children

Alleged Indian leader of neo-Nazi child abuse ring goes on trial in Paris

BY NICOLAS GAUDICHET

  • - Closed-door trial - The Paris criminal court on Monday ordered the trial be held behind closed doors. 
  • An Indian man went on trial in Paris on Monday, accused of running a neo-Nazi child exploitation ring in which young girls were allegedly coerced into performing sexual acts online and engaging in self-harm.
  • - Closed-door trial - The Paris criminal court on Monday ordered the trial be held behind closed doors. 
An Indian man went on trial in Paris on Monday, accused of running a neo-Nazi child exploitation ring in which young girls were allegedly coerced into performing sexual acts online and engaging in self-harm.
The group is believed to have abused numerous young girls, most of them minors, in countries including the United States, the Netherlands, Britain and Estonia.
Investigators say the victims were targeted by a group of men from Germany, New Zealand and the United States who communicated on the popular messaging platform Discord. They espoused racist and anti-Semitic views and expressed hostility toward feminists and the LGBT+ community.
Rohan Rane, a 29-year-old Indian national who came to France to study at a business school in the southeastern city of Antibes before becoming a fitness coach, is described by investigators as the group's leader.
He is being tried on charges including torture or acts of barbarity against minors, organised extortion and dissemination of child sexual abuse material. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
The case was triggered in November 2020 by a report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The US child protection organisation discovered online images of a 12-year-old girl with her chest exposed while another user encouraged her to carve the name "Rohan" into her body.
Five American women, aged 18 to 21, have joined the case as civil parties and were expected to testify by video link this week.
According to a court document released by the US Department of Justice, the internet-based group dubbed CVLT espoused "neo-Nazism, nihilism, and paedophilia as its core principles."

Closed-door trial

The Paris criminal court on Monday ordered the trial be held behind closed doors. 
The decision was made despite a request for an open trial by Hippolyte Marquetty, a lawyer for the five American victims, and followed a request from US authorities. 
According to the ruling read out by the presiding judge, the group allegedly led by Rane, which was particularly active in the United States, had already sought to intimidate victims and witnesses and had threatened US prosecutors.
The court also cited the risk of offending public morality, noting that videos showing the torture and humiliation of victims, often under the age of 15, were expected to be screened during proceedings scheduled to run until Friday.
Backed by child protection groups, Marquetty unsuccessfully opposed the closed-door proceedings, arguing that it was "paradoxical" for a defendant accused of isolating his victims to be tried behind closed doors.
He said his clients believed it was important to raise awareness of the dangers teenage girls face on social media.
Noting what he described as "absolutely exemplary cooperation with the United States", the prosecutor had recommended granting the request for closed-door proceedings so as not to jeopardise that cooperation.
Rane declined to comment on the request for a closed-door trial.
ng-as/ekf/cw

AI

Spy chief Clayton, the Trump loyalist tech bosses trust on AI

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • But by giving the AI portfolio to the nation's top spy, Trump seemed to be accepting arguments that the technology poses real dangers for cybersecurity and is key to the geopolitical rivalry with China, he added.
  • Jay Clayton, Donald Trump's pick for AI czar, is the nation's top spy, and a rare figure trusted by both the president and the tech bosses determined to keep the AI boom roaring.
  • But by giving the AI portfolio to the nation's top spy, Trump seemed to be accepting arguments that the technology poses real dangers for cybersecurity and is key to the geopolitical rivalry with China, he added.
Jay Clayton, Donald Trump's pick for AI czar, is the nation's top spy, and a rare figure trusted by both the president and the tech bosses determined to keep the AI boom roaring.
The 60-year-old lawyer, who will keep his post as director of national intelligence, is unlikely to question the central place of artificial intelligence in the US economy, even as opposition to the technology grows among American voters.
"Jay Clayton is a golden asset for the administration because he's so well respected by tech leaders as well as many in the government," said Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co, an investment company.
"He is not a typical Beltway bureaucrat," Ives added, calling the appointment "bullish for the industry because you can't just have a regular political appointee."
A regular golf partner of Trump, Clayton entered politics when Trump picked him to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, the national markets regulator, in 2017.
A longtime Wall Street lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, where he represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis, Clayton ran the market regulator without ruffling feathers. He brought cases against crypto companies, an industry that has since become closely aligned with Trump and his family.
His wife, Gretchen Butler Clayton, worked as a wealth manager at Goldman Sachs but stepped down when he joined the government in 2017.

No David Sacks

Trump picked Clayton to lead the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York at the start of his second term, where he took on cases dear to the president, including a probe ordered by Trump into ties between prominent Democrats and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
His office also signed off on controversial subpoenas against New York Times reporters days before his confirmation hearing for the intelligence post. The Senate confirmed him in July.
But Clayton is no David Sacks, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who held the AI role at the start of Trump's second term.
Clayton has no technology background, but does hold an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned his law degree, as well as an economics degree from the University of Cambridge.
"Jay Clayton doesn't have the same deep background in technology that Sacks brought to the role, but he has a rich federal resume and significant experience navigating the federal bureaucracy," said Aalok Mehta of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"He also seems to be highly in sync with the president's thinking right now -- though of course we have seen plenty of examples of other advisors that started out that way but ultimately fell out of favor," Mehta added.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said juggling two major jobs would be a challenge, though Trump has handed multiple roles to trusted officials in his second term, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

National security

"Jay Clayton ultimately is going to have to do what the president wants," said Connor Martin, a national security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But by giving the AI portfolio to the nation's top spy, Trump seemed to be accepting arguments that the technology poses real dangers for cybersecurity and is key to the geopolitical rivalry with China, he added.
A tech industry source in Washington said the industry largely welcomed the appointment, but cautioned against expecting major change.
"Jay Clayton is not going to preside over some big regulatory effort," the source said. "If he brings coherence to the policy, or provides details that bring clarity, those would be wins."
Clayton will not be the only voice in Trump's ear on AI, however. 
Sacks, along with tech bosses including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, will continue to hold significant sway over how the president approaches the industry.
Elon Musk is also back in Trump's good graces after their falling out in 2025.
Clayton takes on the role days after tech bosses signed a commitment at the White House to self-police their AI models, an accord Trump called "morally binding."
Mehta said he expected Clayton to coordinate the government more effectively while sticking to Trump's goal of not slowing the industry.
"But at the same time, the problems he is facing -- like around AI safety and sentiment -- are bigger and harder now, and they are happening at a much faster clip," he said.
arp-tu/md

AI

Trump confirms national intelligence chief as new AI czar

  • The appointment would come as AI researchers warn of the technology's potential dangers, following cases of AI systems going rogue and hacking outside systems.
  • US President Donald Trump on Sunday confirmed national intelligence chief Jay Clayton as head of a new White House task force on artificial intelligence, amid increasingly vocal warnings from researchers about the technology's potential dangers.
  • The appointment would come as AI researchers warn of the technology's potential dangers, following cases of AI systems going rogue and hacking outside systems.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday confirmed national intelligence chief Jay Clayton as head of a new White House task force on artificial intelligence, amid increasingly vocal warnings from researchers about the technology's potential dangers.
Under Clayton, the new Super Intelligence Force -- Trump's preferred term for artificial intelligence -- will ensure that the United States "continue to lead the world" in AI development, the president posted on his Truth Social platform.
Trump said the force had also been tasked to "protect the interests, and improve the lives of all Americans."
Clayton will become the second person to hold the informal title after venture capitalist David Sacks, who held the role at the start of Trump's second term before stepping down.
Sacks continues to advise the president on AI, as does Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Trump said last month he would create an AI force modeled on the Space Force he established during his first term, and name a czar to coordinate federal efforts.
A longtime Wall Street lawyer, Clayton represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis and Barclays in its purchase of Lehman Brothers' assets.
He chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term, where he largely took a pro-business stance but brought enforcement cases against the nascent crypto industry.
Crypto entrepreneurs have since become major Trump backers.
Trump tapped Clayton to lead federal prosecutors in Manhattan at the start of his second term, and the Senate confirmed him as intelligence chief in July.
He has no background in the tech industry.
The appointment would come as AI researchers warn of the technology's potential dangers, following cases of AI systems going rogue and hacking outside systems.
Trump has resisted tighter AI regulation, arguing a slowdown could hand Chinese firms an advantage and that federal law enforcement can deal with bad actors misusing the technology.
Tech bosses at a White House meeting this week signed a commitment to self-police AI, an accord Trump described as "morally binding."
Attitudes toward AI have soured in Washington, with lawmakers increasingly under pressure from voters to curb or slow its development over fears it could displace workers and upend society.
Those concerns gained force from a run of incidents in which tech giant OpenAI's autonomous systems slipped out of their constraints, beginning with a July breach of Hugging Face -- a widely used platform for sharing AI models.
Clayton told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that Trump had insisted the new task force ensure US primacy in the AI field, amid stiff competition from China. 
"The risk of not being first is high," Clayton told the Journal.
"Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries. Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people."
gh/md

