'Why were we never consulted about any of this in the first place?' 'Why were we never consulted about any of this in the first place?' Sam Altman says AI will make'bad things' happen. AI is already implicated in violent deaths and nearly started world war three. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has some words for you about his company and the future of artificial intelligence. "One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to use it]," Altman told Politico's new technology podcast and newsletter Decoded .

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. San Francisco Bay Area residents, living in the beating heart of the artificial intelligence boom, are just as conflicted about the technology as the rest of the country.

Tristan Harris' Tech Nonprofit Is Laying Off Most Staff and Going'Founder-Led' The Center for Humane Technology helped spark a movement against excessive screen time, but internal tensions over its direction and strategy have simmered for years, sources tell WIRED. The Center for Humane Technology, the online safety group cofounded by former Google product manager Tristan Harris and featured in the hit documentary, is laying off about half of its 16 non-founder employees, ex-staffers tell WIRED. The organization is ending its policy research and litigation work to focus instead on what it calls " founder-led " projects. The nine departures, which include executive director Julie Guirado and senior director of strategy Camille Carlton, arrive shortly after the center scored a series of major courtroom victories against social media companies . The lawsuits drew on its research alleging that the platforms were deliberately designed to keep kids glued to their screens.

One employee says the system can mean their work is monitored by AI for seven hours a day as they handle inquiries, often from bereaved customers. One employee says the system can mean their work is monitored by AI for seven hours a day as they handle inquiries, often from bereaved customers. 'Dystopian': Co-op becomes latest firm to put staff under AI surveillance Thu 8 Oct 2026 05.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 8 Oct 2026 06.04 EDT The Co-op has become the latest employer to place workers under AI surveillance with an automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers. In a system described as "oppressive and dystopian" by a whistleblower, Co-op Legal Services is using AI models to record, analyse and award a percentage score for interactions between agents and customers seeking advice about probate, wills and estates. A model from OpenAI has been trained to assess more than 50 discrete aspects of each phone call and provide pass and fail scores to managers who use the data to analyse employee performance.

Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer for OpenAI, appeared at the joint select committee on AI on Tuesday. Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer for OpenAI, appeared at the joint select committee on AI on Tuesday. Revelation comes after company's executive told parliamentary inquiry he did not believe AI had been used to write message OpenAI used AI to help write the email to the Australian government advising that its AI agent had hacked into key departmental websites, Guardian Australia can reveal. On Tuesday, one of the company's executives told a parliamentary inquiry that he didn't believe that its own technology had been used to create the email, but said the company needed to confirm this. Guardian Australia understands AI was used by OpenAI's legal and security teams to generate parts of the wording of the email, including word selection and formatting of the message.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Look Up Trending Now Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net All Series California's new AI law: Ban on bots used to fire employees Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. California law argues AI isn't a substitute for HR. Signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom last week, SB 947 sets restrictions on the use of the novel technology in disciplinary decision making, including firing employees. SB 947 may sound like an obvious regulatory move as industries continue to worry about AI's impact on employment, but the No Robo Bosses Act marks the first law of its kind in the nation . Other states, including California, have enacted bans on AI-enabled discrimination and laws that restrict the authority of automated systems in hiring and benefits decisions.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Look Up Trending Now Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net All Series Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Can AI solve the mathematically impossible? On Oct. 6, the company released a slew of new mathematical results in the form of a massive GitHub repository -- an info dump that will take hundreds of human hours to sift through. The company's internal frontier model provided solutions to more than 300 problems, but the company also implied they expect experts to take issue with them, debuting new processes for paper revisions and citations. For future releases, we are committed to further improving the quality of the papers via the citations, mathematical exposition, and presentation of the results for better understanding, wrote OpenAI.

While sources say Nippan Group has confirmed that it sold books to U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, the Japanese wholesaler did not disclose how many books were sold or the total purchase amount. Nippan Group Holdings, a Japanese book wholesaler, has confirmed that it had sold books to U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday. In a letter addressed to the Japan Book Publishers Association, an industry group, Nippan Group said that Nippan IPS, a subsidiary that sells Japanese books overseas, concluded a deal with Anthropic in November 2024 and sold books to it between December that year and last December, according to the sources. Before striking the deal, Nippan IPS asked about the purpose of the book purchases, the letter said. But Nippan Group said that the unit had not been aware that Anthropic's purchases were for AI learning, according to the letter.

According to the company, the average price of a McDonald's menu item increased about 40% between 2019 and 2024. According to the company, the average price of a McDonald's menu item increased about 40% between 2019 and 2024. McDonald's sued for allegedly using AI tool to determine pricing for franchises McDonald's is facing a lawsuit in federal court over its alleged use of an AI tool to determine pricing across independent franchises, which prosecutors say violates antitrust laws and has unfairly inflated menu prices for Americans. The vast majority of McDonald's US stores are independently owned and are said to individually decide on prices under company policy. Antitrust laws require businesses to set prices independently from their competitors, as coordinating prices can stifle market competition and push up costs for consumers.

A Mysterious Nonprofit Run by SpaceXAI's Top Lawyer Is Paying the Salaries of Government Workers The National Design Studio has been something of a successor agency to DOGE. A WIRED investigation finds some of its members are on loan from a nonprofit run by SpaceXAI's general counsel. Following billionaire Elon Musk's departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in late spring 2025, several of the group's members found a new home within the federal government: the National Design Studio . Led by Joe Gebbia, a cofounder of Airbnb, a former member of DOGE, and currently the chief design officer of the US, the NDS is nested in the Executive Office of the President and has been tasked with redesigning government websites and services. As with DOGE before it, who exactly is a part of NDS--and what they're working on--often remains opaque.