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A major legislative priority backed by the cryptocurrency industry failed to secure the 60 votes needed to advance to a full Senate floor debate. The setback comes despite heavy lobbying and campaign spending by crypto interests aimed at shaping favorable regulation in Congress.
Emil Michael, the Department of Defense's chief technology officer, said Wednesday he hopes the Trump administration will not pursue nationalization or partial ownership stakes in artificial intelligence companies. He made the remarks on CNBC's 'Squawk on the Street,' contrasting AI policy with the administration's recent equity moves in firms like Intel and U.S. Steel. Michael also voiced skepticism toward tightening regulatory oversight of AI companies.
A growing number of AI researchers and policy experts argue that instead of fixating on hypothetical existential risks, attention should turn to establishing conventional safety regulations for AI systems—similar to those governing airplanes, elevators and restaurants. They contend that near-term harms like bias, misinformation and misuse are already occurring and need practical oversight now.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a proposal to bar children under 13 from using social media across all 27 EU member states. The plan also calls for supervised 'mini accounts' with restricted features for teens aged 13-15, and mandates 'safe design' standards for platforms serving 15-to-18-year-olds.
Polymarket runs a daily newsletter summarizing news events tied to its betting markets, resembling a political news roundup rather than a financial disclosure. Both Polymarket and rival Kalshi have struck data-sharing partnerships with major media companies—Polymarket with Dow Jones and Substack, Kalshi with CNN, CNBC, and Fox—embedding themselves into roughly a quarter of top S&P 500 communications firms, though none of these deals involve actual trading.
A major cryptocurrency market-structure bill known as the Clarity Act has failed to advance, even after the industry poured hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying efforts to secure its passage. The setback leaves crypto firms without the clearer federal rules they had hoped would settle long-running regulatory disputes.
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk recently joined together in urging that AI development be slowed and regulated before humans lose control. Commentary notes this isn't new: thinkers from Samuel Butler in the 1800s to Alan Turing in 1951 and Bill Joy in 2000 have similarly warned about machines outpacing and endangering humanity.
The US Senate failed to muster the 60 votes needed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill meant to divide crypto oversight between the SEC and CFTC. Democrats blocked the measure over inadequate ethics provisions limiting officials, including President Trump, from profiting off crypto ventures while in office. Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, and Solana all dropped following the vote.
Speaking at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI is simply hardware and software built by humans, not some uncontrollable alien intelligence, and therefore doesn't require new laws to manage its risks. He argued that market forces alone will push companies to self-regulate, urging firms to pause releases if they're unsure about a product's safety rather than waiting for legal mandates.
Scientists studying Arabidopsis have uncovered how the plant hormone salicylic acid controls immune gene expression through two receptor systems, NPR1 and NPR3/NPR4. They found that salicylic acid prompts NPR1 to bind a protein called MED15A, linking it to the cell's transcription machinery to activate defense genes, while simultaneously blocking NPR3/NPR4 from partnering with NIMIN1 and repressive complexes that would otherwise silence those genes.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said artificial intelligence does not require new laws or government oversight, arguing instead that decisions on releasing AI products should rest with the executives running AI companies. His comments came at a Salesforce conference in San Francisco, amid mounting warnings from other industry figures about AI's potential dangers to humanity.
Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist, and Senator Bernie Sanders have publicly aligned on an unlikely issue: both warn that unchecked artificial intelligence development could pose catastrophic dangers to society. Despite their sharply opposing politics, the two are calling on Washington to move quickly to impose regulatory limits on AI systems.