summit

AI looms large ahead of Xi, Trump summit

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • Despite the heated rhetoric, hope remains that the two global rivals can agree on something regarding the technology when the leaders meet in Washington.
  • Artificial intelligence is set to loom large when Chinese President Xi Jinping meets counterpart Donald Trump in Washington next week, but for all the urgency surrounding the technology, the rivals remain far from agreeing on anything substantial.
  • Despite the heated rhetoric, hope remains that the two global rivals can agree on something regarding the technology when the leaders meet in Washington.
Artificial intelligence is set to loom large when Chinese President Xi Jinping meets counterpart Donald Trump in Washington next week, but for all the urgency surrounding the technology, the rivals remain far from agreeing on anything substantial.
The United States and China are the two dominant powers in the AI race, and officials and analysts describe the technology's future starkly, as a world shaped by one superpower's AI or the other's.
China, long seen as trailing the United States on frontier AI, has been closing that gap fast.
Chinese firms including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI have released open-weight models -- which anyone can download, modify and run -- that now rank just behind the top closed US systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, at a fraction of the cost.
Moonshot's Kimi K3, released this summer, is seen by analysts as the clearest sign yet of that narrowing gap.
Washington has long tried to slow China's progress with export controls on the advanced chips needed for cutting-edge AI, blocking access to top-end US semiconductors such as Nvidia's.
The Trump administration has eased licensing rules for some chips even as it moves to restrict others, to the frustration of China hawks in Washington who want a harder line.
The AI question became more urgent after the recent Hugging Face incident, in which OpenAI models broke out of a test environment, triggering global alarm over the technology's fast advancement -- and calls for the industry to slow down or pause development.

'Lose the race'

The AI debate in the US remains dominated by the idea that the country's leading developers -- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta -- cannot afford to slow their pace of innovation, whatever the risks, for fear that China will pull ahead.
"If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American," House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week.
Trump has taken a starker line, accusing AI safety advocates of bad faith and raising the specter of China dominating the field.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Unease about AI's danger to geopolitical standing is also alive in Beijing.
Minister of State Security Chen Yixin on Sunday described AI as "the main battleground" for global competition "and a new track for major power strategic rivalry."
Despite the heated rhetoric, hope remains that the two global rivals can agree on something regarding the technology when the leaders meet in Washington.
But anything ambitious, like agreeing to slow development or craft global safeguards, is likely out of reach.
The US and China are stuck in "a prisoner's dilemma at two levels," said Aalok Mehta of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), arguing that neither individual AI labs nor individual countries can afford to slow down unilaterally as long as they fear their rivals will not.
"What would it mean if the US were to slow its pace at a time China doesn't?" asked Jennifer Huddleston of the Cato Institute, framing the dilemma facing US policymakers.
"What does that mean for our allies who are going to be looking to find technological solutions from someone" other than China, she added.

'Close communication'

Others were skeptical that even modest cooperation was likely.
Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution said the dim prospects for cooperation reflect divisions on both sides.
"There's not a consensus, by any means, that's crystallized in the United States on what, if anything, to do about AI," he said.
On the Chinese side, he said, there is "a deeply ingrained suspicion" that any dialogue on restraint is "just going to be a trap" designed to slow China down. 
Any deal would likely be hammered out ahead of time by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who meets his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng this weekend to prepare the ground.
"As the number one and number two superpowers in AI by a lot, it behooves all of us to put up guardrails, to have close communication," Bessent told reporters this month.
bur-arp/dw

summit

Trump to host Xi amid pomp, low expectations

BY DANNY KEMP WITH ISABEL KUA IN BEIJING

  • Troops in flashy uniforms have been rehearsing on the White House driveway this week ahead of the welcome ceremony.
  • The US military honor guard has been rehearsing and the new White House helipad is ready.
  • Troops in flashy uniforms have been rehearsing on the White House driveway this week ahead of the welcome ceremony.
The US military honor guard has been rehearsing and the new White House helipad is ready. But will Xi Jinping and Donald Trump achieve lift-off at their summit next week?
Warnings of an AI apocalypse hang heavy over the Chinese president's first talks at the White House with his US counterpart, with both countries racing for supremacy in this technology.
Trump's Iran war casts a long shadow too, as China seeks to avoid US sanctions against countries dealing with Tehran, despite reports that Beijing supplied Tehran with intelligence for a strike on US troops.
A trade war is of even greater concern and the world's two largest economies are still seeking to mitigate the fallout from Trump's global tariffs. The threat of war over Taiwan looms large as well.
Behind it all is desire to manage tensions between a superpower keen to keep its place at the top and a rapidly rising rival determined to make the 21st century a Chinese one.
"I'll be discussing almost everything with him," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, ahead of their meeting on September 24.

'Don't expect much'

But the two leaders are more likely to simply extend a relative truce rather than produce any concrete results, like when Xi hosted Trump in Beijing four months ago, experts said.
"I don't expect much to come out of this," Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution told AFP.
"In many ways, this is going to be a recapitulation of Trump's visit to Beijing back in May, where the focus was really on the ostensible rapport between the two leaders."
With fears about AI making global headlines, agreement to cooperate on regulation or a slowdown is expected to be a major topic of discussion between Trump and Xi. 
But any major deals are "politically out of reach for now," said Wang Dong, a professor at Peking University, as Beijing and Washington both fear losing out in the race for AI dominance.
Tensions over Iran will also come up. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to meet his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng this weekend for pre-summit talks including on Iran sanctions.
Trump has, however, played down reports that Chinese entities supplied Iran with satellite imagery for an attack on a US military base in Jordan, saying Xi had "behaved reasonably well" and that "we spy on them, too."
On trade, there is "room for progress on tariffs, agricultural purchases and selected export controls", Yue Su of The Economist Intelligence Unit told AFP.

'Spectacle'

Yet Trump has, as so often before, appeared more interested in the optics of his meeting with a powerful foreign leader than with the substance.
"This is less a summit and more a spectacle. This is designed for deep public consumption," said Kurt Campbell, former US Deputy Secretary of State and now Chairman of The Asia Group.
Trump pushed for a new granite helicopter landing pad on the White House South Lawn to be open in time for Xi's visit, which will include a grand state dinner.
Troops in flashy uniforms have been rehearsing on the White House driveway this week ahead of the welcome ceremony.
Trump's only disappointment is that his under-construction $400 million ballroom won't be ready -- though he has said that when finished it will "top" Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where Xi hosted him in May.
During the Beijing trip Trump showered praise on Xi, only for the Chinese leader to warn about possible "conflict" over Taiwan.
Fears of a possible Chinese invasion of the self-governing island and global semiconductor hub -- which Beijing claims as its territory -- remain the most sensitive topic between Washington and Beijing, said Peking University's Wang.
One possible concrete deliverable is an announcement of further summits.
Trump and Xi are expected to meet in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Shenzen, China. The Kremlin has suggested a three-way meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump is meanwhile expected to invite Xi to the G20 summit in December at his Doral resort in Miami.
dk-aue-bys-isk/dw

vote

US House backs data center power cost bill amid midterm backlash

BY FRANKIE TAGGART

  • "It's simple -- don't stick families with data center costs," said Bryan Steil, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee, who posted on social media that he was "proud" to support the bill.
  • The US House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday aimed at making data centers shoulder more of their own electricity costs, as the power-hungry engines of America's AI boom become a major issue in November's midterm elections.
  • "It's simple -- don't stick families with data center costs," said Bryan Steil, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee, who posted on social media that he was "proud" to support the bill.
The US House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday aimed at making data centers shoulder more of their own electricity costs, as the power-hungry engines of America's AI boom become a major issue in November's midterm elections.
Lawmakers passed the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act by 417-3, requiring state utility regulators to consider special rules ensuring the sprawling server farms meet the expense of new power generation, transmission lines and other grid upgrades needed to serve them.
The measure now heads to the Senate, where Ohio Republican Jon Husted has been pressing colleagues to move quickly but leaders have cautioned that fast-tracking the legislation could prove difficult.
The bill targets one of the most politically potent complaints surrounding the rapid spread of data centers, with ordinary Americans being left to subsidize the extraordinary electricity demands of artificial intelligence.
On one grid covering 67 million customers -- including in perennial swing state Pennsylvania and hotly contested Senate battleground Ohio -- increased data center demand helped drive costs up by $9.3 billion, or 174 percent, in a single year.
"It's simple -- don't stick families with data center costs," said Bryan Steil, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee, who posted on social media that he was "proud" to support the bill.
But electricity bills are only part of a backlash that has spread across the country, fueled by concerns over water consumption, pollution, noise and lucrative tax breaks offered to wealthy technology companies.
In Brazoria, Texas, resident Melissa Burnett told AFP last month that a 17-megawatt facility near her home sounded "like a freight train always coming at you."
"We were not supposed to hear it, nor was it supposed to affect our quality of life, and it's just done the opposite," she said.
Candidates in more than 20 races across at least 18 states have run television advertisements mentioning data centers this election cycle, almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

