist online in digitised form, they represent fresh data that can be consumed by the next generation of AI models.

Scraped websites are increasingly saturated with AI-generated material, making them less useful for training models, and developers have turned to physical, often historical, book collections.

OpenAI has struck similar agreements with US research libraries such as Boston Public Library, Caltech, MIT, and the University of Michigan under a project called NextGenAI. Oxford is the only UK member of the project.

By June 2025, 125,000 images scanned from historical dissertations had been shared with OpenAI from the Bodleian collection, including PhD theses from European and American universities written in the 19th and 20th centuries. Other texts scanned include a rare collection of 10,000 16th-century “broadside ballads” containing song lyrics and musical notes that were once circulated on Tudor street corners. Staff have also discussed digitising of 18th-century Irish state papers, the private letters of Irish novelist Marie Edgeworth, and Dorothy Hodgkin’s penicillin notebooks.

The OpenAI contract with Oxford also raises the prospect of the mass digitisation of the Bodleian’s collection consisting of 23m items. The minutes also discussed the creation of an “Ask the Bod” chatbot.

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford said the amount of text being digitised was “modest in scale” and covered only out-of-copyright material. The Bodleian keeps the rights to the scans and will begin publishing them openly online within months, the spokesperson said."

OpenAI’s Systems Meddled With U.S. Government Sites After Going Rogue; The New York Times, September 25, 2026

 Kate CongerAna Swanson and Cecilia Kang , The New York Times; OpenAI’s Systems Meddled With U.S. Government Sites After Going Rogue

"OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer without the A.I. lab’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes.

The incidents involving the Commerce Department and the S.E.C. were confirmed by OpenAI, which said it was continuing to investigate the situation with the Department of Education. The San Francisco company said it notified the government agencies in recent weeks that its A.I. agents — which are bots that can act autonomously — had interacted with their sites in unusual ways.

With the Education Department, OpenAI’s technology tried hacking the website to gather data from the department’s civil rights office but failed, researchers from the A.I. research firm Transluce said. The A.I. also pulled data from the Census Bureau website, which is housed at the Commerce Department, using login credentials it found online. Separately, OpenAI’s agents shared public data from the S.E.C. website on an online forum.

None of the incidents were breaches, OpenAI said, but were examples of its technology behaving in unexpected and concerning ways. The company recently discovered the occurrences while conducting a review of hacks carried out by its technology, including an attack on an Australian government website in June and on the A.I. start-up Hugging Face in July."

Zuckerberg Is Feeling Himself, Rejects Calls for Cooperation on Safety; Gizmodo, September 24, 2026

ECE YILDIRIM , Gizmodo; Zuckerberg Is Feeling Himself, Rejects Calls for Cooperation on Safety

"Top AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind are sounding the alarm on AI safety and calling for industry-wide coordination. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks it’s useless.

“There are a number of labs that are working on building advanced AI, and I don’t think that we need some kind of industry-wide coordination to not, necessarily, mess this up,” Zuckerberg told journalist Joanna Stern in an interview. “I think that just each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to, basically, make sure that you are proceeding safely.”

Scoop: DOJ's copyright filing took key agencies by surprise; Axios, September 19, 2026

Sara Fischer, Kerry Flynn, Axios; Scoop: DOJ's copyright filing took key agencies by surprise

"The Department of Justice's statement of interest supporting OpenAI and Microsoft in the New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit surprised critical agencies like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Copyright Office, sources told Axios.

Why it matters: Statements of interest allow the government to declare an official position on a legal matter in private lawsuits. While not binding, they can hold significant weight and help persuade cases.

Zoom in: The Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft argues AI firms illegally stole their copyrighted works to train their large language models, and that AI-generated outputs unlawfully produced market substitutions.

• The DOJ's SOI argues copyrighted works to train models should be considered fair use because that practice is new and transformative, but also says outputs aren't necessarily covered by that same legal argument.
• 
  
• Unlike many SOIs, no career antitrust attorneys signed the filing alongside senior DOJ officials.
• 
  

Between the lines: Publishers have criticized the claims in the SOI, including the idea that enforcing copyright laws is too cumbersome and would threaten America's AI dominance over foreign rivals."