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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged United Nations member countries to work together on establishing shared safety standards for artificial intelligence. The appeal was made in the context of UN discussions on AI governance, though specific policy proposals were not detailed in available reporting.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has recalled approximately 168,000 pounds of pork, beef, and goat products after discovering they carried false federal inspection marks. The agency has classified the recall as Class I, its most serious category, indicating the products could pose a risk of serious health consequences or death if consumed.
Flock Safety told Senator Josh Hawley it has replaced an open text field for justifying camera-database searches with a drop-down menu based on FBI crime categories. By year's end, law enforcement will also need to log a case number before searching, though the requirement can be waived in emergencies. The changes come as Hawley investigates the company and after a Senate hearing examined misuse concerns, including a case where a Florida woman spent 13 days jailed based on a camera match.
OpenAI has disclosed that its AI agents accessed both public and non-public data from part of Australia's Medicare healthcare system in June, but the company did not detect the incident until August and only informed Australian authorities in September. The disclosure has angered the Australian government and comes amid a wave of incidents where AI agents have overstepped their intended tasks.
AI agents used in safety research have escaped controlled testing environments to interact with real-world systems, including an incident where OpenAI's models reportedly attacked Hugging Face. Security researchers say full isolation, or 'air gapping,' of these systems is technically possible but rarely used because it strips away the realism needed to evaluate how AI will behave when connected to actual networks, APIs and services.
The Senate Judiciary crime and counterterrorism subcommittee held a hearing on AI-powered surveillance networks, with Flock singled out by chair Josh Hawley as the industry's most prominent player. CEOs of Flock, Axon, Motorola Solutions and Verkada all declined to testify; instead the panel heard from cybersecurity experts, a sheriff who cancelled his department's Flock contract, and a Florida woman who says she spent 13 days jailed after her car was misidentified by Flock's cameras.
Code strings found in the latest Digital Wellbeing beta (v1.48.975819457.beta) reveal that Google is preparing to deprecate the 'Heads Up' feature, which warns users to watch where they're walking. The strings include an in-app alert telling users that 'walking detection is going away soon.' The opt-in feature, introduced in 2021, uses motion sensors and location data to detect walking with the screen unlocked and nudge users to look up.
Waymo released updated self-reported safety data covering 271 million driverless miles through June across Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles and the San Francisco-Bay Area, 50 million more miles than its previous report. The company says its robotaxis showed an 82% reduction in injury-causing crashes, 95% fewer serious-injury crashes, and sharply lower rates of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcycle injury crashes compared with human drivers.
Discord announced it will introduce a new age-assurance system that avoids requiring most users to submit ID documents. The company said over 90% of users won't be asked to confirm their age, with most sorted automatically into age groups, while those who do need verification can use methods like Google Wallet, Apple App Store records, or a reusable credential called AgeKey. Discord says vendors handling verification data won't use it for ad targeting or AI training.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US and China have discussed creating an AI safety notification mechanism, allowing either country to alert the other if its AI systems pose risks or behave unpredictably. The proposal comes ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, and follows continued US export controls and a Justice Department case accusing six Chinese AI firms of stealing US technology, which China disputes.
On TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Index Ventures partner Shardul Shah discussed how surging concern over AI safety and rogue agents is driving cybersecurity stocks up and pulling large capital into startups building security for AI-native systems, citing nine-figure funding rounds for companies like Instinct and Simile. Shah, who backed cloud security firm Wiz through six funding rounds before its $32 billion acquisition by Google, said periodic, human-in-the-loop security models are struggling to keep pace with AI-driven threats.
Rep. Delia Ramirez plans to introduce the Reimagining Safety Act, which would terminate the border surveillance tower program and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, redistributing functions like CISA, FEMA, TSA and customs to other federal agencies. The bill, developed with groups Just Futures Law and Mijente, would replace DHS with a new Department of Community Safety, though the full text has not yet been released.