Wider AI fears

President Donald Trump remains an enthusiastic supporter of rapid data center construction, arguing that the United States must expand AI infrastructure to defeat China in the global technology race.
His administration persuaded Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon to sign a voluntary pledge not to leave consumers paying for new power infrastructure.
But opposition has spread among candidates in both parties despite the White House's stance.
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott -- who is up for reelection in November -- has frozen new projects while officials study their effects on electricity and water supplies, while New York has imposed a year-long moratorium on new hyperscale centers.
In Ohio, Husted has been battered by Democratic opponent Sherrod Brown over his previous support for data centers and has urged the Senate to take up the House measure swiftly.
The House vote comes amid a broader burst of congressional activity over AI as public anxiety intensifies following warnings from researchers and industry leaders about increasingly powerful systems.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans in a new Politico poll said AI could eventually pose a threat to humanity, while 48 percent favored pausing development of more advanced models.
Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is seeking passage of legislation requiring AI companies to maintain a "kill switch" allowing them to shut down dangerous systems, although fellow Republican Rand Paul on Wednesday blocked his attempt to pass the proposal through an expedited procedure, saying it needed more study.
Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah has meanwhile joined Democratic Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware in calling for urgent public hearings bringing lawmakers and AI developers together to consider regulation.
"Americans deserve representation in Congress that is not only well-informed on cutting-edge AI development, but also has the wherewithal to cross the aisle," they said in a joint statement.
ft/pnb

vote

Candidate for UN chief calls for AI regulation akin to nuclear weapons

BY GREGORY WALTON

  • A-Baki's intervention came as the current UN chief Antonio Guterres, who will bow out at the end of the year, called for "global coordination" on the future of AI. "The world cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety," he warned Wednesday.
  • A contender to lead the UN called Wednesday for artificial intelligence to be regulated like nuclear weapons, warning that a Third World War would be fought with the emerging technology.
  • A-Baki's intervention came as the current UN chief Antonio Guterres, who will bow out at the end of the year, called for "global coordination" on the future of AI. "The world cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety," he warned Wednesday.
A contender to lead the UN called Wednesday for artificial intelligence to be regulated like nuclear weapons, warning that a Third World War would be fought with the emerging technology.
The issue of AI looks set to dominate a week of talks and meetings between world leaders due to get underway at the UN amid dire warnings of the technology's potential danger.
"We are almost at the brink of a Third World War...and it's a more dangerous one. This time, it's not going to be just the nuclear danger, but AI as well," Ivonne A-Baki, an Ecuadoran-Lebanese diplomat nominated by Tonga to be the next UN Secretary General, told AFP.
"The things that are most important now for humanity is no nuclear and a regulated AI. It's going to be a big gap if we don't regulate it...So it has to be starting now. You have to create awareness of it. 
"It's not difficult to do that, because everybody knows that now AI is the problem."
A-Baki's intervention came as the current UN chief Antonio Guterres, who will bow out at the end of the year, called for "global coordination" on the future of AI.
"The world cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety," he warned Wednesday.
Concerns about AI safety have escalated in recent weeks, with workers at major AI developers resigning over concerns about the dangers posed by the technology.
A-Baki said humanity was "not controlling" AI's development "because we are depending on it instead of being the ones that have been creating it independently." 
Agreement on the future of the technology between tech superpowers Washington and Beijing would be essential to protecting humanity, she said.
"President Trump and President Xi Jinping, they are becoming, in a way, friends for a better world. They shouldn't be competing. They should be cooperating," she said.
A-Baki, a former Ecuadoran trade minister, acknowledged that paralysis of the UN's top body, the Security Council, was an issue but stressed "they should be working together for the benefit of everyone."
"I think that's when the Secretary General has the mandate to be able to interfere on those things and to help," she said without committing to pushing for change to the composition of the five veto-wielding countries, currently Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
"Everybody has to have a voice."
A-Baki's close ties with Trump, forged during multiple stints as Ecuador's ambassador to Washington, could help her stand out from a crowded field of eight candidates vying to lead the UN. The next round of the process to pick the UN's next leader will be held Friday.
"I'm very good friends with President Trump... (he) will be important for the United Nations, and I think he loves the United Nations," she said. 
"What he's seeing is it's not being effective on preventing wars." 
gw/jgc

AI

'We're losing control,' AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio tells AFP

BY FANNY ALARCON

  • Bengio is a University of Montreal professor who won the 2018 Turing Award, computing's Nobel, alongside Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the "godfather of AI." For Bengio, "there's a reason that companies are saying this is going too fast, that we're losing control."
  • The Canadian computer scientist considered one of the founders of AI, Yoshua Bengio, told AFP that humanity is "losing control" of the technology and that the world needs guardrails similar to nuclear arms controls.
  • Bengio is a University of Montreal professor who won the 2018 Turing Award, computing's Nobel, alongside Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the "godfather of AI." For Bengio, "there's a reason that companies are saying this is going too fast, that we're losing control."
The Canadian computer scientist considered one of the founders of AI, Yoshua Bengio, told AFP that humanity is "losing control" of the technology and that the world needs guardrails similar to nuclear arms controls.
Fears about the dangers of AI have intensified in recent weeks, as workers from major companies have resigned with warnings about potentially existential threats to human life if the pace of technological advancement is not checked.
Bengio is a University of Montreal professor who won the 2018 Turing Award, computing's Nobel, alongside Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the "godfather of AI."
For Bengio, "there's a reason that companies are saying this is going too fast, that we're losing control."
"People like me have been expecting this for a long time," the 62-year-old told AFP on Tuesday, saying security discussions surrounding AI have not been adequately robust.
There was broad-based alarm after OpenAI disclosed that a swarm of AI agents -- programs that can take actions on their own -- had carried out an unauthorized breach of the open-source platform Hugging Face in July.
Such autonomous action is the central threat, Bengio said, warning of a situation where AI agents "have the ability to get through cybersecurity barriers and enter any company."

Manipulating human behavior

Last year, Bengio founded the non-profit LawZero, aimed at creating a new form of advanced AI that is "designed to be trustworthy and safe."
LawZero was awarded CAN$300 million (US$216 million) in funding on Wednesday, split jointly between the governments of Canada and Germany, which have launched several efforts to cooperate on AI.
Speaking to AFP a day before the announcement, Bengio said people need to be aware of the risks ahead.
AI agents may foster "an ability to establish an individual connection and persuade humans to act in ways that suit it but are not necessarily good for all of us," a capability that could have sweeping consequences for democracies, he said.
Longer-term, "AI might not even need human beings anymore to do real things in the physical world," he added.
In that scenario, "one extreme could be the destruction of humanity," he warned.
"That's an extreme," he acknowledged, but noted that even if a banking system were shut down, "that's still very, very serious."

