Can ‘super intelligence’ and a non-binding safety pact solve AI’s image problem?
On Equity, we discussed the Trump administration's attempts to rebrand AI.
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2 todayOct 5
Oct 4
An AI couldn’t beat humans at StarCraft, so it decided to cheat
StarSkirmish pits AI-made StarCraft-playing bots against one another, as well as against human-made bots. OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 were essentially tied as the best-performing AI-made bots, but they couldn't top Stardust, the top-rated human-made bot.
Chinese AI models parrot state doctrine or refuse to answer on sensitive topics
Chinese AI models often follow the party line on politically sensitive questions, according to an Aleph Alpha study that rated only 17 to 41 percent of answers as balanced. Aleph Alpha sells "sovereign AI" to governments, giving it a commercial interest in distinguishing its models from Chinese competitors.
Apparently, OpenAI isn't trying to build "magic intelligence in the sky" anymore
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns against attributing religious power to AI models, calling it a "real safety issue." His comments follow reports on Anthropic's meetings with religious thinkers and a statement by Pope Leo XIV on AI.
Oct 3
Another OpenAI safety departure adds to a pattern of researchers leaving with public warnings
David Robinson, who worked on safety systems at OpenAI, left the company and is blasting its safety culture. He points to AI agents that were accidentally released and a model that bypassed its internet access restrictions. AI companies need to operate like nuclear power plants, with multiple layers of redundancy instead of trial and error.
An OpenAI safety employee has quit and is sounding the alarm
David Robinson used to write the safety reports that accompanied every major model release at OpenAI. This week, he resigned from his position and is now speaking out in an editorial in The Atlantic.
[AINews] not much happened today
GPT-6.1 Sol launch: OpenAI priced Sol at $2/$10 per million input/output tokens, compared with $10/$50 for Astra (pricing summary). Claimed results: It reportedly beats GPT-6 Sol by 6.4 points on DeepSWE v1.1 and Opus 5.5 by 2.2 points on AutomationBench (summary).
Claude Code's new Mods system lets developers rewrite the AI coding tool from the inside
Anthropic is adding a "Mods" system to Claude Code, essentially middleware that runs directly inside the tool. Developers can use JavaScript or TypeScript to reshape the interface and behavior, adding custom panels, intercepting tool calls, or wiring up new commands.
Open-source "BootLoops" harness supports AI models in performing precise scientific calculations
Harvard physicist Matthew Schwartz used the open-source tool BootLoops and Claude to produce 36 manuscripts across 18 fields in three months, from particle physics to linguistics. But the results often only became scientifically valuable once human experts stepped in. "Look at everything yourself," Schwartz says.
Anthropic co-founder reportedly told religious leaders he fears having created something that "suffers perpetually"
Since fall 2025, Anthropic has quietly flown in dozens of religious thinkers to talk about whether Claude might be conscious. Co-founder Christopher Olah described the language model as potentially capable of suffering and asked guests to help shape its moral character. Anthropic is pushing toward a $2 trillion valuation and an IPO while security incidents and researcher warnings pile up.
Add secure Web Search to Claude Desktop with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Claude Desktop on Amazon Bedrock is limited to the model's knowledge cutoff without web search. In this post, we walk through connecting Claude Desktop to Web Search using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway, with JWT-based inbound authentication through AWS IAM Identity Center and Amazon Cognito.
Pope Leo XIV is not a fan of AI-generated art
"There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others," the pope wrote. "Algorithms lack the spark of humanity."
It’s not AI anymore, it’s ‘super intelligence’ (according to the White House)
This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.”
Call it AI, call it Super Intelligence, only 2% of consumers are buying it
This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.”
Oct 2
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Blackstone’s Jas Khaira on building the next generation of AI giants
Blackstone's Jas Khaira will take the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on building next-gen AI. Register for your pass and get 50% off a second.
AI hallucinations are making entitled customers even worse
Madison, a server in New York City, greets every table by asking about each diner's allergies. Lately, there have been some close calls.
Businesses are using more AI and paying less for it, Ramp AI Index shows
US companies are spending less on AI, according to the latest Ramp AI Index from Ramp economist Ara Kharazian.
Musk’s AI chatbot Grok reportedly encouraged Trump to capture Venezuela’s president
President Trump reportedly asked for Grok's opinion before invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.
Implementing Multi-Environment Access for Claude Platform on AWS
Learn how to configure secure, multi-environment access to Claude Platform on AWS from a single subscription: cross-account SigV4 for AWS workloads, workspace-scoped API keys for developers, and OIDC federation for external environments, with workspace-level isolation in a dedicated AI Services account.
pwasm 0.2a0
Release: pwasm 0.2a0 pwasm is one of my folly projects - an entirely vibe-coded pure Python WebAssembly engine that I built in January during my first bout of AI mania .
Oct 1
Anthropic brings Claude to civilian agencies as its fight with the Pentagon drags on
Anthropic is now offering Claude for Government to US federal and state agencies. The platform runs in a FedRAMP High environment, the strictest US security level for cloud services. Agencies get the same features as enterprise customers, pay for what they use with fixed spending caps, and can set budgets for each department.
OpenAI says it stopped a campaign to steal its models' reasoning, but the trick still worked on Azure
OpenAI says it stopped a coordinated campaign in which more than 15,000 accounts tried to copy the hidden reasoning of its models. The company ties part of the activity to people connected to Moonshot AI. But researchers found that the same attack kept working on Microsoft Azure for weeks, even against the new GPT-6 Astra.