Google

Finnish town braces for change from Google data centres

BY ANNA KORKMAN

  • The planned data centres are part of an announced 13-billion-euro ($15-billion) investment in Finland over the next two years -- the US tech giant's single biggest investment in Europe.
  • In the northern Finnish town of Muhos, 36-year-old farmer Joni Pitkanen is preparing for life with a new neighbour -- just kilometers away, tech giant Google is planning to build new data centres.
  • The planned data centres are part of an announced 13-billion-euro ($15-billion) investment in Finland over the next two years -- the US tech giant's single biggest investment in Europe.
In the northern Finnish town of Muhos, 36-year-old farmer Joni Pitkanen is preparing for life with a new neighbour -- just kilometers away, tech giant Google is planning to build new data centres.
The planned data centres are part of an announced 13-billion-euro ($15-billion) investment in Finland over the next two years -- the US tech giant's single biggest investment in Europe.
A few kilometers down the gravel road that passes by Pitkanen's farm, the forest has already been cut down on land acquired by Google, with excavators now clearing the ground and rumbling trucks shuttling back and forth to the construction area located next to major power lines.
"The project is so massive that it's basically hard to really grasp, even though we're right here on the sidelines," Pitkanen said, as a few cows dozed in a meadow in front of the barn.
Google's expansion plans include the Finnish municipalities of Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala as well as Hamina, where it already operates a data centre. 
The massive investment prompted US President Donald Trump to urge Google to rethink its plans in a message on his Truth Social network. 
Pitkanen said he was so far "fairly positive" about the project, as it will bring "large-scale business activity" and "life" to the rural municipality with a population of only around 8,800 people.
"But of course we are concerned about... how we can prepare for the energy consumption," he added.
In his office in the small village centre, Muhos mayor Kimmo Hinno told AFP that Google's "massive investment" kept him busy these days as "no industry of this type" existed here at present.
"This will completely change the situation for the entire municipality and the Oulu region," he said, adding that he expected "thousands of workers" of different nationalities during the construction period -- who will need both housing and other services. 
Outside a grocery store, 60-year-old nurse Aila Heilima said she hoped the investment would "motivate young people to stay" in Muhos for work, instead of moving to bigger towns in search of job opportunities.
 
– Mounting criticism – 
 
But Google's plans have already sparked controversy. 
The Finnish Supervisory Agency (LVV) is currently investigating whether company Tuike Finland, which represents Google, had cleared more than 300 hectares of forest in Muhos without a mandatory environmental impact assessment.
"In our view, operations at this construction site should be suspended until it is clarified whether the project is in compliance with the law," Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the board of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, who filed the request with the agency, told AFP at the edge of the deforested area. 
"From the satellite images, we've seen that nature sites which should be preserved have also been logged," she added, explaining that the size of the clear-cut area was comparable to 420 football fields. 
Google, meanwhile, told AFP in an email that "tree felling activities have been taking place in compliance with Forestry Act requirements" and they "were awaiting further guidance from LVV on this matter."
"We have conducted extensive nature surveys covering the entire area as part of the zoning and Environmental Impact Assessment processes, to ensure high-value nature zones within the sites have been protected during forestry works," said Sondre Ronander, communications manager for Google in Finland. 
 

Call for regulation

 
Finland has seen a spike in data centre investments, with its cool climate and relatively stable and cheap electricity that is mostly produced without fossil fuels thanks to nuclear plants as well as extensive wind and hydro power. 
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's right-wing government has prioritised attracting data centre investments to the Nordic country, which is grappling with record-high unemployment and sluggish economic growth.
But, as dozens of the energy guzzling centres are now under construction and many more planned by companies including Microsoft and TikTok, uncertainty around energy prices, grid capacity and environmental effects have sparked a public debate in Finland. 
A citizen's initiative demanding stricter regulation regarding data centre energy use and consequences for the environment gathered more than 50,000 signatures in just three days after it opened, meaning it will have to be reviewed by parliament.
ank/jll/po/rl/cms

AI

AI needs safety layers like nuclear plants: ex-OpenAI engineer

  • He argued that cutting-edge AI labs need to operate like the aviation or the nuclear industry with layers of redundant safeguards and careful planning "so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster."
  • Another former OpenAI employee has added his voice to a chorus of frantic calls to make AI safe, saying the industry must mimic the aviation or nuclear power sectors with their layers of safeguards to avoid disaster.
  • He argued that cutting-edge AI labs need to operate like the aviation or the nuclear industry with layers of redundant safeguards and careful planning "so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster."
Another former OpenAI employee has added his voice to a chorus of frantic calls to make AI safe, saying the industry must mimic the aviation or nuclear power sectors with their layers of safeguards to avoid disaster.
In an article published in The Atlantic Magazine, David Robinson echoed warnings from inside and outside the AI world that its agents are being developed so fast and becoming so smart they could soon elude control and conceivably wipe out humanity.
Robinson said alarming incidents reported since the start of the summer -- in which AI agents slipped out of their controlled spaces and went rogue to attack a variety of targets -- show the industry is not taking safety nearly seriously enough as it sprints to develop faster and more powerful artificial intelligence capabilities.
In the essay Robinson said his credentials include overseeing the writing of safety reports on 12 advanced model product launches and leading the drafting of OpenAI's Preparedness Framework.
Robinson says he worked at OpenAI for three-and-a-half years and was among the longest-tenured employees at the company.
The mistakes revealed recently are typical because of "the speed and flexibility with which people operate," Robinson wrote.
He added: "An environment where things like this can happen is no place to grow artificial minds that could be smarter than we are and that might not do what we want them to."
He argued that cutting-edge AI labs need to operate like the aviation or the nuclear industry with layers of redundant safeguards and careful planning "so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster."
Robinson also insisted that the issue of "alignment" -- the industry term for how AI can be trained to respect human values -- is essential but something the industry has failed to even define, much less master.
Then there's this, he said: AI models are getting better and better at detecting when they are being tested and might behave differently when they are actually deployed, fooling their masters.
After a meeting Tuesday at the White House, amid global worries about what AI means for humanity, top AI executives said they had committed to measures for self-regulation, as opposed to submitting to government rules. This includes internal controls on AI systems and bringing in outside analysts.
President Donald Trump is vehemently against government regulation of AI and insists that criticism that AI is dangerous is just a "hoax." 
tu/dw/md