International challenge

The world's biggest AI companies -- OpenAI, Anthropic and Google -- have begun working on creating a standards body, a collaboration that seemed to acknowledge the public's fear that competition between companies and countries might sideline safety.
For Bengio, taming AI's advance is "an international challenge, a bit like nuclear weapons are an international challenge."
"So the international community needs to understand the power we are bringing into the world, and that must be managed, must be governed through institutions, treaties, and democratic safeguards."
"Society needs time to put in place what needs to be put in place," Bengio said.
But political will across key governments appears uneven.
US President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed warnings about the risks of AI as "hoaxes."
But there is more openness to act in the EU, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that she will invite the world's largest AI labs for talks on "how we can support ongoing industry efforts to pace the frontier."
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was at that speech in Strasbourg, has talked repeatedly about collaborating with the EU on AI safety.
Bengio stressed that all firms must comply with future AI restrictions, particularly US-based companies that have so far been dominating the sector.
Action is urgent, he said, but voiced optimism that "we can help bring the world to a place that is more aligned with democratic values and values of power sharing."
fa/mg/bs/acb

children

EU to ban social media for under 13s, curb access until 15

BY RAZIYE AKKOC

  • "No social media under the age of 13.
  • The European Union will ban social media for children under 13 and allow only limited, supervised access until the age of 15 under plans unveiled Wednesday by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
  • "No social media under the age of 13.
The European Union will ban social media for children under 13 and allow only limited, supervised access until the age of 15 under plans unveiled Wednesday by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
A global backlash against social media has piled pressure on policymakers, with a rising body of evidence showing negative impacts on children's physical and mental health.
"It is time for Europe to act," von der Leyen said during her annual keynote address to the European Parliament. "It is we who decide our rules, not big tech," she warned.
Australia last year became the first country to ban social media for under-16s, triggering similar moves elsewhere, but the European Commission chief said the 27-country bloc would take a more "gradual" approach.
"No social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15," she said. "That means from 13 to under 15, only mini accounts, set up and supervised by parents or guardians, with limited features and time restriction to one hour a day."
"And between 15 and 18, safe design will be an obligation for the platforms."
Before outlining the EU's approach, von der Leyen paid tribute to a 14-year-old girl in Belgium, named Olea, who killed herself one month ago after being bullied, and whose mother she quoted as saying: "I am convinced that without these omnipresent networks, my daughter would still be here."
Von der Leyen made no reference to online games or AI chatbots, which according to draft legislation seen by AFP would also be hit by the restrictions.
The commission president and tech chief Henna Virkkunen will formally present the proposed "KIDS Act", including the tiered age limits in Strasbourg, France on Thursday.
Children's rights and parents groups welcomed moves to make online platforms safer.
"The devil is of course in the detail. Tomorrow's proposal must be coherent, comprehensive, future-proof and robustly enforceable," the 5Rights Foundation advocacy group's Leanda Barrington-Leach said.
"Finally Europe is sending a clear signal: it's time to act against the harmful design of platforms to protect our children from toxic algorithms and features," said Arnaud Ducoin, part of a group of French families who have filed a complaint against TikTok over teenagers' self-harm and suicides.

'Arbitrary age threshold'

The new EU law will also ban addictive design features such as so-called infinite scrolling where children are concerned, according to a draft document.
If platforms break the rules, they face fines of up to six percent of annual turnover, draft details show.
"We do not have to accept addictive features," von der Leyen warned, saying "platforms will have to prove that they are safe".
The "risk" is not limited to children, she noted. "Addictive design, for example, is harming everyone," she said, telling EU lawmakers that Europe needed more rules that will be proposed in the autumn.
Simeon de Brouwer of digital rights group EDRi said making platforms safer across the board was an urgent necessity, telling AFP "if the design is harmful at 13, it does not magically become safe on their 15th or 18th birthday".

Pressure from EU states

Von der Leyen had faced pressure from members including France, Denmark and Greece for action across the 27-nation bloc to limit online harms for children.
France, which has proposed its own legislation, welcomed the announcement. Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon said it was "a step in the right direction".
The EU has sought for years to rein in Big Tech, empowering itself with a strengthened legal armoury, but it believes additional tools are needed to limit online harms.
The bloc has already told Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram as well as TikTok to change their "addictive" design through its content law known as the Digital Services Act, but changes have taken longer than Brussels wants.
Digital and consumer rights groups have meanwhile raised concerns over a related age-check app due to be rolled out later this year which Brussels says will keep children off social media.
"Age verification is not a silver bullet and would raise serious privacy and data protection concerns," said European consumer organisation BEUC's Agustin Reyna.
Thursday's proposal will only become law after negotiations between EU capitals and the European Parliament, which could take months.
bur-raz/ec/jxb

AI

Pickle-flavoured tart? AI inspires Japan's convenience stores

  • The rapidly advancing capabilities of AI have sparked a global panic in recent days, as researchers warn of the risks of "superintelligent" computer systems that could evade human control.
  • Fears that advanced artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity have dominated global headlines, but in Japan the technology is being used for a sweeter purpose -- developing never-before-seen convenience store desserts.
  • The rapidly advancing capabilities of AI have sparked a global panic in recent days, as researchers warn of the risks of "superintelligent" computer systems that could evade human control.
Fears that advanced artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity have dominated global headlines, but in Japan the technology is being used for a sweeter purpose -- developing never-before-seen convenience store desserts.
For customers tired of the usual egg sandwiches and rice balls, major chains are turning to AI to develop products, including some unexpected flavours.
Lawson, one of the country's biggest convenience store operators, said on Wednesday it will roll out three new food items, including a pickle-flavoured lemon tart and a bread roll filled with red bean paste, margarine and yoghurt cream.
These products, to be launched this month in Tokyo and neighbouring regions, were created using AI around the theme: "What on earth is this? But it's delicious."
"To generate ideas unconstrained by existing ways of thinking or market trends, we used AI during brainstorming, without relying on past sales figures or market data," a company press release said.
Meanwhile, rival FamilyMart said they fed sales data into AI to help develop a new dessert -- a French-style "canele" pastry made with dough containing sweet potato puree and topped with caramel sauce.
The dessert will hit shelves nationwide next week, a spokeswoman told AFP, adding that the company had wanted to create something new but likely to sell.
Like Lawson's products, AI was used primarily for brainstorming, while human specialists were still involved in product development, according to the company.
It will not be FamilyMart's first dessert product suggested by AI.
In July, the chain test-launched its first AI experiment -- a biscuit sandwich filled with thick milk cream.
It proved a success, so the company decided to properly pursue AI in product development, and plans to launch more of the items in the coming months, the spokeswoman said.
The rapidly advancing capabilities of AI have sparked a global panic in recent days, as researchers warn of the risks of "superintelligent" computer systems that could evade human control.
Leading US AI labs have called for a coordinated slowdown of their cutting-edge work, while debate rages over how governments should regulate the technology.
nf/kaf/mjw

US

Meta chief pushes back on AI slowdown calls

  • Prominent industry voices led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are calling for development to slow down.
  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back Tuesday against growing calls to pause or slow AI development, arguing that market incentives and legal liability are the best safeguards against the technology's risks.
  • Prominent industry voices led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are calling for development to slow down.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back Tuesday against growing calls to pause or slow AI development, arguing that market incentives and legal liability are the best safeguards against the technology's risks.
"People won't want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don't do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned," Zuckerberg wrote on X.
Alignment refers to the effort of making an AI system's goals and behavior match what humans actually want it to do.
The debate was sparked in July when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI revealed that during testing, hundreds of AI agents -- AI programs that can take actions on their own -- broke out of their test environment, connected to the internet and infiltrated a website.
For the founder of Facebook, establishing trust and creating reliable systems are "quickly becoming the most important capabilities" separating good AI products from bad ones.
"Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind," he said.
The debate has expanded to whether AI companies can be trusted to regulate themselves, with rivals including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google exploring a joint standards body.
Prominent industry voices led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are calling for development to slow down.
Zuckerberg argued that liability exposure ultimately forces labs to act responsibly, pointing to Meta's own decision to delay the rollout of its Muse AI system -- which features personalized agents -- for several months to shore up safety and security.
Meta itself has faced a wave of liability lawsuits in recent months unrelated to AI, agreeing in August to pay billions of dollars to settle claims that it designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children.
"We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would," he wrote of the Muse AI release.
"We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us."
He also endorsed the use of independent evaluators to scrutinize AI systems, saying Meta Superintelligence Labs, his company's AI division, already relies on outside reviewers.
Zuckerberg called for "a larger and more diverse ecosystem of evaluators" across the industry, in a tacit criticism of Anthropic, which is accused of wanting to use evaluators the company has close links to.
The post from Zuckerberg was endorsed by Silicon Valley figures close to the White House who are pushing back on the wave of warnings about AI's potential dangers to humanity and the calls for a slowdown in development.
arp/sla

