Several AI industry leaders have publicly urged a slower pace of AI development, citing safety and societal risk concerns. Lawmakers and policymakers, however, have largely declined to act on these calls, continuing to prioritize competitive advancement over caution.
Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN the company is still working out 'how and when' to release a next-generation Steam Deck, even after unveiling its full 2026 hardware lineup including the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. He said the current RAM shortage hasn't really changed Valve's thinking on developing the handheld, though no timeline was given.
Elon Musk's xAI has withdrawn the antitrust allegations it previously filed against Apple, which had accused the iPhone maker of favoring OpenAI's products within its ecosystem. The company is continuing to pursue its separate antitrust lawsuit against OpenAI.
Fitness app SmartGym has released version 8, adding a feature called SmartGym Intelligence that lets users build workout routines by typing natural-language requests, such as specifying exercise types or restrictions. Because SmartGym isn't yet eligible for Apple's Private Cloud Compute, developer Matt Abras built a similar anonymized cloud infrastructure that routes requests to frontier AI models without logging or linking them to user identities. The update also deepens Siri integration and adds features tied to iOS 27, iPadOS, and watchOS 27.
Executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and SpaceX loosely agreed over the weekend to slow AI development, backing a three-step proposal from Anthropic's Dario Amodei that calls for third-party auditors, domestic lab oversight and a global slowdown agreement. Critics argue the move looks less like genuine safety policy and more like an attempt by dominant firms to block competitors and open-source rivals while sidestepping binding legal rules.
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told the BBC that regulators may eventually need to require AI companies to have a verifiable shutdown mechanism, checkable by outside parties, to disable systems that become too dangerous. He said most AI labs already have some way to pull the plug internally, but argued this should become part of the broader policy debate rather than left to individual firms.
The Trump administration has appealed a federal court ruling that blocked its policy allowing detention and deportation of noncitizen researchers who study harmful online content, arguing they pose national security risks. Separately, a judge dismissed a related lawsuit from Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, ruling that courts lack jurisdiction to stop deportation proceedings even though she criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio's justification for targeting him.
Researchers led by Simin Ma at Yunnan University developed perovskite solar cells specifically tuned to convert the blue-shifted light that penetrates several meters underwater into electricity. They addressed the material's usual weakness to moisture by adding polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride, which forms a water-repelling layer and strengthens the crystal structure, improving both durability and power output.
Amazon has discounted the TCL TAB 10 Gen 4, a 10.1-inch Android tablet, by 15% off its retail price, bringing it down to $169.99. The price cut positions the device as an affordable option in the budget tablet segment.
Nvidia's RTX 5090 has vanished from first-party retail listings at Newegg and Amazon, leaving only third-party marketplace sellers offering the card at prices ranging from roughly $6,400 to $8,700, with some listings even higher. This marks a sharp jump from the $4,299 median price seen in June and the $5,199 low tracked in early September, with stock disappearing entirely within about two weeks. Micro Center remains the lone major retailer still selling the card near its typical price.
Nvidia has introduced the RTX Pro 5500 Blackwell Workstation Edition, a professional graphics card built on the same GB202 die as the GeForce RTX 5090 and offering similar CUDA core counts and performance. The key difference is memory: the RTX Pro 5500 carries 84GB of GDDR7, 2.6 times more than the RTX 5090, positioning it between the existing RTX Pro 5000 and RTX Pro 6000 in Nvidia's professional lineup.
Microsoft confirmed that its September 8 security update, KB5124008, is causing audio failures on legacy USB Audio Class 1.0 hardware such as older speakers, headsets, and microphones. Affected users may see no sound, unresponsive volume controls, or a 'Code 10' error in Device Manager. The company noted a temporary workaround: switching the audio mode to Stereo restores sound until an official fix arrives.