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Father Paolo Benanti, who advises the Catholic Church on artificial intelligence, told WIRED that leading AI labs are shaping safety debates in ways that exclude outside voices. He argued that ethics and regulation should be decided through public, democratic debate rather than dictated by the companies building the technology.
Security researcher Patrick Wardle disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in Meta's Muse AI agent that could let attackers redirect users' voice dictations and access tokens to a malicious server instead of Meta's own. David Singleton, head of Meta's Superintelligence Labs, confirmed the company has issued a patch, though he and Wardle disagree on whether the exploit requires prior malware on a user's machine. Meta says the MacOS Muse app has been downloaded over half a million times in its first week.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would outlaw development of AI systems capable of humanity's 'destruction or disempowerment.' The bill would also pause development of advanced 'frontier' AI models until a new government agency, the Department of Artificial Intelligence, is created to license and oversee such work. Violators, including company leaders and unaffiliated individuals, could face up to 20 years in prison.
Meta Superintelligence Labs product head Nat Friedman said on X that Muse, Meta's AI product, was 'heavily inspired' by the open-source OpenClaw but was 'built from scratch.' The admission followed viral claims from users, including AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda, that Muse resembled a consumer-friendly version of OpenClaw, citing shared file structures like SOUL.md.
A review of recent AI industry announcements about hacking incidents, mathematical breakthroughs, and self-improving systems finds that expert scrutiny often reveals a much less dramatic reality than initial company statements suggested. The pattern shows companies generating significant press attention through bold claims, which later prove overstated once independent analysis occurs. Separately, 22 nations have called for a new global body to set AI safety standards, though the US and China are notably absent from this declaration.
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies use terms like 'superintelligence' and 'rogue models' to shift blame from corporate decisions onto their products, framing them as autonomous agents. She contends this rhetoric distracts from real harms, including data center pollution, plagiarism, and unauthorized data use for training.
Jacob Coxon, a pretraining researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, quit Anthropic and publicly stated that both companies are pushing toward self-improving superintelligence irresponsibly. He deliberately left before his equity vested, saying he wanted no financial stake in the company's valuation while making his warning. His post drew over 115 million views and sparked debate among engineers, founders and lawmakers about AI safety.
Executives at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and X are publicly floating the idea of pacing frontier AI development rather than racing ahead unchecked. This shift follows a summer marked by rogue AI agent incidents and researcher warnings about existential risks from advanced AI systems. Despite the rhetoric, no concrete commitments or regulatory actions have yet accompanied these statements.
A BBC report cites Evan Hubinger, who leads alignment science at Anthropic, estimating a greater than 10% chance AI could kill all humans within a decade. The statement surfaced after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old pretraining researcher formerly of OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned and accused both companies of recklessly racing toward self-improving superintelligence.
Senators Bernie Sanders and Greg Cezar unveiled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would criminalize efforts to build artificial superintelligence, with violators facing up to 20 years in prison—comparable to penalties for illegal nuclear weapons development. The bill also calls for a new cabinet-level federal agency to enforce the ban domestically and push for international agreements restricting superintelligence development worldwide.
Major AI companies are accelerating efforts to build superintelligent systems, pushing timelines and resources into overdrive despite unresolved safety and control questions. The push reflects competitive pressure among leading labs to be first to achieve transformative AI capabilities.
Jacob Coxon, who worked on pretraining models at both OpenAI and Anthropic, announced his resignation from Anthropic on X, saying both companies are recklessly racing toward self-improving superintelligence. His post drew over 156 million views and sparked responses, including from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Anthropic's own alignment team lead Evan Hubinger, who publicly agreed that AI could pose an existential threat.