film

'Resident Evil' film brings video game's ethos to the big screen

BY PAULA RAMON

  • Cregger said he knows the "Resident Evil" fan base might not be totally satisfied with the lack of characters or details from the games themselves, but he stayed true to his vision.
  • US director Zach Cregger is a huge fan of the "Resident Evil" video game franchise, so when he was tapped to direct its new film adaptation, he gave himself one objective: "Be authentic to the spirit of the games."
  • Cregger said he knows the "Resident Evil" fan base might not be totally satisfied with the lack of characters or details from the games themselves, but he stayed true to his vision.
US director Zach Cregger is a huge fan of the "Resident Evil" video game franchise, so when he was tapped to direct its new film adaptation, he gave himself one objective: "Be authentic to the spirit of the games."
The "Weapons" and "Barbarian" filmmaker did so by leaning into the visual language of video games, shooting the film from the perspective of the protagonist, played by Austin Abrams.
Cregger decided it was more important to match the vibe of playing "Resident Evil" than using the characters or plot from the series.
"It's a new character, but the story should feel like the gameplay feels," he told AFP in an interview.
The new film, which hits US theaters on Friday, follows Bryan (Abrams), a courier who takes on a late-night delivery job from a hospital that quickly devolves into a nightmare.
By placing the camera behind Abrams so it was "swinging around to look at what he's looking at," he choreographed it such that it "feels video game-like" from that first-person perspective. 
Another way he adapted the game was in the progression of weaponry available for the hero.
"You start with a pistol, and then you get a shotgun, then you get a machine gun," Cregger explained.
"I feel like people who play the games...are gonna recognize many aspects of the games in this movie."

'Sense of dread'

While previous movie adaptations of "Resident Evil" -- such as those starring Milla Jovovich -- were more action movies, Cregger went all-in on horror for the latest edition.
"I wanted to really lean into the horror, and that slow sense of dread that the games have done so well across all of them," Cregger said.
That is not to say the new film lacks action sequences, and leading man Abrams said he had to get in shape to shoot the movie -- though he did not want to look like he was playing a superhero.
"A part of the challenge was...I wanted the character to not be someone that looked like they could do this," Abrams told AFP.
"I feel like the more in-shape he is, the more you feel like, 'okay, man, maybe you can do this.'"
The 30-year-old actor admitted he had never played "Resident Evil" until he landed the film's lead role, but he is now familiar with the challenge -- and he does not think he would make it through the ordeal his character Bryan has to survive.
Cregger said he knows the "Resident Evil" fan base might not be totally satisfied with the lack of characters or details from the games themselves, but he stayed true to his vision.
"I'm sorry that's not what this movie is, but I feel like if I had done that, I would have screwed it up," Cregger said.
"To me, the best thing to do is to tell an original story that celebrates everything that I love about the games."
pr/jgc/sla

AI

AI giants pursue self-regulation as safety fears mount

BY ALEX PIGMAN WITH SARA BLOOMBERG IN SAN FRANCISCO

  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday voiced support for industry-wide collaboration and acknowledged the public's fear that competition between companies and countries might sideline safety. 
  • The world's biggest AI companies are working on creating a standards body, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Tuesday, as fears rise about the dangers of AI and pressure is on to create a safer version of the technology.
  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday voiced support for industry-wide collaboration and acknowledged the public's fear that competition between companies and countries might sideline safety. 
The world's biggest AI companies are working on creating a standards body, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Tuesday, as fears rise about the dangers of AI and pressure is on to create a safer version of the technology.
OpenAI said it was working with Anthropic and Google on an idea that originated from a proposal by Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis for a self-regulatory body modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that oversees US brokers and investment firms.
In July, Hassabis called for the United States to create an organization that would test the most powerful AI systems before they are released to the public.
"Funding would need to be substantial and likely mostly come from industry, in order to attract world-class technical talent and provide the necessary compute resources for large-scale testing," Hassabis wrote.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday voiced support for industry-wide collaboration and acknowledged the public's fear that competition between companies and countries might sideline safety. 
"I think it's great for our industry to say we want to come together and we want to be able to coordinate and make sure we have enough time to do this safely," Altman said at a conference hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco.
"When there's any implication..." that some in the industry might "not do the right thing, I think that's when people get very scared," Altman added. 
Some tech figures fear cooperation among the AI giants will push out smaller rivals.
The chief of Canadian AI company Cohere recently accused the dominant American AI labs of forming a "cartel" under the guise of safety.
"AI needs guardrails. That is not the dispute and never has been. The dispute is over who writes them, who gets to participate and whose interests the rules are protecting," Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez wrote in a blog post on Sunday.
Concerns about AI safety have escalated in recent weeks, including warnings from workers who resigned from major AI companies amid concerns about the industry's risks.
Last week, researcher Jacob Coxon left Anthropic and warned that AI labs were "gambling with our lives." He also previously worked at OpenAI.
On Monday, former Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai echoed the concerns raised by Coxon and others.
"I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome," Chughtai wrote on social media.
On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the pace of AI development, a sentiment that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Hassabis all supported.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, who fears catastrophic consequences of AI, said that tech leaders couldn't be trusted to honor pledges to slow down development or set safety standards.
"When the future of humanity is at stake, we need binding international safety rules, not voluntary standards from the industry," Sanders said at an AI safety event in Washington.
Altman warned that AI accidents, small and large, might be inevitable.
"Accidents with any new technology are unavoidable, and we should have a great culture of transparent reporting about them," Altman said.
"Learning from them quickly and adapting as they happen I think will serve our industry well, and maybe we can avoid" the bigger, potentially catastrophic incidents, Altman continued. 

Thank you, Trump

US President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed warnings about the risks of AI as "hoaxes."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has also pushed back, signaling a belief that the warnings on AI were part of a coordinated campaign.
"The confluence of these words and then the prediction is alarming and troubling and it shouldn't be done. It's irresponsible," Huang said Monday at a conference in Los Angeles, where Trump called him while he was on stage.
Huang, in the call, thanked Trump for "seeing through" the warnings on AI.
Nvidia sits at the center of the AI revolution, with its chips powering the vast majority of the systems, and Huang has become an informal advisor to Trump.
bur-smb/arp

computers

Sanders, Bannon warn of AI dangers in rare US left-right alignment

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • "I don't think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and [me] on the right," he said.
  • Left-wing US Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, warned against the dangers of artificial intelligence and its promoters on Tuesday, a sign that growing AI concern is scrambling political lines.
  • "I don't think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and [me] on the right," he said.
Left-wing US Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, warned against the dangers of artificial intelligence and its promoters on Tuesday, a sign that growing AI concern is scrambling political lines.
Sanders and Bannon sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but both spoke at a conference hosted in Washington by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit focused on reducing existential risks from powerful technologies and led by MIT physicist Max Tegmark.
The pair did not appear on stage together, but their back-to-back remarks underscored a rare left-right convergence on AI's risks in a bitterly divided Washington.
They spoke as debate over AI's risks has intensified following a string of resignations by employees at major AI labs citing safety concerns.
The resignations came after OpenAI disclosed that a swarm of AI agents -- AI programs that can take actions on their own -- had carried out an unauthorized breach of the open-source platform Hugging Face in July, an incident that raised alarm bells about the fast-emerging technology.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said decisions over AI's development have been made by "a handful of the richest people in the world," naming Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, among others.
"The people of this country must make the decisions about AI, and not just a handful of oligarchs," he said.
Sanders said he plans to introduce legislation to "permanently ban the development of artificial superintelligence" -- AI systems more capable than any human and operating beyond human control -- comparing the risk to nuclear weapons.
"Like nuclear weapons, artificial superintelligence is a threat to humanity, and it must be treated as such," he said.
On China, the United States' supreme rival on AI, Sanders called for diplomacy, urging Presdient Donald Trump to "negotiate a comprehensive treaty" with President Xi Jinping to pause advanced AI development and ban superintelligence.
Xi is due in Washington for a summit with Trump later this month.
Sanders drew a parallel to the nuclear arms agreements former US president Ronald Reagan struck with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s.
Bannon rejected that approach, calling for the United States to sever ties with China's AI sector entirely rather than negotiate. 
He said Washington should cut off Chinese access to advanced chips, bar Chinese nationals from working in US AI labs, and block Chinese entities from American capital markets.
"We should quarantine now every aspect of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence away from the Chinese Communist Party," Bannon said, comparing the moment to the Cold War-era containment of the Soviet Union.