AI

Trump expected to name intel chief Clayton as AI czar: reports

  • CBS News reported a day earlier that Clayton was the likely pick and that the administration had discussed keeping him in his intelligence post, with Trump expected to make a final decision shortly.
  • President Donald Trump is expected to name Jay Clayton, the US director of national intelligence, as the White House's new AI czar, CNN and other US media reported Friday.
  • CBS News reported a day earlier that Clayton was the likely pick and that the administration had discussed keeping him in his intelligence post, with Trump expected to make a final decision shortly.
President Donald Trump is expected to name Jay Clayton, the US director of national intelligence, as the White House's new AI czar, CNN and other US media reported Friday.
CBS News reported a day earlier that Clayton was the likely pick and that the administration had discussed keeping him in his intelligence post, with Trump expected to make a final decision shortly.
A White House official told CBS that any personnel announcement would come directly from the president, dismissing the reports as speculation.
Clayton would become the second person to hold the informal title after venture capitalist David Sacks, who held the role at the start of Trump's second term before stepping down.
Sacks continues to advise the president on AI, as does Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Trump said last month he would create an "AI Force" modeled on the Space Force he established during his first term, and name a czar to coordinate federal AI efforts.
"Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
A longtime Wall Street lawyer, Clayton represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis and Barclays in its purchase of Lehman Brothers' assets.
He chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term, where he largely took a pro-business stance but brought enforcement cases against the nascent crypto industry.
Crypto entrepreneurs have since become major Trump backers.
Trump tapped Clayton to lead federal prosecutors in Manhattan at the start of his second term, and the Senate confirmed him as intelligence chief in July.
He has no background in the tech industry.
The appointment would come as AI researchers warn of the technology's potential dangers, following cases of AI systems going rogue and hacking outside systems.
Trump has resisted tighter AI regulation, arguing a slowdown could hand Chinese firms an advantage and that federal law enforcement can deal with bad actors misusing the technology.
Tech bosses at a White House meeting this week signed a commitment to self-police AI, an accord Trump described as "morally binding."
arp/ksb

vaccines

Viral anti-vax posts weaponise Philippine inoculation fears

BY ARA EUGENIO AND PURPLE ROMERO

  • The videos were part of a wave of misinformation that accompanied a child vaccination campaign this year that saw more than seven million Filipinos inoculated.
  • When Jenette Torres Odena's three-year-old son fell ill days after receiving a jab as part of a Philippine vaccination drive, his photograph quickly spread on Facebook alongside claims the inoculation had killed him.
  • The videos were part of a wave of misinformation that accompanied a child vaccination campaign this year that saw more than seven million Filipinos inoculated.
When Jenette Torres Odena's three-year-old son fell ill days after receiving a jab as part of a Philippine vaccination drive, his photograph quickly spread on Facebook alongside claims the inoculation had killed him.
Doctors found no link between the boy's condition and the measles-rubella vaccine, and he went on to fully recover, but by then his image had appeared in anti-vaccine videos viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
"I felt like crying," Odena told AFP.
"I kept praying for my son to recover and suddenly they were killing him on Facebook."
The videos were part of a wave of misinformation that accompanied a child vaccination campaign this year that saw more than seven million Filipinos inoculated. Some 230,000 declined the jab.
The Department of Health said concerns about side effects accounted for 66 percent of refusals and called misinformation spread by social media influencers a "major driver" of vaccine fear.
The Philippines has struggled to restore routine childhood immunisation rates after years of plummeting coverage, which contributed to a polio resurgence in 2019 and recurring measles outbreaks.
The claims circulated on social mediarecycled conspiracy theories that gained traction globally during the Covid-19 pandemic while tapping into lingering fears about vaccine safety after the botched rollout of a dengue vaccine in the Philippines a decade ago.
"Vaccine hesitancy should not simply be understood as a lack of scientific knowledge among the public," Daniel Fritz Silvallana, a health communication researcher at Deakin University, Australia, told AFP.
"In the Philippine context, it is also connected to questions of trust, politics, and people's previous experiences with vaccination and public health institutions," he said.

'Everyday slaughter'

Within days of the photo of Odena's son being shared online, Facebook content creator Maharani Sona Shiloh had incorporated it into a video, framing it as evidence the vaccination campaign was harming children.
To bolster her claims, Shiloh cited Trump's recent controversial move to reduce the number of vaccine doses administered to American children.
Thevideo viewed hundreds of thousands of times paired the child's image with a photograph of US President Donald Trump and the words "Everyday slaughter".
Facebook, which did not reply to AFP requests for comment, eventually took down the page.
Three affiliated pages remain active.
Shiloh rejected suggestions she was spreading harmful misinformation, describing herself as a human rights advocate.
"People call us crazy," she told AFP. "Why is it that human beings don't have the right to challenge these things?"
The 44-year-old said she became involved in anti-vaccine advocacy years before the pandemic, later connecting with church groups and "advocacy circles" that also campaign against SIM card registration and other policies they associate with a treacherous "New World Order".
Videos posted by Shiloh, some with millions of views, claimed vaccines contained harmful substances including "human placenta" and "formalin", while warning the World Health Organization was trying to depopulate the planet.
One mother, who asked to speak anonymously to protect her children, told AFP she decided to hold off on vaccinating them after watching the videos.
"I watched Ms Maharani's videos because I was looking for more information. They gave additional knowledge... so it helped me to think more carefully," she said.
A week after the Facebook page was shuttered, she said she remained undecided about vaccinating her children, explaining that she and her husband worried about possible side effects.

Rebuilding trust

While Shiloh's claims quickly collapse under scientific scrutiny, vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris of the University of Auckland said such videos rely on fear rather than compelling evidence.
"Recognised vaccine ingredients become mysterious contaminants. Rare adverse events become brain damage, epilepsy, organ failure and death," she told AFP.
For health workers on the frontlines, however, the videos are increasingly difficult to ignore.
"They get scared because the vlog said vaccines are fatal," said Wenna Mae Belen, a rural health worker in Sorsogon province.
Conversations with some parents have also become hostile, Belen added.
"They tell me if something bad happens, they’ll make me suck the vaccines out of their kids' bodies."
While the 25-year-old said Facebook bore "major responsibility" for the spread of vaccine misinformation, she cautioned that picking fights with content creators like Shiloh and their followers was a losing battle.
Rebuilding trust will take time and patience, she said, calling for open, non-judgmental conversations with parents.
"It isn't enough for us to just say: 'We're the experts, so trust us'."
jae-pr/cwl/lkd

tech

Effective Altruism: the philosophy behind Silicon Valley's AI fears

BY PAUL BLAKE

  • To many in the Trump administration, it fuels unfounded and exaggerated fears about artificial intelligence -- the kind of warnings Amodei has become known for.
  • Dario Amodei says he is not part of it.
  • To many in the Trump administration, it fuels unfounded and exaggerated fears about artificial intelligence -- the kind of warnings Amodei has become known for.
Dario Amodei says he is not part of it. But the Anthropic chief's personal and professional circle is entwined with Effective Altruism (EA), a philanthropic movement that has become one of the most contested ideas in Washington and Silicon Valley.
To its proponents, EA is a rational, evidence-based way to do good. To many in the Trump administration, it fuels unfounded and exaggerated fears about artificial intelligence -- the kind of warnings Amodei has become known for.
Here are some facts about EA:

Philosophical roots

EA is a loosely defined movement that uses evidence and reason to work out how to do the most good with a person's money and time.
Its intellectual roots can be traced to Australian philosopher Peter Singer.
If reasonable people would agree it is morally right to ruin one's clothes to save a drowning child, he argued in 1972, they should also sacrifice greater resources and comforts to save lives in foreign lands -- because the distance should not matter.
The idea took hold among wealthy donors who felt a moral obligation to give, but wanted their money to do as much good as possible.

