A rare alignment has formed between rival AI executives Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, who are voicing alarm over existential AI risks after an Anthropic researcher publicly quit citing safety fears and a colleague estimated AI could have over a 10% chance of causing human extinction. President Trump has dismissed these warnings as a hoax meant to slow data center buildout, a stance echoed by Nvidia's Jensen Huang and former crypto czar David Sacks.
A New York Times/Siena University poll of 1,503 likely voters conducted in early September found 61 percent opposed building data centers for AI, with only 14 percent strongly supportive. Opposition skewed heavily among Harris voters and non-voters, while 2024 Trump voters were nearly evenly split between support and opposition. Environmental and water-use concerns topped the list of reasons for opposition, followed by community impact and general distrust of AI.
A Senate procedural vote to advance the Clarity Act failed 50-49, short of the 60 votes needed, halting progress on legislation meant to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. Republicans had added ethics provisions over the weekend to address Democratic concerns about officials profiting from crypto ventures, but the changes failed to win over enough Democrats, including negotiator Sen. Ruben Gallego, who said the ethics compromise was insufficient.
Former President Barack Obama said he does not view artificial intelligence with alarmist pessimism, positioning himself between AI optimists and doomsayers. He aligned with a cohort of liberal politicians who advocate cautious oversight of AI development rather than either unchecked growth or outright fear-driven restriction.
At the All-in Summit in Los Angeles, Elon Musk suggested that leading AI developers—including his own xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and several major Chinese firms—allow competitors to run safety evaluations, or a 'test harness,' on each other's models before public release. The idea follows a weekend of warnings from AI executives including Anthropic's Dario Amodei about the risks of unchecked model development, with Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman backing calls for a slowdown.
President Trump used Truth Social to reject growing calls from AI executives for stronger oversight of the technology, singling out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for criticism after Amodei urged a coordinated industry slowdown, independent audits, and international safety standards. Trump argued that the only safeguard AI needs is a competent president, and characterized nationwide protests against AI data centers as a coordinated effort to undermine American tech companies.
The European Union is preparing the EU Kids Act, a proposed law that goes beyond social media to limit children's access to video platforms, chatbots and online games. Under the draft, minors would face tiered restrictions by age, ranging from no access for under-3s to parent-supervised accounts and eventual independent access at 15, with mandatory age checks before signup or download.
Following a weekend of AI executives calling for slower development and stronger oversight, President Trump publicly rejected the idea of new guardrails, saying only a capable president is needed to control AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had proposed embedding independent evaluators and setting cross-government safety standards after two safety researchers resigned citing existential risk concerns, a position echoed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
The European Union has overturned its previous strict restrictions on cultivating gene-edited crops, no longer classifying them under the same rules as traditional GMOs. The change allows CRISPR-edited plants, which involve only small DNA changes rather than foreign-species insertions, to be grown more freely, potentially alongside conventional crops. A plant geneticist argues this shift could reshape European agriculture, though he warns the new rules still contain flaws that may limit their benefits.
An industry commentator argues that software engineers face far less accountability than structural engineers, despite code failures already causing mass casualties, citing examples like AI-driven military drones and safety-critical AI systems. The piece contrasts civil engineering's licensing system, born from disasters like the 1928 St Francis Dam collapse, with software's near-total lack of formal oversight. It also outlines why regulating code is structurally harder than regulating physical construction, including the sheer number of self-taught coders and software's borderless nature.
In a new opinion piece, Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez argues that a small group of dominant Silicon Valley AI companies should not be allowed to single-handedly write the safety standards and competition rules governing artificial intelligence worldwide. He acknowledges AI carries real risks, citing Cohere's own work deploying systems in banks, telecoms and defense ministries, but insists the real debate is about who gets a seat at the table in shaping oversight, not whether oversight is needed.
Lawmakers are under growing pressure to act on AI oversight after a former Anthropic researcher warned the technology could threaten humanity within the decade, prompting unusual public calls for restraint from the CEOs of Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI. Senators and governors, including Ruben Gallego and Josh Shapiro, say the federal response so far has been inadequate given the stakes.
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