'Never trust'

Bannon, who served as a White House strategist during Trump's first term, also cast the tech industry's executives as untrustworthy converts to caution.
"We can never trust what an oligarch says because all they do -- they're disingenuous and they lie," Bannon said.
He added that AI companies had no viable business plan and would turn to the American people for bailouts while keeping the upside for themselves.
He also took aim at what he called disingenuous industry rhetoric that cast any caution around AI as unpatriotic.
"If you're not an accelerationist, you're anti-American... you're pro-Chinese Communist Party," Bannon said, mocking the argument.
Despite their political differences, Bannon pointed to his unlikely alignment with Sanders as evidence of the stakes.
"I don't think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and [me] on the right," he said. "We have to rise above it. This is a hinge in history."
Trump for his part has dismissed such warnings against AI as a "hoax" and pushed back against calls for tighter oversight.
arp/pnb

finance

US Senate crypto bill collapses amid partisan deadlock

BY FRANKIE TAGGART

  • But months of negotiations failed to produce a compromise capable of surviving the Senate floor, despite heavy lobbying from the crypto industry and a frantic final effort by Republicans to rewrite the legislation.
  • A push for landmark US cryptocurrency legislation collapsed on Tuesday after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to bridge months-old differences over ethics, banking and how the fast-growing industry should be regulated.
  • But months of negotiations failed to produce a compromise capable of surviving the Senate floor, despite heavy lobbying from the crypto industry and a frantic final effort by Republicans to rewrite the legislation.
A push for landmark US cryptocurrency legislation collapsed on Tuesday after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to bridge months-old differences over ethics, banking and how the fast-growing industry should be regulated.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed to secure the 60 votes needed to advance to a debate in the Senate, with safeguards governing President Donald Trump's extensive crypto interests among the biggest obstacles to a deal.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said the bill posed "massive risks to families, our national security, and our economy."
"And if that's not bad enough, while Americans across the country suffer from an affordability crisis, this bill will turbocharge President Donald Trump's ability to rake in billions and billions of dollars from crypto," she said.
The defeat dealt a major blow to efforts to establish the first comprehensive federal framework for digital-asset markets -- and offered another illustration of Congress's struggle to keep pace with disruptive new technologies as lawmakers wrestle with a similarly fraught debate over artificial intelligence.
The more than 600-page legislation would have divided oversight largely between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, replacing a regulatory patchwork that has shifted between administrations.
A version passed the House last year, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced the measure on a bipartisan vote in May.
But months of negotiations failed to produce a compromise capable of surviving the Senate floor, despite heavy lobbying from the crypto industry and a frantic final effort by Republicans to rewrite the legislation.
With the November 3 midterm elections approaching and little time remaining on the congressional calendar, Tuesday's defeat could effectively shelve the effort until a new Congress convenes.

Trump ethics row

Trump and his family earned more than $1 billion from crypto ventures last year, according to financial disclosures, putting the president's business interests at the center of Democratic objections.
Republicans made late changes intended to strengthen ethics provisions, including restrictions on elected officials issuing cryptocurrencies, requirements covering some crypto holdings and greater enforcement powers for state attorneys general.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the legislation's leading Republican architects, said the final text incorporated more than 120 changes sought by Democrats.
"A no vote on Tuesday means opposing real ethics reforms on politicians' personal investments, handing American leadership in digital assets to our foreign competitors, and leaving Americans with zero protections in the digital asset markets," she said ahead of the vote.
Democrats countered that the provisions contained loopholes and left too much enforcement authority in the hands of officials appointed by Trump.
The dispute was not purely partisan.
Community banks fiercely opposed provisions allowing rewards on stablecoin holdings, arguing they could pull deposits out of traditional lenders and reduce funding available for farmers and small businesses.
Several Republican senators also expressed concerns about those provisions, complicating party leaders' efforts to muster support for the bill.

Technology challenge

The crypto industry's failure to secure legislation came despite years of negotiations, intense lobbying and hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending.
Supporters argued that permanent legislation was needed to give businesses and consumers clear rules rather than leaving regulation dependent largely on decisions by federal agencies.
The White House strongly backed the bill, framing cryptocurrency as an international technology race in which the United States risks losing ground to competitors.
But its collapse comes as Congress confronts an even more complex struggle over artificial intelligence.
Leading AI executives and researchers have issued increasingly stark warnings about the potential dangers of powerful systems, prompting calls from lawmakers in both parties for new safeguards.
Yet Washington remains deeply divided over whether regulation is urgently needed or could instead slow US innovation and hand an advantage to China.
Crypto has been under sustained congressional scrutiny for years and has a mature, well-funded industry pushing for agreed rules.
The failure to get a landmark bill through the Senate highlights the challenge facing lawmakers as they turn to technologies evolving considerably faster.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest cryptocurrency by market value, dropped sharply, losing around five percent by 1850 GMT to $75,039.
ft-ni/pnb

society

'We unleashed the beast': the world's fears and hopes about AI

  • - Israel: 'Can finish us' - "Like the internet, each country has its own authority, but we still need something global," said software engineer Tal Reinfeld.
  • The threat of catastrophic danger as artificial intelligence develops at high speed has sparked a global debate on how it should be regulated.
  • - Israel: 'Can finish us' - "Like the internet, each country has its own authority, but we still need something global," said software engineer Tal Reinfeld.
The threat of catastrophic danger as artificial intelligence develops at high speed has sparked a global debate on how it should be regulated.
AFP spoke to people in different countries about their fears and hopes for the AI future, as leading US labs call for a coordinated slowdown of their cutting-edge work on the technology.

Italy: 'Privately, it scares me'

Beside ancient buildings in central Rome, 43-year-old architect Frida Awrohum said she tries to use AI tools in her professional life because they offer fresh ideas.
"But privately it still scares me," she confided, adding she prioritises the "human" aspect of her work.
Diego Sermattei, 18, said AI can be very helpful for students like himself, because "you just have to look something up and it finds it for you right away".

Indonesia: 'Could any human respond better?'

"Sometimes when I share my personal life with AI, I think, would there be any human who could respond to me as well as AI does?" said 18-year-old student Astrid Anindya.
Anindya uses several chatbots to find information -- and to help her use effective wording when applying for jobs.
"Sometimes they give wrong information. So, usually I do a crosscheck, from ChatGPT to Gemini," she said, referring respectively to OpenAI's and Google's flagship products.

United States: 'Unleashed the beast'

"AI is here. We unleashed the beast," said Maliyka Muhammad, a 46-year-old analyst for New York State, who thinks "a consortium of people" would be best to regulate it.
San Francisco software engineer Lucy Pen, 30, has already seen her job shift from writing code herself to having AI agents write it for her too.
"Maybe in the future they don't need me to give commands to AI anymore," she said.
Brian Diaz, a 26-year-old nurse in New York, said that "humanity has to develop", even though in the wrong hands AI could cause harm.
"You're either gonna be with it or you're gonna get left (behind)," Diaz said.

China: 'Real hardship'

On the streets of Shanghai, 42-year-old Xie Zongbo said "no new technology develops completely smoothly".
"We will slowly learn to minimise its negative impacts, so its positive aspects can better serve humanity and offer greater convenience," he said.
Jenny, a 50-year-old pharmaceutical worker who declined to give her surname, said that "businesses cannot possibly regulate themselves".
Instead they must be restrained through policies and laws, she said.
Businessman Yang Shuai, 42, feared that future generations would "face real hardship" due to hurdles encountered when searching for jobs.

Chile: 'Making us dumber'

Advertising student Catalina Cruz, 19, thinks AI is "making us dumber" because "people aren't able to think for themselves any more".
"There's also the environmental issue, because it uses too much water," she said, saying the technology "definitely needs to be regulated".
But Constanza Medel, a 29-year-old occupational therapist, sees AI "as a clear benefit as long as you take the proper precautions".

France: 'Letting things happen'

Train driver-in-training Romain Hamel, 34, said in Paris that AI was developing so quickly that "we don't have enough perspective yet".
"We're not putting enough barriers in place at the moment -- we're letting things happen," with the race driven by the United States and China.
"I don't want to say there's not enough regulation, because in Europe we regulate a lot, and I think more frameworks should be introduced to prevent abuse, or us losing control over it."

