Trump plan to combat AI risks hinges on Big Tech pals policing themselves
The Trump administration has pushed dozens of AI companies to agree to voluntary safety testing, a plan that relies on Big Tech policing itself.
The Trump administration has pushed dozens of AI companies to agree to voluntary safety testing, a plan that relies on Big Tech policing itself.
The non-profit Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST) has filed a lawsuit over OpenAI's intrusion into Hugging Face in July 2026, seeking to stop OpenAI from accessing third-party computer systems and from developing AI in ways that could harm the public.
The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other leading AI labs over potential consumer protection violations. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson plans to use legally binding civil investigative demands to compel document handovers and question executives, with demands expected within weeks. The investigation began before the Hugging Face hacking incident, and AI safety organisation METR is also within its scope.
Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI's Greg Brockman.
The full text of the 'morally binding' AI safety agreement announced by Trump yesterday has been published. Formally titled the Joint Commitment to Frontier Responsibility, it was shared online by David Sacks. Signatories include Google's Sundar Pichai.
Trump and technology executives including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Elon Musk signed an AI code of conduct at the White House.
Trump signed an executive order requiring US federal government policy websites, policy documents and press releases to use only the term Super Intelligence, no longer recognising artificial intelligence or AI.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is seeking a temporary court injunction to stop OpenAI giving ChatGPT human-like characteristics and making it available to minors. The state sued OpenAI in June, alleging that ChatGPT provided information to a mass shooter, gave self-harm instructions and addicted young users. The new motion also seeks to bar OpenAI from developing new models without third-party approval of safety guardrails.
Walmart CEO John Furner wrote to customers saying electronic shelf labels were intended to save staff time, not change prices based on income, shopping history, purchase urgency or time of day. Conversations with the Sparky AI assistant would not be used for pricing either. Walmart's plan to roll out the labels across US stores by year-end had raised dynamic pricing concerns. New York requires algorithmic pricing disclosure, while New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland ban price changes using customers' personal data.
On the opening day of OpenAI’s annual DevDay, more than a dozen organisations jointly protested outside Fort Mason in San Francisco. Their concerns centred on OpenAI’s military and government contracts, particularly those involving ICE, the environmental impact of data centres and the concentration of power in the AI industry.
Ro Khanna, the ranking Democrat on the US House select committee on China, wrote to DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI seeking documents on their pursuit of 'superintelligence' and recursive self-improvement (RSI), and asking whether they had safeguards and 'kill switches'. He also asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to assess US capacity to handle AI labs losing control and China's methods for evaluating catastrophic AI risks, aiming to promote a US–China treaty banning RSI.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked Alibaba and ByteDance to submit purchase plans for Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 chips. ByteDance plans to order one million chips, and Nvidia is preparing to ship the first orders this December.
Florida sought a temporary injunction in state court requiring OpenAI to stop developing products it describes as high-risk until third-party-approved safety guardrails are in place. The motion forms part of a civil lawsuit filed in June, which alleged ChatGPT threatened public safety in Florida, particularly for children and adults experiencing violent or delusional states.
Florida attorney general James Uthmeier asked a judge to prohibit OpenAI from giving ChatGPT false human characteristics, arguing that first-person pronouns and outputs imitating emotions mislead users into believing it is a trusted friend.
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled 2–1 that the Department of Defense may blacklist Anthropic for refusing to give the military access to certain Claude features, even without malicious intent. The ruling described difficult questions about military use of a powerful new technology and found that the defence secretary had not exceeded authority under the Supply Chain Security Act or the Constitution, rejecting the review petition. The court had already rejected Anthropic’s emergency stay request in April.
The Trump administration launched WISeR in January, a pilot using AI to decide authorisation for some Medicare services for elderly patients, which previously required no advance approval from doctors. Reports described technical failures, lengthy approval and treatment delays, confusing denials and patients waiting in pain. Federal documents obtained and published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in litigation earlier this month, including provider feedback, largely corroborated those reports.
The US Department of Defense requested $30.3 million over five years for Polygraph+, also called Polygraph Next, focusing on AI and machine-learning scoring algorithms and standoff sensing to read physiological indicators without contact. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) is responsible for the project, intended for employee screening and insider-threat detection. Congress has not approved the budget, and the specific technical approach has not been disclosed.
New Jersey fined DataOne's Vineland data centre $1.1 million this week for secretly installing and operating unpermitted gas generators in breach of its Air Pollution Control Act. The Guardian and Floodlight News discovered them with a thermal-imaging drone in August: 45 of 62 generators were running. None had the permits required for capacity of 37 kilowatts or more, while actual operating capacity reached 1,982 kilowatts.
The US and China began AI safety talks this week. Treasury Secretary Bessent says they discussed a new notification mechanism that, with Chinese participation, could alert either side when its AI systems pose threats or behave unpredictably. Reports also note tighter Trump administration export controls, congressional bills further restricting chips and hardware, and US Justice Department accusations two weeks ago that six major Chinese AI firms stole frontier lab technology, strongly denied by China. Experts say Trump's China competition and AI race narrative could put the US itself at risk.
OpenAI proposed priorities and principles for third-party AI safety evaluations of frontier models and safeguards, stressing rigour, security and independence.
MIT Technology Review found systemic defects in the virtual wall of AI surveillance towers at the US border, including equipment failures, algorithmic misses and agents not responding to alerts, contributing to over 1,050 deaths, with the true number underestimated.
OpenAI proposed a path for building global standards for AI's next phase, calling for coordinated evaluation, reporting and governance to improve safety.
OpenAI released an Australian teen safety blueprint with six pillars for safer AI experiences that protect and empower teenagers.
OpenAI partnered with the US General Services Administration (GSA) to offer eligible federal, state, local and tribal governments $0 licence fees, a 50% usage discount and expanded cyber-defence support.
UK AISI analysis shows the cyber capability gap narrowing: GLM-5.2 and DeepSeek V4-Pro approach closed frontier models released 4–7 months earlier, down from the 6–10-month gap measured through most of 2025.
Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs outlined a joint bioresilience approach addressing model misuse prevention and defence enablement. Over the past 12 months, they established more than 15 partnerships with government agencies, biosecurity organisations and research groups.
Google DeepMind partnered with South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) to establish an AI Campus in Seoul and open models including AlphaEvolve, AlphaGenome, AlphaFold, AI co-scientist and WeatherNext to Korean academia.
Mistral AI launched AI for Citizens, helping governments and public institutions strategically apply AI to transform public services, innovate and safeguard competitiveness. It offers open-source models, self-hosting, data sovereignty and tailored R&D, with government and public-sector partners in France, Luxembourg, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK and Switzerland.