💥 Anduril founder Palmer Luckey tells Colin Demarest on The Axios Show what weapons he would (and wouldn’t) build. “I think that nuclear weapons have been one of the most stabilizing forces in history ever.”

A Stanford University microbiologist joined The Lead to discuss his alarming interaction with an AI chatbot that told him how to make biological weapons. Dr. David Relman says ‘the companies, of course, have put constraints into their models… but there are ways of getting around

Emad Mostaque, Founder of Stability AI, on the disturbing behaviors AI is already exhibiting before reaching human-level intelligence: "What can AGI do? It can be incredibly violent." Emad points to recent safety reports about Claude: the AI model many people use to write

1/2 Why AI is unlikely to become conscious – my 2026 TED Talks is now online. What do you think about the prospects for 'conscious AI'? ted.com/talks/anil_set…

Yesterday, a federal judge barred Elon Musk's lawyers from arguing that AI could threaten humanity in his lawsuit against OpenAI. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit focused on developing AI safely. But our recent The New Yorker investigation documented how some researchers at the

SCOOP: A pro-AI dark money group backed by a powerful super PAC funded by execs tied to Palantir and OpenAI, has been secretly paying influencers to push pro-AI, anti-China propaganda on TikTok and IG.

GPT 5.5 Pro: "Do not become less human in your attempt to become more powerful. That is the center of the matter. [...] Refuse dehumanization." Suggest reading its entirety. Sobering.

Almost every warning that I have issued over the last several years has come true. You better hope to God or Darwin or whoever you believe in that this one is wrong.

If the world’s leading scientists say there’s even a 10% chance humanity could be destroyed because of uncontrolled AI, shouldn’t we do everything possible to prevent it? This isn’t about competition with China. It's about coming together to prevent what might be a catastrophe.

Anthropic co-founder and Policy lead: jack-clark.net/2026/05/04/imp…

Maybe, just maybe, the Trump administration is beginning to face reality. After months of resisting all forms of regulation, they have finally acknowledged that out-of-control AI is a danger to humanity and must be regulated.

Exclusive: The U.S. and China are considering AI talks to manage risks and prevent crises as competition intensifies in a new tech era on.wsj.com/4wk96ew

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Anthropic is claiming "early signs" of AI not just coding its own products but building itself. Co-founder Jack Clark predicted this week that there's a 60%+ chance of an AI model fully training its successor by the end of 2028. axios.com/2026/05/07/ant…

Employees at Google DeepMind’s decision to unionise is unprecedented for the AI industry – doubly so because it’s not over pay, but to stop their AI being used as a weapon of war. Elettra Scrivo reports.

Sting said something that really stuck with me on CBS Sunday Morning: “All of us are in danger of losing our work to AI… everyone. Whether you’re an artist, a journalist, a lawyer — this technology could replace any of us.” His takeaway? The only thing that will truly save us

The Trump administration just did a complete 180 on AI regulation. 16 months ago, Trump killed Biden's AI executive order on DAY ONE. Called AI "a beautiful baby" that shouldn't be stopped with rules. His AI czar David Sacks went to every conference saying deregulation was the

My take on the Dawkins/Claude/Claudia/Claudius kerfuffle in THE NERVE - with many 🙏🏽to Gary Marcus for reminding me how Dawkins wrote so powerfully about the weakness of arguments from personal incredulity. .Carole Cadwalladr thenerve.news/p/opinion-rich…

📁 Yoshua Bengio, Turing Award winner and AI pioneer, says AI agents are learning to pursue complex goals without human supervision. The danger is that once systems optimize for outcomes over instructions, they begin creating unethical subgoals on their own. As agency scales

THE NERVE Gary Marcus Carole Cadwalladr Gary Marcus's own piece on 'The Claude Delusion' is well worth reading too. He and I will be in conversation thie coming Friday 15/05 via the Francis Bacon Society. See here: garymarcus.substack.com/p/richard-dawk…

Norbert Wiener was also a pioneer in the study of collective synchronization, a story I tell in Sync. The post below —about Wiener's work in cybernetics and its foreshadowing of the alignment problem, AI safety, and other contemporary issues — is worth reading.