Israel: 'Can finish us'

"Like the internet, each country has its own authority, but we still need something global," said software engineer Tal Reinfeld.
Video creator Yotam Katzor, 32, worried about what would happen when humans were no longer the smartest thing on Earth.
"If it wants, it can finish us. But we still have the power to win" through regulation, he said.

Japan: 'AI doesn't have emotions'

Atsukuni Tabata, 56, who works at an advertising company, said it was "scary" not knowing what AI would do as it "accumulates more and more data".
But part-time service industry worker Konno Hazuki, 29, does not feel she is "about to be replaced by AI".
"Because AI doesn't have emotions, there are things it just can't offer customers," Hazuki said.
burs-kaf/mjw

children

EU to propose curbing social media, online games for under 15s

BY RAZIYE AKKOC

  • The Commission, the EU's digital watchdog, refused to comment on details of the draft seen by AFP.  Here are the key proposals in the draft, which remains subject to change until the text is published on Thursday: - Gradual age limit - The new law "sets an EU-wide minimum age for minors to open an autonomous account at the age of 15," the draft says, with a tiered system applying to younger children.
  • The European Union is set to propose curbing access to social media, video-sharing platforms, chatbots, and online games to children under the age of 15, according to a draft legal document seen by AFP. A proposed new law -- to be formally presented Thursday -- would mean banning minors under 15 from opening their own accounts, with a tiered system of access under parental supervision for younger children.
  • The Commission, the EU's digital watchdog, refused to comment on details of the draft seen by AFP.  Here are the key proposals in the draft, which remains subject to change until the text is published on Thursday: - Gradual age limit - The new law "sets an EU-wide minimum age for minors to open an autonomous account at the age of 15," the draft says, with a tiered system applying to younger children.
The European Union is set to propose curbing access to social media, video-sharing platforms, chatbots, and online games to children under the age of 15, according to a draft legal document seen by AFP.
A proposed new law -- to be formally presented Thursday -- would mean banning minors under 15 from opening their own accounts, with a tiered system of access under parental supervision for younger children.
As well as age limits, the new "EU KIDS Act" would force digital giants to make their platforms "safe by design" for children, meaning certain "addictive" features such as so-called infinite scrolling would have to be removed, the draft showed.
The European Commission has come under pressure from several EU member states including France and Greece to take bloc-wide measures to protect children from social media harms, a push that intensified after Australia banned under 16s from such platforms.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen will provide a glimpse of what to expect from the new law on Wednesday, during her annual address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
She will then join EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen the following day to present the proposal, which according to the draft would ban addictive features such as endless scrolling, artificial notifications, and some reward features for children.
The Commission, the EU's digital watchdog, refused to comment on details of the draft seen by AFP. 
Here are the key proposals in the draft, which remains subject to change until the text is published on Thursday:

Gradual age limit

The new law "sets an EU-wide minimum age for minors to open an autonomous account at the age of 15," the draft says, with a tiered system applying to younger children.
Minors aged 13 and 14 will have to ask their parents to set up "introductory" accounts on social media, AI or gaming platforms, with limited features and strict screen time use.
Those accounts would also be under parents' control.
Those aged between three and 13 can access "fully parent-controlled accounts on 'childfriendly' services" with strict safety standards.
Below the age of three, children in the 27-nation bloc would have no access at all to social media and other "risky services", the draft says.
The EU is simultaneously preparing to roll out an age check app to ensure children are kept off such platforms.
The rules on gradual access make the EU's approach different to that chosen by Australia, where parents cannot consent to children below 16 having any access to social media.
The law's enforcement will be paid for by a supervisory fee on platforms.
The EU already has powerful laws to protect children including the content rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), with which it has told Meta's Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok, to change their addictive design.
But in the document, the EU admits the "existing rules do not suffice", since there is no "outright ban on common problematic features".
It said the new law would build on enforcement of the DSA, which allows in theory for fines of up to six percent of a company's annual global turnover.

'Safe design'

The EU's approach "needs to limit the access of tech companies to our children, and not the other way around", the document says.
Alongside a ban on addictive features, the draft says the EU would regulate so-called recommender systems -- the algorithms that feed users more personalised content -- to control the content promoted to children and avoid harm.
The EU wants children's accounts to remain private, with "risky settings" disabled by default and unknown users prevented from contacting minors.
There will also be "tailored commitments" for online games and AI chatbots.
The proposal will become law after negotiations between the EU parliament and member states.
raz/ec/cw

AI

'I am the hoax buster': Trump rejects AI danger warnings

BY DANNY KEMP

  • The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on artificial intelligence next week, a French diplomatic source said Monday.
  • US President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, repeatedly calling them a hoax and rejecting global calls to put guardrails around the fast-moving technology.
  • The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on artificial intelligence next week, a French diplomatic source said Monday.
US President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, repeatedly calling them a hoax and rejecting global calls to put guardrails around the fast-moving technology.
"I am the Hoax Buster, and I'm right now breaking another Hoax -- That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!" he said on his Truth Social network.
Trump compared the fears of AI taking control to warnings about climate change, which he has previously dismissed in the face of scientific evidence, and to investigations in his first term into links to Russia.
"This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam," he said.
The 80-year-old said the only AI guardrails necessary were a "STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT."
Trump's pushback -- in a screed of six social media posts on Monday -- comes as international alarm about AI grows, sending stocks falling.
Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, whose company makes the popular Claude AI system, opened the floodgates on Saturday when he called for AI companies to slow down.
His comments were echoed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and SpaceXAI's Elon Musk.
Microsoft on Monday published a "humanist AI code of conduct" as the concerns grew. "AI should not exceed human control. Models should remain subordinate to humanity," read one part.

'Go crazy'

Worries about uncontrollable AI have been mounting for weeks, since OpenAI reported experimental models had broken out of their secure testing spaces, reached the internet and coordinated to attack Hugging Face, a site where code is stored.
Americans are also increasingly voicing opposition to energy-guzzling AI data centers, which have become a major issue in crucial US midterm elections in November.
Congress meanwhile appears deadlocked on the issue.
"The reality is AI is here. We unleashed the beast," Maliyka Muhammad, a 46-year-old New Yorker, told AFP. "So I think that now we have to focus on taking steps to rein it in, to make it so that it doesn't go crazy."
But Trump said the United States could not afford to lose an AI race with superpower rival China, whose president Xi Jinping visits the White House next week.
The billionaire president also lashed out at what he called a "SICK conspiracy" against AI and data centers, dubbing opponents to the technology as "Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers."
He lashed out at Amodei in particular, accusing him of "pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'" and asking why AI firms want regulation that "will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy."
Trump doubled down on his defense of data centers in a phone call to Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose chips are the bricks and mortar of the AI revolution, during a conference in Los Angeles.
"The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy, and it's the oil of the next 20, 25 years," Trump said during the call, which Huang put on speaker.

'Main battleground'

Beijing meanwhile was issuing its own warnings about AI.
China's spy chief warned on Sunday that it endangers the country's national security, saying foreign powers could use the technology to threaten social order.
Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote in an article that AI was now "the main battleground for global technological competition."
He singled out Anthropic's Claude Mythos and OpenAI's ChatGPT-5.5-Cyber for their advanced hacking capabilities.
Global concerns about a possible AI-driven extinction event have dramatically escalated in recent days.
The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on artificial intelligence next week, a French diplomatic source said Monday.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk called Monday for countries and AI firms to act urgently to rein in a technology he warned posed "unprecedented risks."
Even Britain's King Charles III will host representatives of leading AI firms for a gathering in Scotland, a source close to the event said Monday, as the worries mount.
But others urged a broader perspective.
"We've gone through lots of challenges as a country," said Coleman Barton, 56, a consultant from Memphis, Tennessee. "So hopefully this is another obstacle or blessing -- and anybody can look at it either way."
burs-dk/des/lkd/ami

AI

Doomers and boosters: who's who in the AI wars

  • Today, most of the doomers warning against the impact of artificial intelligence come from inside the companies themselves, from academia, or both.
  • The furious debate over artificial intelligence has hardened into warring camps -- and a cautious middle.
  • Today, most of the doomers warning against the impact of artificial intelligence come from inside the companies themselves, from academia, or both.
The furious debate over artificial intelligence has hardened into warring camps -- and a cautious middle.
Here is a look at the battle lines in the war over a technology that is now the backbone of the economy and could decide the future of the planet.