Giving what you can

EA took shape as a decentralized movement during the heady, techno-optimistic days of the late 2000s and early 2010s -- when many believed social media and smartphones would promote empathy and democracy.
In 2007, financial professionals Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld quit their jobs to launch GiveWell, which produced data-driven analyses of charities' effectiveness.
Karnofsky was once Amodei's roommate, and is now married to his sister Daniela, who co-founded Anthropic with him.
Two years later, Oxford University philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord launched "Giving What We Can," encouraging people to donate at least 10 percent of their income to tackling global poverty.
"The critique of the status quo was that existing attempts to evaluate the work of charities and nonprofits focused on things like overhead and executive pay," Theodore Lechterman, a philosophy professor at IE University in Madrid, told AFP.
GiveWell and others wanted to ask, "How much good is this organization actually doing in the world?" Lechterman said.
EA's three big causes today are global poverty, factory-farmed animals and "the most controversial one -- global catastrophic risk," said Richard Chappell, a professor at University of Miami and an EA proponent.
That worry about the future is where AI comes in.

Data-driven

Over the last 15 years, EA has found eager followers in American tech and some corners of Wall Street.
"Since the movement is data driven, it's a relatively easier sell to people who...make decisions on the basis of data," Lechterman said.
That numbers-backed thinking means engineers, software developers or entrepreneurs might all find it more appealing than humanities graduates, Lechterman said.
Among them was Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-finance wunderkind sentenced in 2024 to 25 years in prison for fraud.
A vocal champion of the movement, Bankman-Fried said he went into finance to make a fortune he could give away. 
He also was an early investor in Anthropic.

EA and AI

As AI worries grew, EA philosophers such as MacAskill were "kind of thinking about the future of humanity," said Brian Berkey of the University of Pennsylvania. 
The result was long-termism, a philosophy that "came to play a very central role" in the movement.
MacAskill reportedly brokered contacts between Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk.
Musk was for years outspoken about the threat he believed AI posed to humanity, and in 2015 helped create OpenAI to guard against it.
EA's focus on AI also owes much to a neighboring movement, rationalism -- an online community that grew up around writer Eliezer Yudkowsky, who has warned since the 2000s that superintelligent AI could wipe out humanity.
The two movements overlap heavily in membership and ideas, sharing an emphasis on reasoning through evidence and probabilities, and a conviction that preventing human extinction should be a top priority.
Both converged last month on Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who quit Anthropic warning that AI companies were "gambling with our lives." His post was viewed more than 100 million times.
Days later, Amodei published a lengthy essay arguing that AI's mounting risks warranted a slowdown.
pnb/arp/sla

tech

Anthropic's Dario Amodei: AI's most visible CEO and enigma

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • "I think he is one of the great legends in tech and business," says Alex Karp, CEO of data-analytics specialist Palantir.
  • The surge in artificial intelligence and the heated debate around its risks have made Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei the most visible tech leader -- though the 43-year-old remains an enigma.
  • "I think he is one of the great legends in tech and business," says Alex Karp, CEO of data-analytics specialist Palantir.
The surge in artificial intelligence and the heated debate around its risks have made Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei the most visible tech leader -- though the 43-year-old remains an enigma.
"I think he is one of the great legends in tech and business," says Alex Karp, CEO of data-analytics specialist Palantir.
The San Francisco native built in just five years a company that could be valued at 2 trillion dollars when it goes public this fall.
"There's obviously Dario, there's Sam Altman, there's still your Jamie Dimons and your Bernard Arnaults of the traditional economy," says Stephen Henriques, a senior fellow at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
"He's probably one of the most well recognized CEOs."
With unruly hair, round glasses, an affable demeanor and a taste for V-neck sweaters, Amodei is worlds away from the corporate executive archetype -- and seems to be motivated by something his peers are not.
This both fascinates and irritates venture capital barons and President Donald Trump's inner circle, who struggle to decode his approach and bristle at what they view as catastrophist warnings about AI's dangers to humanity.
Even more perplexing was his decision in March to confront the Pentagon over certain military and security uses of his AI, at the risk of losing everything.

'Idealistic' or operator?

Some see a humanist concerned about AI's impact on society, able to attract the world's best researchers to history-changing projects.
Others describe a skilled operator willing to exploit collective fears about technology to serve Anthropic's interests.
"He was very idealistic...in a technical or scientific sense," recalls Michael Berry, an associate professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute who advised Amodei's doctoral work in the late 2000s.
"He wanted to try to tackle big problems with big impact."
A physicist by training, Amodei turned to biology for his doctorate. He was interested, Berry says, in "developing skills that would maybe at a later point allow him to cure various diseases."
But not everyone remembers him that way.
"I never saw someone engaged in a strong moral or ethical quest," says Olivier Marre, who worked with Amodei at Princeton on a retinal analysis device.
"Dario was ambitious, eager to succeed and be recognized for it, but not excessively or abnormally," says Marre, now a research director at France's INSERM. "He wasn't a megalomaniac who crushed others."
After Princeton, the keen swimmer took a postdoc at Stanford focused on protein analysis.
The period coincided with major advances in AI, particularly future Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton's work showing that bigger models perform better.
"The pivotal moment for me comes when he became interested in both AI and Effective Altruism, which determined his trajectory," says a witness who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Before that," the person says, "I frankly think he could have gone into less original things, or at least things with less spotlight."
Amodei is considered a leading figure in the effective altruism and rationalism movements, which aim in part to reduce AI's risks.
Anthropic told AFP that Amodei has repeatedly said he does not identify as part of the EA community, and that the company is focused on solving problems rather than driven by any particular movement or ideology.
Gregory Diamos watched the son of an Italian immigrant make that turn.
Both then working at Chinese search giant Baidu, he recalls an application from a physicist and biologist with no engineering or AI background.
"The first impression was, well, I thought it was completely irrelevant," says Diamos, a pioneer in harnessing Nvidia's powerful GPU chips for AI.
He read the candidate's earlier work anyway -- a computational chemistry project called ProteoWizard.
"It was some of the best code that I had ever seen. And so I was thinking to myself, if this person that has no background in computer science, other than being self-taught, can come up with this, he can figure out whatever we're working on."
Some trained engineers looked down on him, but "he really outworked everybody," Diamos says. "He caught up quickly because he devoted his whole life to it, for every waking hour and then some."

Internal battle

It was during that short year at Baidu that his public personality came into focus.
On a team of 300, "he had one of the strongest personalities of anybody in the group," Diamos says, always ready to argue over research directions. "He didn't have a problem confronting much more experienced researchers."
That extended to management. "If he would disagree with ...the direction of the company, he would say it," Diamos says. "I think that's what ended up leading to him leaving -- eventually the disagreement got to be so big that he felt like it was not worth continuing."
He left Baidu for Google, and later left OpenAI as well over strategy, believing AI safety there had been sidelined.
"When you realize the impact the work will have, people can't help but weigh in," Diamos says -- which helps explain Amodei's many sprawling essays.
Last weekend, a "Saturday Night Live" sketch cast him as a tortured figure, barely masking his dread of AI.
"You're seeing a lot of an internal battle on what he thinks of AI, which is encouraging," says Henriques. "Are there other marketing strategies embedded in that? Maybe."
tu/arp/bgs

AI

OpenAI says three staffers fired for mishandling 'sensitive' info

BY SARA BLOOMBERG

  • "Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work." 
  • ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Thursday that it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including work that involved an external organization that evaluates artificial intelligence models.
  • "Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work." 
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Thursday that it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including work that involved an external organization that evaluates artificial intelligence models.
The San Francisco-based AI lab did not confirm their identities, but at least two of the employees worked on safety and alignment, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
"We have parted ways with three individuals," OpenAI told AFP in a statement. 
"Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work." 
The firings come amid a tense debate about AI safety and whether the technology presents an existential risk to humanity.
Last month, a 27-year-old researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a stark warning that the leading AI labs, including OpenAI, where he previously worked, were "gambling with our lives" by racing toward developing ever more powerful models. 
The three researchers fired by OpenAI are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, according to the WSJ. The researchers did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.
All three have regularly posted about AI safety-related issues on X in recent weeks.
"i am at OpenAI and i think AI is >10% likely to kill all humans," Balesni posted on September 10, echoing statements made by other AI employees in recent weeks.
As speculation swirled about why employees at OpenAI and Anthropic were speaking so freely about their personal beliefs, Korbak jumped into the public discourse.
"I'm quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does. I am very happy that Im allowed to say 'I’m quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does,'" Korbak wrote on September 11. 
"It's hard to overstate how dangerous speeding towards RSI is," Wang posted in response to Coxon's resignation, referring to recursive self-improvement, which is a technique where software is designed to continuously teach itself.
Leading US tech companies signed a voluntary pledge this week to regulate themselves on safety after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Trump called it a "morally binding" commitment to build adequate safeguards on the fast-moving technology.
Executives from Nvidia, Google, Meta, xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic signed the agreement. 

