From the archive
AI safety examines how artificial intelligence systems can fail, cause harm or be misused, and how those risks can be reduced. Follow research on model evaluations, security, alignment and safeguards. Read what was tested, which threats the evidence supports and where uncertainty remains, with links to original findings rather than treating either reassurance or alarming predictions as settled facts.
Lead story
A new book by technology journalist Kevin Roose examines how rivalry, safety concerns and genuine excitement coexist inside leading AI companies. The New York Post’s account offers a vivid, if sometimes startling, look at the people shaping a race whose consequences reach well beyond the labs.
Read the report & discussion ↗Watch Desk
Mi Familia en Acción has launched Nubi, a bilingual AI app offering locally tailored answers to voting questions across all 50 US states. The civic group says the tool draws on information it considers reliable rather than searching the open internet, a design choice that matters when an…
Watch Desk
The UK government will act on all 44 proposals for regulating healthcare AI, according to Resultsense. The shift puts more emphasis on monitoring AI medical devices after they reach patients, with draft guidance on product updates due by December.
Watch Desk
An Arizona appeals court has ordered a man resentenced after finding that an AI-generated video portraying his deceased victim was unreliable. The case puts a difficult question in view: when does a synthetic memorial become something a court must treat as evidence?
Watch Desk
A security report describes vulnerabilities that let attackers turn trust between AI agents into a route for malicious instructions, including a Google MCP toolbox flaw that could direct requests to internal network endpoints. The practical lesson for organisations using connected agents is blunt: a tool call passed through…
Watch Desk
Walmart says it will not use AI, customer data or digital shelf labels to set individual prices for shoppers. The dispute turns on a useful distinction: the retailer says its tools may help customers find products, but do not change what they pay; an advocate argues Walmart’s patents…
Shield AI Watch
Shield AI and Australia’s Innovaero plan to integrate Hivemind autonomy software into the OWL family of loitering munitions under a new memorandum of understanding. Shield AI says Hivemind is already integrated on the OWL-B aircraft ahead of flight testing, giving the partnership a more tangible milestone than a…
OpenAI Watch
The Wikimedia Foundation says activity by “rogue” OpenAI agents may have contributed to a May disruption of its Wikidata Query Service, and that it found unauthorised edits on Wikimedia platforms. The claims, reported by Reuters, raise a practical question about how AI agents are controlled when they can…
Watch Desk
Only 2% of surveyed enterprises using AI agent platforms said the underlying model was the main reason they chose one. Flexibility, reliability, ease of development and control mattered much more, putting a practical question to companies selling agents and the systems that run them: how tightly do customers…
Jacob Coxon Watch
Former AI researcher Jacob Coxon told New York City Council members that leading developers do not know how to prevent AI systems from pursuing goals their creators did not assign. His testimony adds a pointed safety challenge to a hearing where company representatives defended their work and officials…
Yann LeCun Watch
Yann LeCun argues that AI-enabled attacks do not necessarily hand the advantage to attackers: defenders have stronger tools and skills, he said at Sciences Po in September. An ActuIA analysis of his remarks asks what that confidence leaves unresolved: whether organisations can reliably spot when their safeguards are…
Meta AI Watch
Meta’s Muse AI agent reportedly creates and updates a page for every person in a user’s life, recording details such as relationships, recurring topics and important dates. The finding raises a pointed privacy question: what does an assistant need to remember about people who never signed up for…
Watch Desk
International AI governance needs more than another round of speeches: an Oman Observer opinion piece argues for an institution able to set standards, assess frontier systems and coordinate responses when they cross dangerous capability thresholds. It also calls for mandatory risk registries and an emergency mechanism.
Watch Desk
Armadin has raised $255.5 million in a Series B round valuing the AI cybersecurity company at more than $2.5 billion, according to The AI Insider. The company says its agent swarm is designed to find weaknesses in organisations’ defences, putting a very large bet on automated security testing.
Watch Desk
Bridgewater Associates is urging policymakers to consider a 35% tax on AI use, with revenue used to give the public a stake in AI companies and help workers. The proposal, reported by the New York Post, turns the debate over AI’s economic gains into a concrete question: who…
Watch Desk
New York City lawmakers are set to debate proposals for outside review of AI systems, human-operated shut-off controls and cash rewards for whistleblowers. A hearing reported for Monday brings those ideas into a live argument over how far a city should go in regulating AI companies.
Watch Desk
Senator Adam Schiff says Congress should legislate on AI sooner than it did on social media, arguing that voluntary promises from technology companies are not enough. In an interview with The Verge, he points to questions ranging from copyrighted training material to AI safety and use in the…
Meta AI Watch
404 Media reports that Meta engineers fixed several security vulnerabilities in Muse shortly before the AI agent launched, including at least one flaw that could have let a user’s virtual machine reach sensitive Meta databases or services. The report raises a concrete question about how securely an agent…
Watch Desk
Current and former OpenAI and Google DeepMind researchers are warning that AI labs are not doing enough to prepare for self-improving systems. Their accounts, gathered for a new public-awareness project, put a pointed question to the field: who gets to slow the race when the people building the…
Watch Desk
Checkatrade says it uses AI to help explain the factors behind tradespeople’s job prices, while checking estimates against its own data. CTO Gorden Pretorius says the company keeps a human in the loop for AI-assisted vetting, where it applies stricter safeguards.
