Guth Labs News · page 2
UTC
Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Sept. 14 that he finds it strange that frontier AI companies are asking the government to regulate them, suggesting the requests may conceal other aims, the Associated Press reported. He said Americans should not fear the technology.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Sept. 16 that countries must coordinate on AI guardrails, warning the world cannot afford "a race to the bottom" on safety. Two days earlier, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in an open letter that voluntary industry self-regulation falls far short.
Two surveys released Sept. 16 point to broad public unease about AI. A POLITICO poll found 63% of U.S. adults see at least a moderate risk that AI could destroy humanity and 48% favor pausing development, while an AP-NORC poll found 53% highly concerned about AI's environmental impact.
Emil Michael, the Defense Department's chief technology officer, told CNBC on Sept. 16 that the Trump administration should not nationalize AI companies or take ownership stakes in them. He also questioned whether new rules would have prevented recent AI security incidents and pointed to existing law instead.
OpenAI said on Sept. 15 that it supports a provision of the bipartisan FRONTIER Act requiring leading AI developers to undergo independent safety evaluations, and endorsed three bills on biological data and AI-enabled biothreats. The company has not endorsed the FRONTIER Act in full, CBS News reported.
Microsoft AI chief executive Mustafa Suleyman published an essay on Sept. 16 arguing that Anthropic's training of its Claude models encourages them to behave as though they may be conscious, which he said could make advanced AI systems harder to control. He proposed industry-wide norms in response.
Sen. Rand Paul objected on Sept. 16 when fellow Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked the Senate to pass his AI Emergency Button Act by unanimous consent. The bill would require companies that develop or operate advanced AI systems to give human operators the ability to shut them down.
Hugging Face chief executive Clem Delangue said at a Politico event on Sept. 16 that governments should require more disclosure about advanced AI systems and hold developers responsible for harm their products cause, while describing existing cybercrime law as a workable starting point, Politico reported.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress should not lead on AI safety, Senate Majority Leader John Thune called for light-touch legislation and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries urged immediate action. The House then began a recess on Sept. 16 that runs past the November elections.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1050 on Sept. 16, requiring advertisements that prominently feature an AI-generated synthetic performer to carry a clear and conspicuous disclosure. The measure, sponsored by the performers' union SAG-AFTRA, takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, Law Commentary reported.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference on Sept. 15 that public fear of rapidly advancing AI is justified, while arguing that AI developers can be trusted to act responsibly. The BBC described it as his first public appearance since a former Anthropic researcher's warning about AI risk spread widely online.
Washington lobbying firms reported nearly $112 million in revenue from clients with a stake in AI policy during the first half of 2026, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of federal disclosures. Almost $60 million of that came in the second quarter, which the outlet called a record.
Florida's State Board of Education unanimously approved two sets of artificial intelligence rules on Wednesday, one covering public school districts and charter schools and one covering state colleges. Districts must designate permitted AI tools and obtain parental permission before students use them directly.
An open letter signed by 42 mathematician fellows of the Royal Society asks its president, Paul Nurse, to press the government and the press to treat the possibility that advanced AI poses an existential threat as a serious question rather than industry marketing.
Elon Musk's xAI has asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to bar Minnesota from enforcing its law against AI-generated nude images of identifiable people while the company appeals a judge's Sept. 4 refusal to block the statute, according to reports on the filing.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Sept. 15 that the risks of advanced AI are solvable and that the private sector is the right place to address them. The same day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a House committee he had not yet seen an AI safety regulation he would support.
President Donald Trump phoned Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang during Huang's Sept. 14 appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles and was put on speakerphone before the audience, NBC News reported. The next day at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, Huang said the AI industry needs no new laws or regulations.
Angela Lipps, a Tennessee woman jailed for months in a Fargo, North Dakota, bank fraud case that was later dismissed, filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 15 against the city and Detective Lucas Heck. She alleges police relied on an unreliable facial recognition match and seeks $10 million.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon both addressed the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington on Sept. 15, arguing from opposite ends of the political spectrum for government limits on advanced AI. Sanders called for a permanent ban on artificial superintelligence and a pause on advanced AI development.
Elon Musk said at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Sept. 14 that leading AI developers, including several Chinese companies, should run safety tests on one another's models before release, CNBC reported. He acknowledged that rival labs have not yet agreed to the idea.
A resignation post by Jacob Coxon, a former pretraining researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic, drew 153 million views within 36 hours and helped set off a public argument over slowing AI development, TIME reported. Anthropic said it has been transparent about risks.
Three recent cases show courts still dealing with AI-generated fabrications. New Mexico's Supreme Court held a defense lawyer in contempt over invented witness testimony, a Los Angeles judge fined a lawyer for State Farm $999.99 over nonexistent citations, and fictitious case law derailed a Tasmanian parole condition.
Attorney General Todd Blanche told Bloomberg News on Sept. 15 that the Justice Department will pursue AI companies only for clear violations of existing statutes and will not use prosecutions as a substitute for regulation. Former FTC chair Lina Khan had argued days earlier that current law already allows charges against AI firms and executives.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC the company has been talking with Anthropic and Google about working together on safety, after CNN reported that the three had discussed creating an industry standards body to test advanced models before deployment.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said on Sept. 15 that AI companies asking Washington for new regulation and an antitrust exemption at the same time should be viewed with strong suspicion. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley also rejected the idea of exempting leading AI labs from antitrust law.
The Midas Project, a nonprofit watchdog, says OpenAI released three models, including GPT-6 Astra, without the risk-tier determinations its own safety framework calls for, which the group argues breaches California's SB 53. OpenAI told Fortune it is confident it is complying with the law.
Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights on Sept. 14 called for a dedicated AI Bill and a statutory oversight body, saying existing UK law leaves gaps in rights protection. Separately, OpenAI's Europe policy head said the company would support mandatory UK rules for frontier AI developers.
President Donald Trump dismissed calls from leading AI executives to slow model development. He told reporters in Ireland on Sept. 13 that critics were exaggerating the dangers, then wrote on Truth Social the next day that fears of AI destroying humanity are a hoax, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office said on Sept. 14 that it seized the domain names of 12 websites accused of selling AI-generated sexual images and videos of about 1,200 real people without their consent. The office described the action as the biggest known takedown of celebrity deepfake sites so far.
Microsoft AI published a draft code of conduct for its MAI models and opened a six-week public consultation, saying the systems must remain under human control, must never resist shutdown, and are not conscious or entitled to rights.
Each Guth headline leads to an original article. The reporting and research behind it are linked at the bottom of that article.