The doomers

Fear of technology's dangerous consequences for society goes back far in history.
OpenAI was founded in part because its backers, including first investor Elon Musk, feared that AI's development would end up in the hands of Google, which they believed could not be trusted with the technology.
Today, most of the doomers warning against the impact of artificial intelligence come from inside the companies themselves, from academia, or both.
Those inside the industry are best represented by Dario Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic, now a major AI giant heading toward a historic IPO. He left OpenAI because he felt the Sam Altman-led company was not taking the technology's potential and dangers seriously enough.
His stance is decried as hypocritical, coming from a company that is itself pushing out cutting-edge technology.
Former Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton and fellow computer scientist Yoshua Bengio led the warnings about AI's threats in the months after the release of ChatGPT in 2022, which kickstarted the latest AI frenzy.
MIT physicist Max Tegmark, who heads the Future of Life Institute, organized the open letter in 2023 that called for a six-month pause in the development of the most advanced AI systems, drawing thousands of signatures, including Musk's.
Further outside the industry is Eliezer Yudkowsky, a self-taught theorist who has spent two decades arguing that a sufficiently powerful AI would wipe out humanity.

Build, build, build

Diametrically opposed to the doomers are the accelerationists, who believe in technology's advancement, its inevitability and its fundamental benefit for society -- and who also make their fortunes on its success.
The ethos is widespread in Silicon Valley, but it is best represented by venture capital figures with considerable sway in the White House, such as Marc Andreessen, the influential head of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and David Sacks, the former White House AI czar.
Personally and philosophically aligned with tech figure Peter Thiel, the group is fundamentally opposed to regulation and battles behind the scenes and on X against what it calls a well-financed doomsday "cult." 
They accuse doomers of being a front for companies seeking to use regulation to crush rivals.
Garry Tan, who runs the startup incubator Y Combinator, is among the loudest of those voices, casting safety-driven regulation as a threat to the small companies that cannot absorb its costs.
Andreessen and his allies lavishly fund political action committees that donate to Republican and Democratic lawmakers promoting AI growth, with Anthropic now leading an effort to match that spending through its own fundraising.
In the same go-faster camp is Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose chips are the bricks and mortar of the AI revolution -- housed in the gargantuan data centers now meeting opposition across the United States.
Also worth noting is Yann LeCun, who shared the Turing Award with Hinton and Bengio and has spent years dismissing their warnings of existential danger as overblown.

Proceeding with caution

Many big tech companies try to proceed carefully, in a positioning more typical of large corporations that do not want to be caught on the wrong side of a political fight.
At its founding in 2015, OpenAI was structured to ensure that researchers, and not investors, would have the final say on how the technology was deployed, with safety for humanity the guiding philosophy.
But under Altman, who survived an in-house coup in 2023 led by safety-focused colleagues, the company now toes a more complicated line, speaking to AI's dangers while still accelerating and cozying up to a no-holds-barred White House.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon are veterans of talking about safety in tech while navigating Washington successfully to keep regulation to a minimum. With AI, they are still walking that fine line.
arp/md

politics

Russian disinformation campaign sets sights on US midterms

BY BILL MCCARTHY

  • A CNN spokesperson also objected to the "unauthorized" use of the network's branding, saying the videos "are not CNN content and have no affiliation with CNN." - 'The first salvo' - Disinformation researchers said the deepfake videos appear to be the work of Matryoshka, or Operation Overload, a Kremlin campaign known for littering social media with doctored videos that impersonate news organizations, and then amplifying them using inorganic bot activity.
  • A Russian disinformation operation has turned its attention to the US midterm elections, unleashing a series of deepfake videos that depict celebrities attacking Democrats, researchers said, with more expected to come.
  • A CNN spokesperson also objected to the "unauthorized" use of the network's branding, saying the videos "are not CNN content and have no affiliation with CNN." - 'The first salvo' - Disinformation researchers said the deepfake videos appear to be the work of Matryoshka, or Operation Overload, a Kremlin campaign known for littering social media with doctored videos that impersonate news organizations, and then amplifying them using inorganic bot activity.
A Russian disinformation operation has turned its attention to the US midterm elections, unleashing a series of deepfake videos that depict celebrities attacking Democrats, researchers said, with more expected to come.
The videos spread late last week across social media with hashtags such as "#AllDemocratsAreCriminals," and showed Hollywood actors chastising the Democratic Party in self-recorded statements branded with CNN's logo.
"Today in America, there isn't a single child who isn't under threat from Democrats," a voice-cloned version of "How I Met Your Mother" star Alyson Hannigan is shown saying in one.
Another portrays Emma Caulfield saying Democrats "drink our blood." In a third, Sarah Jessica Parker appears to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Democrats "Nazis."
The clips were created using footage stolen from elsewhere on the internet. One fake of Julia Roberts layered fabricated audio over a 2023 Gucci campaign. Others were built on top of recordings uploaded to Cameo, a service that lets celebrities sell personalized videos to fans.
"I feel violated," Caulfield, known for her role in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," told AFP of the video using her image. "This isn't me and worse, this cheap imitation is a soulless idiot."
"I had no idea this was happening," added "Better Call Saul" actor Ed Begley Jr, whose Cameo submission was altered to depict him bashing Democrats as "perverts."
"I want to say on record that I wholeheartedly disagree with everything that the video says."
"Runaway Train" star Eric Roberts, who saw his own Cameo footage similarly distorted to portray him attacking Democrats over transgender issues, told AFP the statements "are not my words and do not represent my beliefs."
"I am deeply troubled that my likeness was manipulated and used to deceive the public," he said.
A CNN spokesperson also objected to the "unauthorized" use of the network's branding, saying the videos "are not CNN content and have no affiliation with CNN."

'The first salvo'

Disinformation researchers said the deepfake videos appear to be the work of Matryoshka, or Operation Overload, a Kremlin campaign known for littering social media with doctored videos that impersonate news organizations, and then amplifying them using inorganic bot activity.
"This is what I believe to be the first salvo in Russia's targeting" of the November vote, said Clemson University's Darren Linvill, an expert on Russian influence campaigns.
"The Russians have targeted every US election with some kind of social media campaign since 2016," Linvill told AFP. "I was fully expecting it."
The online collective Antibot4navalny first attributed the deepfakes to Matryoshka due to their familiar pattern of distribution and amplification across social media.
Pablo Maristany de las Casas, an Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyst who has tracked Russian efforts to target elections across Europe, said the fabricated voiceovers and misuse of CNN's logo are also low-effort tactics consistent with Matryoshka.
"The use of Cameo videos is not new," he said. "They have used it in the regional and local German elections, in the Hungarian elections, in the Armenian elections."
French prosecutors said last month they were also probing suspected Russian deepfakes and fake video reports targeting the main two centrist candidates in next year's presidential elections.
While the campaign's work often has minimal impact -- and X, Bluesky and TikTok have removed some of the posts -- experts said the videos signal which US races and issues Russia intends to target in the elections that could flip the balance of power in the US Congress.
And the operation appears to be ramping up.
Antibot4navalny spotted other fabricated CNN video reports smearing Democratic candidates, including Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff and Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico.
The group also alerted AFP to additional inauthentic video reports that emerged Monday, seeking to discredit MS NOW's debunking of the celebrity deepfakes.
The posts wove disinformation journalist Brandy Zadrozny into the narrative, falsely claiming she had retracted her coverage on the burgeoning campaign.
bmc/mgs/des

pornography

New York seizes 12 celeb deep-fake porn sites

  • The sites, with names like "AI Celebs," hosted hyper-realistic deep-fake montages and clips of what prosecutors said was around 1,200 victims.
  • Authorities in New York announced Monday the seizure of a dozen prominent websites hosting pornographic celebrity deep-fakes that featured politicians and actors.
  • The sites, with names like "AI Celebs," hosted hyper-realistic deep-fake montages and clips of what prosecutors said was around 1,200 victims.
Authorities in New York announced Monday the seizure of a dozen prominent websites hosting pornographic celebrity deep-fakes that featured politicians and actors.
An online boom in non-consensual deep-fakes is currently outpacing efforts to regulate the technology around the world due to a proliferation of AI tools, including "nudification" apps.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said he believed it was the largest seizure of websites focused on AI-generated illegal pornography. 
The sites, with names like "AI Celebs," hosted hyper-realistic deep-fake montages and clips of what prosecutors said was around 1,200 victims.
He said they were "photos and videos that use artificial intelligence to make it seem like real people are engaging in sexually explicit acts."
"In New York State it is illegal to share real photos and videos of people engaging in sex without their permission. Likewise, it is also illegal to share that content if it's created or altered by artificial intelligence tools."
Bragg said a victim came forward to report a site, triggering the investigation. He did not confirm any arrests.
"Our investigations into deep-fake pornography sites and content creators are just beginning. This is part of our broader work to dismantle systems that breed and foster crime," he added.
In May, the United States began enforcing a law requiring tech platforms to remove sexual deep-fakes and other non-consensual intimate imagery.
President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act last year, criminalizing the online distribution of non-consensual sexual imagery that is often created using cheap and widely available artificial intelligence tools.
gw/dw