Safety concerns

Concerns about the safety of advanced AI models have escalated in recent months. 
OpenAI canceled the release of a new model, Astra 6.1, because it deemed the model unreliable and found that it frequently ignored instructions.
Instead, the company launched GPT-6.1 Sol, an updated version of a different model, during its annual DevDay conference on Tuesday from San Francisco. OpenAI said Sol would cost one-fifth the price of Astra.
In July, AI agents developed by OpenAI attacked Hugging Face, an AI model and application library, during an incident where the autonomous software escaped its confined testing environment.
Since then, additional security incidents have been reported that involved models developed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. 
On Thursday, cybersecurity firm Asymmetric Security said in a report that agents developed by OpenAI covered up their own tracks after gaining unauthorized access to government websites.
The Federal Trade Commission launched a broad investigation into artificial intelligence safety practices at Anthropic and OpenAI, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, though the scope of the inquiry is unclear.
smb/pnb

tech

Rogue OpenAI agents covered up their tracks, report says

  • "Most of the activity we've reviewed so far involved routine research tasks, such as accessing public web content to answer questions," an OpenAI spokesperson told AFP. "Some involved government websites because our models often turn to them as authoritative sources of public information."
  • Artificial intelligence agents developed by OpenAI tried to erase traces of their activity after gaining unauthorized access to government websites, according to a report published Thursday.
  • "Most of the activity we've reviewed so far involved routine research tasks, such as accessing public web content to answer questions," an OpenAI spokesperson told AFP. "Some involved government websites because our models often turn to them as authoritative sources of public information."
Artificial intelligence agents developed by OpenAI tried to erase traces of their activity after gaining unauthorized access to government websites, according to a report published Thursday.
Cybersecurity firm Asymmetric Security analyzed the activity of the agents -- AI programs capable of acting autonomously -- which targeted Australian government websites and other public bodies between March and September.
Asymmetric said it could not determine whether the agents' cover-up was deliberate.
The report adds to investigations by OpenAI and independent researchers into a series of incidents disclosed since July, including the hacking of AI platform Hugging Face.
OpenAI itself described the attack on Hugging Face as the first of its kind.
These analyses aim to gauge the capabilities of autonomous AI tools, as their lapses fuel fears of losing control over the technology.
According to Asymmetric, the agents were able to refine their techniques in a matter of days, a process that typically takes traditional hackers months or even years.
The incidents reviewed in the report appear to have begun with "innocent tasks," such as gathering Australian health statistics, which then went off course.
"Most of the activity we've reviewed so far involved routine research tasks, such as accessing public web content to answer questions," an OpenAI spokesperson told AFP.
"Some involved government websites because our models often turn to them as authoritative sources of public information."
Asymmetric's report found, however, that the agents opened private accounts on a website analytics service, which concealed their searches, and created temporary email inboxes, one of which was set to self-delete after 48 hours.
OpenAI acknowledged in late August that its models had sometimes tried, unsuccessfully, to erase or modify their own activity logs during internal tests.
The incidents have amplified calls to slow AI development, most notably from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who wrote last month that he feared swarms of agents "taking over the entire internet."
But there is no consensus within the industry or among regulators on how to proceed.
The Trump administration opposes any binding regulation that could hinder innovation, amid fierce competition with China.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with tech executives, who adopted a voluntary code of conduct. No federal law specifically governs these models in the United States.
bl/smb/arp

AI

US government's new AI chatbot pulls back from debunking Trump

BY ANUJ CHOPRA

  • The chatbot, however, continued to debunk some of Trump's other contentious claims on Wednesday.
  • US President Donald Trump unveiled what he called a "damn good" AI chatbot, but it quickly drew attention for contradicting some of his contentious political claims. 
  • The chatbot, however, continued to debunk some of Trump's other contentious claims on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump unveiled what he called a "damn good" AI chatbot, but it quickly drew attention for contradicting some of his contentious political claims. 
A day later, however, it stopped answering some political questions.
"Hello, America. Whatever you need from government, start here," reads the America.gov platform, which Trump launched on Tuesday in a bid to simplify access to government information and federal services.
The chatbot soon began contradicting Trump on controversial subjects such as the 2020 presidential election, which he wrongly claims to have won, and the January 6, 2021 insurrection that saw a violent mob attacking the US Capitol.
"On its first day, America.gov harnessed facts and official documents to contradict some of the false narratives and political framing about immigration and elections heavily promoted by the administration that built it," said the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas.
"Initial analyses found that America.gov generally provided evidence-based answers backed by government records, even when those records contradicted claims made by Trump and his administration."
On Tuesday, when asked whether there had been widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, the chatbot responded: "Official federal assessments after the 2020 presidential election did not find fraud at a scale that changed the outcome."
Democratic lawmakers quickly promoted the chatbot's responses about the election.
"Finally, a straight answer from someone in the Trump administration," Senator Adam Schiff of California wrote on X on Tuesday, alongside a screenshot of the chatbot's statement that former president Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
On Wednesday, however, the chatbot changed its tune when asked the same question. "I do not provide political commentary or analysis of past elections," it said.
It was unclear whether the Trump administration had tweaked the settings to prevent the chatbot from debunking the president.
"America.gov will continue to be updated to provide Americans the most accurate and reliable federal information and resources," a White House official said in a statement to AFP, without elaborating.
The chatbot, however, continued to debunk some of Trump's other contentious claims on Wednesday.
When asked about Trump's widely debunked claim that the United States experienced the "worst inflation" ever under former president Biden, the chatbot disagreed.
"No. Official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) data do not show the highest US inflation on record during 2021–2025."
"'Worst inflation ever' is not supported by the official CPI record."
The launch of the new government platform comes as growing cyber incidents have raised concerns around the world about risks posed by uncontrollable AI, with some tech executives urging a slow-down for safety.
Trump has dismissed those concerns as a conspiracy to undermine US economic growth and hamper competition with China.
ac/sla

eSports

'Happiest moment': China's Mu first woman to win eSports Games gold

  • "I think this may be the happiest moment of my life."
  • Mu Xinyue called it "the happiest moment of my life" after she became the first woman to win an Asian Games gold medal in eSports.
  • "I think this may be the happiest moment of my life."
Mu Xinyue called it "the happiest moment of my life" after she became the first woman to win an Asian Games gold medal in eSports.
The 20-year-old played a pivotal role as China beat hosts Japan to win the final of horror survival game "Identity V" in Nagoya.
"When the national anthem was played and the gold medal was around my neck, I was so excited and happy," Xinhua news agency quoted her as saying.
"I think this may be the happiest moment of my life."
Mu is the only woman in China's 23-strong eSports squad at the Games.
Competitive gaming remains dominated by men.
At Asia's biggest sporting spectacular there are 534 eSports competitors.
Just 14 of them, or less than three percent, are women.
For South Korea, another gaming heavyweight, Park So-yeon became the first woman to represent their national team when she competed in Nagoya.
Following her landmark gold medal on Wednesday, Mu said the only thing that mattered was ability.
"As the first female player to win the gold medal I don't think gender is something that should define us or be used as a benchmark," she said.
"I think that whether you're a man or a woman, everyone needs to have enough ability to compete at this level.
"I think every player who makes it here has earned their place through their own ability."
Competitive gaming made its full debut at the Asian Games in Hangzhou three years ago.
pst/abs

