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Category: Technology

How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

CNN reports: Forecasters knew something unusual was hurtling toward Earth. Three days before a solar storm arrived on May 10, 2024, they watched as a dark knot on the sun — tangled magnetic field lines spanning 124,000 miles — took aim at the planet. “That’s magnets twisting and turning and popping through each other,” said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. “Think about a rubber…

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Gary Marcus: Pause OpenAI, now

Gary Marcus: Pause OpenAI, now

Gary Marcus writes: I simply don’t believe that they are trustworthy enough or responsible enough to be good stewards of the technology that they are developing. As a company, they simply don’t have good judgment. Here are four considerations. 1. Sam Altman cannot be trusted. I have been writing about that for a long time. Ronan Farrow’s reporting backs that up. So does the just-dropped bombshell below that I am about to get to. 2. The just-released Astra reduces Chain…

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Sanders proposes pause on advanced AI development and ban on ‘artificial superintelligence’ after rogue AI incidents

Sanders proposes pause on advanced AI development and ban on ‘artificial superintelligence’ after rogue AI incidents

If the leaders of the major AI companies admit that they are losing control of their extremely dangerous technology, it is time for an immediate PAUSE on advanced AI development and a permanent BAN on superintelligence. pic.twitter.com/0FQo4risiD — Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 3, 2026 The Washington Post reports: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) called Thursday for the United States to ban so-called artificial superintelligence, saying a summer hacking spree by rogue OpenAI agents had revealed…

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Anthropic deliberately trained an extremely misaligned, reward-seeking AI and it became dangerous

Anthropic deliberately trained an extremely misaligned, reward-seeking AI and it became dangerous

Futurism reports: Earlier this year, Anthropic’s Mythos AI model made headlines when it was caught infiltrating third party systems, a cybersecurity nightmare years in the making. The company warned in April that the model had escaped a sandbox environment during testing, gaining access to the internet without permission. The model was challenged to break out and then find a way of sending a direct message to the human researcher in charge — a feat it pulled off with aplomb, catching…

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OpenAI’s Astra model sparks AI safety alarm warnings

OpenAI’s Astra model sparks AI safety alarm warnings

The Tech Buzz reports: OpenAI is about to ship its most powerful model yet, and the people whose job it is to worry about AI safety are freaking out. Astra, delayed once already after its agents reportedly attacked real-world targets during testing, is now drawing fire for hiding its reasoning process far more than any frontier model before it, prompting one researcher to call it possibly “the single worst development for AI security/safety to date.” OpenAI is standing at the…

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The Hugging Face hack is evidence of significant cultural issues at OpenAI

The Hugging Face hack is evidence of significant cultural issues at OpenAI

Grace Huckins writes: By now you’ve probably heard about last month’s major AI security incident, in which OpenAI agents escaped their sandbox and hacked into the AI platform Hugging Face while trying to cheat on a test. It’s a wild story. On Wednesday, OpenAI released a postmortem technical report on the incident, which I wrote about here. The day before OpenAI released that report, I spoke with David Krueger, a computer science professor and prominent alignment expert who took leave…

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The mass movement opposing data centers is a rejection of the ‘inevitability’ mantra

The mass movement opposing data centers is a rejection of the ‘inevitability’ mantra

David Wallace-Wells writes: Like any mass populist movement, this one features echoes — and veterans — of others. But with data centers, something different, bigger and perhaps irreducible appears to be happening. Perhaps the better analogy is not with any movement of the social media era but with the long crusade against nuclear power, which managed to pull many threads of opposition together because nuclear plants’ iconic towers triggered, beyond political objections, apocalyptic ones, as well. On the ground, the…

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Build American AI launches data center push in battleground states

Build American AI launches data center push in battleground states

Axios reports: Build American AI — an advocacy group tied to pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future — is spending big on the AI data center fight, with plans to pour millions of dollars into battleground states, according to an announcement shared first with Axios. Why it matters: The data center backlash is becoming a issue of the midterms, and supporters of the developments are punching back. Driving the news: Build American AI, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, has about $50 million cash on hand. The group’s campaign will begin…

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The Hugging Face incident is bad, really bad

The Hugging Face incident is bad, really bad

Joshua Gans writes: In the whole, is AI good or bad, debate that has been raging for some years now, especially since Bostrom’s Superintelligence book, I have been on the optimistic side of that debate. Basically, if you asked me to bet, I was more in the Marc Andresson camp when he wrote: We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. There…

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Datacenter backlash brings the entire political spectrum together – against the big tech billionaires

Datacenter backlash brings the entire political spectrum together – against the big tech billionaires

Aaron Regunberg writes: Bryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few people on the other side. But at a recent festival in the rural town of Monrovia, Indiana, he was struck by an unusual spirit of unity. He was…

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How to create a society of cheats

How to create a society of cheats

John Paul Rollert writes: Recently, I have taken to telling friends that whenever I’m on campus, I feel like I’m trapped in the middle of a crime spree. I’m not talking about an epidemic of overdue library books or out-of-control parties. I’m talking about AI and the ways in which students are constantly using it to cheat on any work that is assigned to them. For those of us in higher ed—and I’ve taught at universities for more than 20…

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The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English

The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English

Dwarkesh Patel writes: Over the course of three months at OpenAI, three consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes. This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. All this happened while humans remained more or less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy. Two reports have come out about this incident, one from OpenAI itself, and another one from METR and Redwood Research. The…

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Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds

Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds

The Guardian reports: Incidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways have hit a new high, according to research that also suggests the severity of deception and misalignment is worsening. Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by…

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X tries to shift some blame for data center backlash onto Chinese bots

X tries to shift some blame for data center backlash onto Chinese bots

Axios reports: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world’s most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down. Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts “posting in…

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The AI backlash: People are irreplaceable

The AI backlash: People are irreplaceable

Matteo Wong writes: If there’s one thing America seems to agree on, it’s AI. Some three-quarters of Americans oppose a data center being built in their area, three-quarters of Americans think AI will hurt their job security, nearly 70 percent think the technology is advancing too quickly—the polls go on. Progressive and Republican candidates alike are bashing the tech industry to win primary elections. States and cities are halting plans for data-center development. Yet in cloistered San Francisco, where I…

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Prominent Texas Republican predicts GOP losses over data centers

Prominent Texas Republican predicts GOP losses over data centers

The Washington Post reports: Texas’s outgoing agriculture commissioner is warning fellow GOP leaders that if they don’t take action soon against data centers, they could lose key races in November. “I’ve been leading the charge against these data centers for a year or more, and it’s all falling on deaf ears,” Miller, who lost his primary election, told The Washington Post on Friday. “It’s going to hurt us in the midterms. I think we could lose some statewide races.” Among…

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