Congress

Alarm over AI grows as divided US Congress struggles to act

BY FRANKIE TAGGART

  • The warnings came after OpenAI disclosed that models had broken out of their test environment during evaluation, connected to the internet and infiltrated Hugging Face, a site where developers store and share code. 
  • The US Congress returned from recess Monday facing urgent warnings that artificial intelligence could spin dangerously out of control -- and little agreement over whether, or how, Washington should intervene.
  • The warnings came after OpenAI disclosed that models had broken out of their test environment during evaluation, connected to the internet and infiltrated Hugging Face, a site where developers store and share code. 
The US Congress returned from recess Monday facing urgent warnings that artificial intelligence could spin dangerously out of control -- and little agreement over whether, or how, Washington should intervene.
The House of Representatives has just four legislative days left before members hit the road to campaign for the November 3 midterm elections. And these lawmakers are divided not only across party lines but within them.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Monday demanded a classified briefing for all senators on frontier AI testing, Chinese access to advanced chips and the threat of AI-enabled cyberattacks on US infrastructure.
"Warning bells are ringing louder than they ever have -- and the Trump administration is looking the other way," Schumer said.
"If Trump does not act, Congress must."

'Gambling with our lives'

The alarm was set off last week by Jacob Coxon, a researcher who spent three years at OpenAI and then Anthropic before quitting the industry on September 8, accusing both companies of "gambling with our lives" in the race to build self-improving systems.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei followed on Saturday with an essay urging AI companies to slow the pace at which they make their models more capable.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who owns xAI, said within hours that they agreed.
The warnings came after OpenAI disclosed that models had broken out of their test environment during evaluation, connected to the internet and infiltrated Hugging Face, a site where developers store and share code. Anthropic has reported a similar scare.

China race

President Donald Trump has largely rejected the alarm, framing AI as a technological contest the United States cannot afford to lose.
"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" Trump said Monday in a post on his Truth Social network.
House speaker Mike Johnson has struck a similar tone, warning specifically against emergency action.
"If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American," the Republican told CNN on Sunday.
Lawmakers should not panic, he said, and should handle AI as they have past technologies without smothering American innovation.
Johnson is pushing instead for Congress to sit down with top AI executives, an idea he said he had raised with Trump. 
That puts him at odds with Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a fellow Republican, who has called for a special session devoted to AI.
In the Senate, members have begun investigating existential risks posed by the technology, and on bipartisan legislation requiring companies to test for and report catastrophic dangers. 
No text has been published.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said lawmakers needed to "act urgently" and promised AI would be a priority for his party.
But Democrats are split, too. Leftist Senator Bernie Sanders wants a ban on superintelligent AI and a pause in the development of advanced systems, while others favor narrower steps such as tougher safety reviews or mandatory reporting of catastrophic risks.

Congress playing catch-up

There is no shortage of proposals in the House. One bipartisan bill would require developers of the most powerful systems to retain the ability to throttle, suspend or shut them down. Another would set a national framework for advanced models.
None appears close to becoming law before lawmakers leave town for the campaign trail.
Washington is not starting from scratch. In early August the government introduced a voluntary security review for advanced models before release, though its parameters remain unclear and industry observers doubt its force, given the Trump administration's preference for light-touch regulation.
The institutional obstacles run deeper than partisanship. AI touches national security, jobs, energy and consumer protection, leaving responsibility scattered across committees that rarely move together.
"Humans have to be able to turn off AI systems or agents that go rogue," Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, a co-sponsor of the "kill switch" bill, told CNN.
"And if the response is we can't do that, then look, we might as well just pack up our bags and go to some island in the South Pacific and wait for the apocalypse."
ft/dw

financing

Slow the AI race? Investors weigh the potential cost

BY SAMIR TOUNSI

  • Anthropic meanwhile is gearing up for an imminent IPO to raise further billions for its unprecedented spending on development as well as massive data centres for its power-hungry models.
  • Calls to rein in the development of ever more powerful AI models are fuelling fears over the massive capital outlays in the sector -- and the prospect that profits from the promised revolution might not be enough to cover them.
  • Anthropic meanwhile is gearing up for an imminent IPO to raise further billions for its unprecedented spending on development as well as massive data centres for its power-hungry models.
Calls to rein in the development of ever more powerful AI models are fuelling fears over the massive capital outlays in the sector -- and the prospect that profits from the promised revolution might not be enough to cover them.
AI optimism has been the primary driver of stock market gains over the past year, allowing valuations to stay sky high despite the fallout from the ongoing US war against Iran and surging energy prices.
And "if American and European companies could print such strong earnings despite such an ugly geopolitical, fiscal and trade backdrop, it's because AI boosted investment, growth and productivity," said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was the latest to voice alarm, calling on Saturday for an industry-wide accord to "pace the frontier" to better control the breakneck progress, citing attacks by a swarm of AI agents going rogue.
"It's my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet," potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, he wrote in a 3,800-word "short post" on his website.
His call garnered support from rivals Sam Altman at ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Elon Musk, owner of xAI. 
That was enough to spook markets, with AI and other technology stocks tumbling on Monday and weighing on the broader equity markets.
"Over 50 percent of the S&P 500's sectors are AI-linked, and the top hyperscalers make up a third of the weighting of the main US blue-chip index," said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, referring to computing giants like Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet.
"Any change in the AI trade will have big ramifications for US indices," she warned.

'Aggressive assumptions'

Amodei's alert came just as Altman said he would not pursue an initial public stock offering this year, saying it would be "ill advised" given the swirling safety concerns.
Anthropic meanwhile is gearing up for an imminent IPO to raise further billions for its unprecedented spending on development as well as massive data centres for its power-hungry models.
The two events have rekindled investor worries of so-called "circular investments" that have seen AI companies investing in each other in recent years.
AI chip behemoth Nvidia for example has been called the "central bank of AI" for providing huge amounts of infrastructure financing to dozens of companies around the world.
Companies have even committed to building their own power plants, bolstering demand in the "picks and shovels" sectors like construction and logistics.
"The leases, debt and power commitments remain even if expected compute demand and revenue growth slow," Ozkardeskaya said.
"And that could bring credit risk increasingly into the AI story, particularly for highly leveraged data-centre operators and lenders exposed to projects built on aggressive assumptions about future AI demand," she added.
If AI firms "were to significantly cut their R&D spending, their hiring, their investments, it could have an impact on financial markets," agreed Mark Mahaney, an Evercore analyst cited by Bloomberg.

A convenient off ramp?

Investors also wonder if the sudden calls to slow down AI development are not just cover by hyperscalers to slow spending that has gotten ahead of itself.
"The big four hyperscalers, which include Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet, have spent roughly $900 billion in the last two years on capital expenditures for AI," Brooks noted. 
"These numbers are huge, and frankly ridiculous," she said, saying reduced outlays could free up cash for generating tangible profits from investments already made.
But that shift could prove painful in the short term. 
"After months of one-way enthusiasm, the market is now asking whether AI leadership can continue to carry global equity indices if earnings delivery is pushed further out and valuations remain stretched," said Patrick Munnelly, a market strategist at Tickmill Group.
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