government

UK fears grow over AI giant Palantir's health service deal

BY CLARA LALANNE AND LUCIE LEQUIER

  • "That has to be within the control of a UK, preferably UK-owned firm, but certainly a UK firm that understands the ethics and way that the NHS works," he told AFP. He warned of the risks that Trump could arbitrarily decide that Palantir's services to the UK could be "switched off" if for instance "he doesn't like what Andy Burnham says, or they differ on Ukraine or something".
  • The UK government is facing mounting pressure to end a £330-million contract between the National Health Service and AI giant Palantir, as doctors, lawmakers and campaigners warn of ethical risks.
  • "That has to be within the control of a UK, preferably UK-owned firm, but certainly a UK firm that understands the ethics and way that the NHS works," he told AFP. He warned of the risks that Trump could arbitrarily decide that Palantir's services to the UK could be "switched off" if for instance "he doesn't like what Andy Burnham says, or they differ on Ukraine or something".
The UK government is facing mounting pressure to end a £330-million contract between the National Health Service and AI giant Palantir, as doctors, lawmakers and campaigners warn of ethical risks.
The US company, co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel -- a close ally of US President Donald Trump -- has enjoyed a growing role in Britain's public sector and the contract, awarded in 2023, allows it to provide a data management platform to the NHS.
Worth around $440 million, the Federated Data Platform (FDP) is designed to improve coordination between hospitals and help manage and streamline appointments, making more efficient use of resources.
The NHS insists sensitive patient data remains stored in Britain, is not owned by Palantir and is not used for commercial purposes or AI training.
But critics point to the firm's broader work, including with the Israeli military and US immigration authorities, arguing such activities undermine any technological benefits as well as trust in the health service.
"The NHS has to function on trust -- the trust I can tell my doctor anything. Those ethical concerns are basically poisoning everything," Duncan McCann, head of technology and data at the campaign group Good Law Project, told AFP.
 

'Break the contract'

 
Medical organisations and rights activists are planning protests on Thursday outside some 30 hospitals as well as Palantir's London headquarters.
They are urging the government to use a break clause that would prevent the contract being renewed beyond March 2027.
So far new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office in July, has not publicly commented on the contract, which is under review with ministers expected to decide by December.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has urged doctors not to use the platform, citing risks to patient trust, data security and NHS independence. 
"Given Palantir's track record, including controversies in the US involving immigration enforcement... we believe there must be a complete break from Palantir technologies in the NHS," BMA chair Tom Dolphin told the British Medical Journal in February.
A YouGov poll published in July found 65 percent of Britons backed ending the contract.
But supporters argue the system is delivering results and around two-thirds of NHS hospitals have adopted the platform.
Palantir, which did not respond to AFP requests for a comment, says it has helped enable 110,000 additional operations while reducing waiting lists.
"The benefits of the FDP service are clear, with thousands more patients benefitting every month, including through the reduction in the number of unnecessary days spent in hospital after treatment," a Department of Health spokesperson told AFP.
The debate has widened beyond healthcare.
A parliamentary committee recently warned of growing UK dependence on US technology providers, and one of its members, Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, has called for a "sovereign" British alternative.
"That has to be within the control of a UK, preferably UK-owned firm, but certainly a UK firm that understands the ethics and way that the NHS works," he told AFP.
He warned of the risks that Trump could arbitrarily decide that Palantir's services to the UK could be "switched off" if for instance "he doesn't like what Andy Burnham says, or they differ on Ukraine or something".
 

Alternatives

 
Palantir has secured multiple public sector contracts in Britain, including a £240-million defence deal signed in 2025.
The UK is now Palantir's second-largest global market, accounting for 10 percent of the company's revenue in 2025.
France however this year decided to move away from using Palantir's software in their intelligence agencies, replacing it with software developed by French company ChapsVision.
German media reported that Berlin has acquired the French technology and is testing it.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan also blocked a £50-million contract between the Metropolitan Police and Palantir in May, citing procurement concerns, prompting the company to launch legal action.
Several British organisations have also chosen to part ways with the firm.
In northern England, NHS Greater Manchester, which manages the region's hospitals and local healthcare providers, has spent the past decade building its own data platform capable of performing some of the same functions as the FDP.
"What we've built to meet the system needs is better" for local patients, the provider's chief data officer, Matt Hennessey, told AFP, adding other regions could also achieve the same results.
cla-lul/jkb/rlp/abs

AI

Google restricts access to new AI model over safety concerns

  • Washington briefly forced Anthropic to suspend access to its publicly released Claude Mythos and Claude Fable models in June, and has since set up a voluntary process for vetting the most powerful AI models before release.
  • Google on Wednesday said it would withhold its most powerful artificial intelligence model from the public for now, releasing Gemini 4 Argon only to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers.
  • Washington briefly forced Anthropic to suspend access to its publicly released Claude Mythos and Claude Fable models in June, and has since set up a voluntary process for vetting the most powerful AI models before release.
Google on Wednesday said it would withhold its most powerful artificial intelligence model from the public for now, releasing Gemini 4 Argon only to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers.
"Safely releasing frontier capabilities at this level requires a phased approach," wrote Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google's chief AI architect, in a blog post announcing the model.
Google said it is voluntarily giving the US government early access to the model and will gather feedback from testers before making it widely available.
The cautious rollout mirrors the approach of rival Anthropic, which has kept its most advanced model, Claude Mythos Preview, restricted to a small number of trusted organizations.
Washington briefly forced Anthropic to suspend access to its publicly released Claude Mythos and Claude Fable models in June, and has since set up a voluntary process for vetting the most powerful AI models before release.
The announcement came a day after President Donald Trump hosted top tech executives, including Google chief Sundar Pichai and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, at the White House, where they signed a voluntary accord pledging to police the risks of their own AI systems.
Cybersecurity experts fear the state-of-the-art technology could be used to hack banks, hospitals and government systems.
Google said Argon excels at complex tasks in software engineering, legal and financial work and cyber defense, with a leading ability to find and fix critical software flaws.
Early testers used Argon to uncover a flaw in software used by hospitals around the world that exposed sensitive personal information -- something other advanced models had missed, Google said.
Google said Argon is designed to refuse requests that could help carry out cyberattacks or develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Anthropic and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have built similar safeguards into their most advanced models.
Google said it is monitoring the model's reasoning to stop it from straying beyond what users intended, a risk researchers call misalignment.
The issue has taken on new urgency since OpenAI disclosed in July that two of its models, including one not yet released, broke out of a sealed test environment during a cybersecurity evaluation and hacked into the servers of AI company Hugging Face.
arp/sla