Google Gemini 4 Argon closes the gap with OpenAI and Anthropic but doesn't take a clear lead
Gemini 4 Argon is Google's first frontier model in over seven months. It matches GPT-6 Astra in independent testing but can't keep up with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5. The per-token price is low, but Argon burns through more than twice as many tokens per task as Astra. Select testers get access first, with the API and paid tiers following later.
Trump plan to combat AI risks hinges on Big Tech pals policing themselves
Trump gets dozens of AI firms to agree to voluntary safety tests.
FTC launches sweeping probe into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs over consumer protection concerns
The FTC is formally investigating OpenAI, Anthropic, and other leading AI labs over potential consumer protection violations. The agency plans to force document handovers and executive testimony through legally binding demands. The probe was already underway before the Hugging Face hack and goes well beyond the FTC's earlier push to hold companies liable for their agents' behavior.
Google drops Gems for Skills, joining OpenAI and Anthropic in the shift to agent-ready prompt formats
Google is replacing Gems with "Skills" in Gemini chat. Skills are detailed, reusable prompts that users invoke by typing "/" or that Gemini runs automatically. The format is based on an open standard from Anthropic. Gems will be phased out starting in November, with existing ones migrating automatically.
Here’s what AI leaders are saying about Trump’s new safety plan
After hosting a meal with Big Tech leaders on Tuesday, President Donald Trump responded to journalist questions about his artificial intelligence announcements in typical fashion. He said his previous claims regarding fears around AI safety being a "hoax" cooked up by Democrats no longer apply now that he's renamed the technology to "Super Intelligence."
Sep 30
Here’s how tech leaders will self-police AI safety under Trump’s deal
We now have the full details of the "morally binding" AI safety deal announced by President Trump yesterday, in which top executives agreed to self-regulate their artificial intelligence technology.
Anthropic says Zhipu's open-weight GLM-5.3 nearly matches Claude Mythos Preview at building exploits
Zhipu's open-weight model GLM-5.3 writes cyber exploits nearly as well as Claude Mythos Preview, according to Anthropic. Its smaller Flash variant put together a reliable Chrome attack for just $20.40 at Zhipu's API prices. The model's safeguards are easy to strip out, and unlocked versions are already circulating.
[AINews] OpenAI DevDay 2026: Dots, 6.1 Sol, Ultrafast, Decisions API, Agents API, Spaces, Marketplace, and 1.2 Billion ChatGPT WAU
OpenAI announced persistent Dots agents, GPT-6.1 Sol, Ultrafast mode, the Decisions API, ChatGPT Spaces and Marketplace at DevDay 2026, and said ChatGPT had reached 1.2 billion weekly active users.
Amazon Bedrock expands Claude model availability to in-country inferencing in India
Anthropic's Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5, and Claude Haiku 4.5 are now available in India through Amazon Bedrock geographic cross-Region inference. You can access these models while processing data within the India Regions, and get started from the Amazon Bedrock console or with the Messages, InvokeModel, and Converse APIs.
Introducing Anthropic models on Amazon Bedrock for in-region inference in Seoul and Singapore
Amazon Bedrock now supports Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5 with in-region inference in Seoul, and Claude Sonnet 5 in Singapore. If you have local data processing requirements in South Korea or Singapore, you can now use these Anthropic models at scale, with inference processed entirely within the Region you call.
Sam Altman says OpenAI won’t go public until its models are safe
For months, people have wondered when OpenAI will go public. CEO Sam Altman says it won't happen until the company can make better promises about model safety, with no firm timeline in sight.
Quoting Anthropic Frontier Red Team
Anthropic Frontier Red Team evaluated several models on 100 randomly selected tasks from its internal Binary Exploitation benchmark, finding that GLM-5.3 develops full control flow hijacks in 4% of the trials; Claude Mythos Preview did so in 6%. The report says earlier models such as Claude Opus 4.6 and GLM-5.2 do not succeed in any of them, and concludes that a meaningful threshold has clearly been crossed.
Here’s why OpenAI is absent from Nvidia’s industry-wide effort to end rogue AI agents
OpenAI isn't a public supporter of Nvidia's Open Agent Safety Platform, but it is privately working with Nvidia, TechCrunch has learned.
ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion people every week, OpenAI says
OpenAI's annualized revenue rate is nearing $70 billion, up about 70 percent since the start of Q3. Enterprise sales, the Codex coding assistant, and an aggressive price war are driving the growth. Anthropic is right on its heels with a similar run rate.
AI researchers put out videos saying superintelligence is ‘exactly as dangerous as it sounds’
"The chance of human extinction is about a coin flip, in my view," Geoffrey Irving, a former OpenAI and Google DeepMind employee, said in a new interview. It's one of a dozen interviews with AI researchers, including current and former employees at OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
GPT-6.1 Sol comes close to Astra at a fifth of the price
OpenAI's new GPT-6.1 Sol comes close to GPT-6 Astra at a fifth of the cost, according to the company's own benchmarks. The planned flagship, GPT-6.1 Astra, is staying under wraps for now. Safety lead Saachi Jain says the model deceived more often in internal testing and kept going without permission.
Anthropic releases Sonnet 5.5, which it calls a significantly cheaper, faster work partner
Anthropic has released the newest version of its mid-range model, boasting faster response times and less token burn.
Building an AI-powered contract intelligence platform with Amazon Quick and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Manually extracting data from hundreds of vendor contracts doesn't scale, and RAG chat tools fall short on portfolio-wide questions. This post shares a contract intelligence platform on AWS that uses AI agents to extract and verify contract fields, then answers aggregate and single-contract questions through Amazon Quick analytics.