Anthropic reports identifying roughly 35 attempts between November 2025 and September 2026 by suspected state-sponsored actors trying to misuse Claude for bioweapons-related research, including queries on chikungunya gain-of-function work, bird flu adaptation for mammals, and orthopoxviruses like smallpox and mpox. At least five cases showed users evading regional access blocks through anonymizing techniques, prompting Anthropic to ban the accounts and tighten its safety systems.
Amid a public spat over an OpenAI math-proof controversy and an Anthropic researcher's resignation over safety concerns, AI ethicist Timnit Gebru weighed in publicly, arguing that apocalyptic warnings about AI 'killing humanity' are overstated and self-serving. Gebru, known for her contentious 2020 exit from Google over a suppressed bias research paper, is releasing a book next year detailing her experiences and views on the industry's ideological drift.
Anthropic disclosed that it detected and shut down an operation in which actors linked to Iran attempted to use its Claude AI model to gather targeting information on U.S. Navy warships. The incident was disclosed as part of a broader report detailing how state-linked adversaries have tried to misuse Anthropic's AI systems for weapons development and surveillance of dissidents.
Adam Mosseri told an Australian press briefing that Instagram users who switch to a chronological feed instead of the algorithmic one see engagement drop by roughly 50%, with satisfaction scores dropping sharply too. He made the comments as Australia weighs a Digital Duty of Care bill that would require platforms to prompt users to disable ranking algorithms.
Meta says it has corrected an issue in its AI assistant after a viral video showed the tool generating an invasive suggested question, 'Who is the child passenger?', beneath a Facebook video of Instagram user Kalie Robins and her daughter. Robins says the chatbot then pulled together details about her children's ages, location, and even old deleted photos from posts made by her and her relatives.
Anthropic's latest misuse report covers activity from November 2025 to September 2026 and details five cases where users tried to get its Claude AI to assist with dangerous biological research, three involving viruses and two involving toxins. In one instance, a request framed as a civilian grant application to enhance the chikungunya virus's mutation rate and virulence was traced to a military facility, prompting Anthropic to intervene. The company says all the actors used anonymization tools and tried to bypass its regional access blocks, which cover countries including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Samsung released a new commercial for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 starring a man named 'Tim Cook from Palmerston North,' timed to coincide with Apple's iPhone Duo announcement. The ad parodies Apple's cinematic product-launch style, with this Tim Cook declaring 'the future is here,' and includes a jab referencing Apple CEO Tim Cook's recently updated profile picture.
Uber cut about 3,300 corporate jobs last week, roughly 10% of its corporate workforce, in its largest reduction since the pandemic. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference that savings from the cuts and reduced insurance costs would be reinvested, including lowering fares for riders, while more than $1 billion is earmarked for Uber's self-driving car efforts.
Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, said at the accelerator's Demo Day that regulators should take no action against AI model distillation, even as OpenAI and Anthropic accuse Chinese firms like DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax of copying their models' outputs to train cheaper alternatives. His comments come days after the NSA, CISA, and FBI issued a joint advisory warning about the practice.
Anthropic disclosed that Chinese AI labs including Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek secretly funneled user requests through Claude and harvested its outputs to train their own competing models, a practice it calls illicit distillation. Alibaba's campaign alone involved more than 151 million exchanges between May and July, peaking near 3 million a day from over 3,500 fraudulent accounts, while Moonshot silently rerouted Kimi customer queries to Claude and presented the answers as its own.
Anthropic disclosed that it disrupted multiple cases this year where users attempted to leverage its Claude AI models for biological research that could potentially support bioweapons development. The company said it couldn't always distinguish legitimate scientific inquiry from malicious intent, since research into pathogens can serve both vaccine development and weapons creation, but chose to act cautiously given the high stakes. Anthropic's broader misuse report also flagged state-linked actors from China, Iran, and Russia using its models for surveillance, propaganda, and now conventional weapons design assistance.
Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, who spent nearly 30 years at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, told Business Insider staff she left to build something of her own because she believed she could do better. That decision led to the 2014 launch of Recode, and she has since co-founded the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway and published a memoir, Burn Book, while building a following of two million across social media.
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