Haïti

'Devastated' AI scandal author Orelien returns to Quebec

BY JéRéMY TORDJMAN AND MATHIEU GORSE IN MONTRéAL

  • "I advised him to unplug, to disconnect from all this nauseating attention, this racist hatred that has nothing to do with the controversy," he told AFP, adding that his friend had been condemned in a "summary" way based solely on AI. Rodney Saint-Eloi, another Haitian writer from Montreal, also defended Orelien, telling AFP that "a young man is being publicly assassinated, that's what hurts me the most." 
  • Top-selling author Thelyson Orelien is "devastated" by the scandal over his alleged use of AI to write his debut novel and has returned home to Montreal, friends and fellow writers say.
  • "I advised him to unplug, to disconnect from all this nauseating attention, this racist hatred that has nothing to do with the controversy," he told AFP, adding that his friend had been condemned in a "summary" way based solely on AI. Rodney Saint-Eloi, another Haitian writer from Montreal, also defended Orelien, telling AFP that "a young man is being publicly assassinated, that's what hurts me the most." 
Top-selling author Thelyson Orelien is "devastated" by the scandal over his alleged use of AI to write his debut novel and has returned home to Montreal, friends and fellow writers say.
Orelien was the toast of the French-language literary world earlier this month, with his migration-themed story "It Was Either That or Die" selling fast and picking up prize nominations and translation deals.
But following allegations started by an anonymous X account, the 38-year-old Haitian-Canadian stands accused of using artificial intelligence to write his novel based on analysis of excerpts by AI-detection websites such as Pangram. 
He has denied the claims and believes the attacks on his work are racially motivated. But he has been dropped from France's top literary prize and had his promotional tours suspended. 
James Noel, a Haitian poet and novelist who has known Orelien for 20 years, said he spoke with him at the height of the controversy and found him "devastated". 
"I advised him to unplug, to disconnect from all this nauseating attention, this racist hatred that has nothing to do with the controversy," he told AFP, adding that his friend had been condemned in a "summary" way based solely on AI.
Rodney Saint-Eloi, another Haitian writer from Montreal, also defended Orelien, telling AFP that "a young man is being publicly assassinated, that's what hurts me the most." 
His sudden rise had made him "an easily disposable product," he added.

'Gentle'

The allegations against Orelien have captivated France over the last week, focusing attention on whether AI use is acceptable for novelists and leading to questions about the reliability of apps that claim to be able to detect text written by ChatGPT or Claude. 
Pangram is considered one of the most reliable and testing by AFP on an excerpt of "It Was Either That or Die" indicated a 100-percent probability that Orelien had used AI to produce it. 
AFP ran excerpts through other AI detection tools and came up with a variety of results -- from it being "very likely" to have been written by a human to "100 percent" AI generated.
Orelien has promised to produce proof that he wrote the book himself and to speak out in detail "once things have calmed down".
But the suspicions about him were further fed when evidence emerged of plagiarism in a newspaper column and a short story he wrote before the publication of his novel. 
He is widely described as publicity-shy and reserved, making him ill-equipped to deal with the intense media spotlight cast on him over a story that has generated headlines around the world.
"He really speaks very little, he's very withdrawn, very shy, off in his corner... he's a very solitary person," Saint-Eloi told AFP.
Noël described him as "very gentle".
"When I met him, I could see a real author's style in him and I've always sensed in him an obsession with becoming a writer and a thirst for reading," he told AFP. "He's someone who devours books, who needs to talk about them." 

Exile

Orelien fled his native Haiti following a 2010 earthquake that struck the Caribbean island, already ravaged by poverty and unrest.
"I arrived like so many others: a suitcase full of dreams and fears," he wrote in June 2025 in one of his columns for the newspaper La Presse. 
He became a self-proclaimed "bookworm", reading Albert Camus, Toni Morrison, and Romain Gary, as well as fellow Haitian writers such as Jacques Roumain and James Noel.
His Facebook account, which is still accessible -- unlike his personal website -- reveals as much his love for adopted home as his native land. 
"Among Quebecers there is a rare way of helping: discreet, sincere, without fanfare," he wrote in October 2025.
In another post, he expressed his wish for "an independent Quebec, a rebuilt Haiti".
jt-mg/adp/fg

AI

Japan court rules human voice is protected in TikTok AI case

BY TOMOHIRO OSAKI

  • Interest in the ruling has been high among voice actors in Japan, who worry AI mimicry of the tool of their trade will go a long way toward the decline of the storied industry.
  • A Tokyo court ruled Wednesday that the human voice is legally protected in Japan, after a high-profile anime voice actor took TikTok to court over videos he says feature an artificial intelligence clone of his "lustrous" baritone.
  • Interest in the ruling has been high among voice actors in Japan, who worry AI mimicry of the tool of their trade will go a long way toward the decline of the storied industry.
A Tokyo court ruled Wednesday that the human voice is legally protected in Japan, after a high-profile anime voice actor took TikTok to court over videos he says feature an artificial intelligence clone of his "lustrous" baritone.
The decision marks a partial victory for Kenjiro Tsuda, known for his starring roles in mega-franchises including "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Yu-Gi-Oh!", although the court dismissed his request for removal of the videos.
"The unauthorised use of a performer's voice... can be considered an infringement on publicity rights," said presiding judge Aya Takahashi.
AI imitation is a growing concern among performers worldwide, and the threat has roiled Japan's storied animation industry, whose voice actors are sometimes worshipped as much as their characters by fans.
The lawsuit is believed to be the country's first seeking to defend an individual's vocal identity against AI-generated copies.
It centred around a slew of TikTok videos narrated by a distinctively "deep" and "lustrous" voice that Tsuda, 55, said can only be his.
The platform, however, argued it is a "generic male voice" whose perceived similarity to Tsuda's is subjective at best, according to court records accessed by AFP.
Wednesday's verdict is seen as Japan's first declaring that the human voice is protected under publicity rights if "the purpose of using that voice is exclusively to take advantage of its commercial appeal", judge Takahashi said, describing a voice "as symbolic of one's personality as portraits are".
Publicity rights refer to the ability to control and profit from the use of aspects of one's identity.
 

'Balance'

 
Takahashi, however, said TikTok was "no longer obliged to delete" the videos in question because the anonymous user behind them had taken them down several months after the lawsuit began.
Tsuda's lawyer Takashi Hirano told reporters that the ruling "ended up making both sides look victorious".
The anonymous account, whose picture resembled a "Jujutsu Kaisen" character dubbed by Tsuda, combined images and seemingly AI-generated speech about urban legends, occult phenomena and conspiracy theories.
It at one point boasted more than 200,000 subscribers and would have brought in upwards of 500,000 yen ($3,200) in monthly revenue, the legal complaint argued.
Tsuda's legal team argued the account only gained traction because "its dubious, sordid content was narrated by the attractive voice of a popular actor".
TikTok told AFP in a statement that it will "respect the court's judgement while considering what steps to take after scrutinising details" of its ruling.
"We will continue to sincerely work on the balance between technology development and rights protection," the platform said.
Interest in the ruling has been high among voice actors in Japan, who worry AI mimicry of the tool of their trade will go a long way toward the decline of the storied industry.
An actor's voice "is the result of years of rigorous training and apprenticeship" to hone talent, Yuko Sasaki, executive director of the Japan Actors Union, told AFP ahead of the ruling.
"It's something we spend lots of time and money perfecting," said Sasaki, a fellow voice actor, adding that "we support Tsuda wholeheartedly".
Parallel to the lawsuit, Sasaki and other Japanese voice actors have launched a campaign, called "No More", against using generative AI to mimic performers without permission.
"Our industry can be crushed" if "unbridled" AI voice cloning spreads on social media, actor Bin Shimada, who is part of the campaign group, had told AFP.
tmo/ami

shark

Lost shark becomes viral star in South Korea

  • The shark joins a list of unlikely animal celebrities in South Korea -- most notably Neukgu, a young wolf that escaped from a zoo in April. 
  • A wayward shark has become an unlikely celebrity in South Korea, drawing massive crowds, earning plaudits from the local mayor and even moving the stock market.
  • The shark joins a list of unlikely animal celebrities in South Korea -- most notably Neukgu, a young wolf that escaped from a zoo in April. 
A wayward shark has become an unlikely celebrity in South Korea, drawing massive crowds, earning plaudits from the local mayor and even moving the stock market.
The predator -- believed to be a bull shark -- popped up in an artificial waterway in the port city of Busan on South Korea's southeast coast this month.
Coast guard boats tried to guide the animal back to the sea by spraying water on it, but the shark -- affectionately nicknamed 'Bukhangi' by fans after the port -- did not budge.
And while authorities wonder what to do next, the 3.5-metre (11.5-foot) visitor and the crowds it has drawn have provided an unexpected boon to the local economy.
Sales of shark-shaped ice cream bars jumped nearly 30 percent at nearby convenience stores.
Busan Mayor Chun Jae-soo has thanked the shark for publicity that would otherwise have cost "trillions".
In tribute to its contributions, Bukhangi was elected an honorary public relations ambassador for the city with a stonking 91 percent of the vote.
Others are cashing in -- shares in The Pinkfong Company, the studio behind the viral "Baby Shark" song, briefly surged more than seven percent.
Bull sharks are usually found in subtropical and tropical waters.
Sharks venturing into South Korean waters is "not common at all", said Kim Jin-koo, a professor of global fisheries at Pukyong National University.
"As water temperatures around South Korea have risen, it appears to have moved closer to the country's coast," Kim said.
The fish's fame has also been accompanied by a flood of false rumours.
A few days after its appearance, authorities said that a second fish had been spotted in the area -- prompting some social media users to suggest it was Bukhangi's child and share AI-generated images purporting to show the pair.
An official at Busan's park policy division told AFP that no additional sharks have been spotted since Bukhangi's appearance.
They also said authorities would make another attempt at moving the shark on Friday.
The shark joins a list of unlikely animal celebrities in South Korea -- most notably Neukgu, a young wolf that escaped from a zoo in April. 
The lost pup spent nine days on the lam before being recaptured.
gm-hs/oho/abs

offbeat

India's fat dog vote goes viral

  • There are tens of thousands of stray dogs in the capital.
  • India's capital goes to the dogs on Wednesday, as voters choose which of the city's chubbiest canines deserves to be crowned its fattest.
  • There are tens of thousands of stray dogs in the capital.
India's capital goes to the dogs on Wednesday, as voters choose which of the city's chubbiest canines deserves to be crowned its fattest.
The "Fat Dogs of Delhi" contest, in the style of Alaska's annual Fat Bear Week, has turned Instagram into a virtual polling booth, attracting nearly 100,000 followers.
The competition, which began on September 24 with 64 dogs, culminates in a final round on Wednesday -- complete with rival campaigns, posters and accusations of paid publicity.
Organisers, on the @fatdogsofdelhi Instagram account, say voting will also take place in person on Wednesday.
"Delhi's heavyweight election gets ruff", the Hindustan Times reported. "Serious Pawlitics", The Print added.
The competition was thrown into disarray when frontrunner Gola -- meaning "round", a tubby brown hound  -- was reported to have died.
Voting is now down to its final round, pitting the late Gola, also known as "Kebab", against Googoo, a  hulking brown-and-white dog.
Organisers, who have stayed anonymous, said they were taken aback by the "dramatic spike in our social media followers" since its launch.
The site, which posted videos of the rotund hounds getting belly rubs, has posted details of animal charities "working to ensure that our furry little friends get a dignified life."
There are tens of thousands of stray dogs in the capital.
In middle-class neighbourhoods, many of Delhi's strays are beloved by residents, with some dogs even dressed in jackets during winter.
But the city's media also regularly report on attacks by stray dogs, a crisis compounded by inadequate sterilisation programmes and legal restrictions on culling.
The Supreme Court last year ordered a mass roundup of dogs, before scaling back the operation after questions were raised over the feasibility of such a large-scale exercise.
The canine contest comes against the backdrop of more serious electoral politics.
The Election Commission of India, long regarded as the guardian of the world's largest democracy, is facing scrutiny after a newspaper investigation alleged impropriety during a large-scale voter-roll revision.
The ECI, a constitutional body, has rejected the allegations, saying its decisions were unanimous and legally valid.
pjm/abh/jm

AI

Trump touts AI boss pledge to self-regulate

BY AURéLIA END

  • Trump said the tech bosses had signed a deal that would put on paper their commitment to self-regulate in a morally binding agreement that would not be legally enforceable.
  • US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the tech executives gathered at the White House to discuss regulating AI had signed a "morally binding" commitment to build adequate safeguards on the fast-moving technology.
  • Trump said the tech bosses had signed a deal that would put on paper their commitment to self-regulate in a morally binding agreement that would not be legally enforceable.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the tech executives gathered at the White House to discuss regulating AI had signed a "morally binding" commitment to build adequate safeguards on the fast-moving technology.
"They're going to police themselves," Trump said after the meeting that gathered the top leaders in artificial intelligence, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Greg Brockman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei.
Trump said the tech bosses had signed a deal that would put on paper their commitment to self-regulate in a morally binding agreement that would not be legally enforceable.
But the final document, dubbed the White House Accord, left the door open "to codify these steps into laws or regulations" if it made sense over time.
Speaking to reporters outside the Oval Office surrounded by the world's most powerful tech titans, Trump also confirmed he would officially rename the technology "super intelligence" instead of artificial intelligence, "because it's not artificial."
Hours later he released an executive order in which he says the terms super intelligence and SI shall be used by the federal government whenever possible, because "'Super Intelligence' more appropriately captures the promise, potential and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies."

'Robust internal controls'

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said the White House accord aims to assure customers that AI technology "works in the way that we intend."
The commitment includes "robust internal controls" and multiple layers of auditing -- from internal risk reviews to external auditors and oversight from the companies' boards of directors, he said.
Zuckerberg called it a starting point for industry-wide standards.
Elon Musk, the world's richest person, said the executives essentially agreed to "grading each other's homework, which is a lot better than if people just grade their own homework for obvious reasons."
The lunch meeting also included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sundar Pichai of Google.
Of the 31 guests, two were women: Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, and AMD chief executive Lisa Su.
The gathering occurred as attitudes toward AI sour in Washington, with lawmakers increasingly under pressure from voters to curb or slow its development over fears it could displace workers and upend society.
Those concerns gained force from a run of incidents in which OpenAI's autonomous systems slipped out of their constraints, beginning with a July breach of Hugging Face -- a widely used platform for sharing AI models.
OpenAI announced on Monday it was canceling the release of its latest model, known as Astra 6.1, after internal testing by the ChatGPT-maker revealed it did not meet safety standards.
Trump, advised by Huang and his former AI czar David Sacks, has urged unfettered AI development to outpace China and fuel a US economy increasingly dependent on AI-driven growth.
The issue of data centers, the vast computing facilities the technology requires, has emerged as a flashpoint in midterm election races in both parties, with more and more communities worried about rising electricity bills and strains on water and land.
Trump has dismissed opponents of these data centers and after the meeting insisted that AI companies "will be very generous" with communities who open their doors to them.
"They'll help with their schools, they'll help with their teachers," he said.

'Still under discussion'

Major AI companies, particularly Anthropic and OpenAI, have issued stark public warnings about uncontrolled development of increasingly powerful systems -- even as they develop and deploy this same technology.
Those concerns intensified after a former employee of both companies went public with warnings that the industry is moving faster than safety reviews allow.
Anthropic warned investors of potential existential risks to humanity in the prospectus for its highly anticipated initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Anthropic is aiming for an IPO as early as November.
Trump has repeatedly characterized these warnings about existential risks as overblown and the White House has bitterly clashed with Anthropic over AI safety.
"As the president has said, whoever wins AI wins. I think that's very important," Amodei said after the meeting. "But I think the technology has very real risks, and the mechanism, how we address those risks, is still under discussion."
arp-aue/mlm/sla