United States President Donald Trump and top tech executives have signed an accord to "self-police" artificial intelligence, as calls grow for more guardrails to mitigate risks associated with the technology's rapid growth. Trump announced the accord on Tuesday after meeting with a large group of AI company leaders at the White House. The accord - which Trump posted on his Truth Social platform - said the companies would implement "robust internal controls", partner with an "independent external auditor" to assess whether the controls were working, and set up a committee among each company's board of directors to evaluate reports from internal and external auditors. The companies also said they would work to ensure their AI tools do not "hack or access technical systems in unintended ways". "Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws and regulations," the accord said.

As industry leaders urge a global slowdown in artificial intelligence development for the sake of humanity, the two superpowers driving the technology's rapid advancement have given no indication they intend to hit the brakes. The United States and China, which are locked in a fierce strategic rivalry, have each rebutted calls to slow the pace of AI development, even as industry executives and researchers stress the need for international cooperation to avoid exposing humans to catastrophic - or even existential - risks. Observers anticipated measures that, at best, would fall far short of the coordinated slowdown that many experts said is needed. "The two countries host nearly all frontier labs and most of the models people download," said Alvin Wang Graylin, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, describing agreed guardrails between the US and China as "close to a precondition" for safe AI. "A safety regime covering one side's models covers half the problem," Wang Graylin said. Hampering the prospects for US-China cooperation, analysts said, are mutual mistrust and divergent perceptions of the primary risks involved.

The conversation in the AI industry has largely been focused on slowing down AI development or "pacing the frontier," but that apparently won't stop Anthropic and OpenAI from releasing new models. Both companies are iterating on their previous releases, Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra, with new models that offer similar levels of performance but at lower costs. In the case of Claude, Anthropic says its new Opus 5.5 model is better at handling complex work, "finding and fixing inefficiencies in software" and financial analysis and business work -- all pitches laser-targeted at Anthropic's enterprise customers. Anthropic's benchmarks claim Opus 5.5 also scored better at agentic coding than GPT-6 Astra on both Terminal-Bench 4.0 and FrontierCode v1.1 (Main), which could make it more appealing for developers. Improvements extend outside of the tasks the model can handle and to how it works: Anthropic claims Opus 5.5 produces writing that's easier to understand, and that it "attempted to circumvent boundaries around 85 percent less often" than past models, suggesting it'll disobey directions less often.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

AI, Tariffs, Rare Minerals: What to Expect From Trump's Upcoming Summit With Xi Jinping Washington and Beijing have grown ever more linked in the AI boom, making hardware exports and technological restrictions hefty bargaining chips in negotiations. Of all the events in the United Nations General Assembly taking place this week, the most anticipated by far is the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping. Though the majority of the diplomatic activities are happening in New York, this face-to-face between the two leaders will take place at the White House. Trump is scheduled to personally welcome Xi at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, September 23--an unusual diplomatic gesture, as US presidents do not typically go to the airport to welcome foreign leaders. Ahead of that airport reunion, a US delegation led by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative Jamieson Greer is meeting with He Lifeng, China's vice premier of the State Council, to set the agenda.

Can the US win the AI cold war with China? Share Can the US win the AI cold war with China? on social media The success of China's cheap AI technology has clearly worried American AI companies. Industry leaders have openly called on the US government to take action on competition from the Chinese AI industry. Washington has already imposed various restrictions on the sale of chips to China. Last year, it launched the Pax Silica initiative, aimed at securing supply chains for AI technology that exclude Beijing; 23 states have since joined, along with the European Union.

As the industry calls for pumping the brakes on AI development, President Donald Trump is instead creating an "AI Force" and seeking a "czar" to run it. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would announce his pick to run the AI Force "in the near future." Trump's post didn't include concrete details on what this new agency would do, but the president compared the effort to the creation of the Space Force. "We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry," Trump wrote on his Truth Social post. "Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!"

For one day only, WIRED is bringing the technologies, people, and cultural forces transforming our world off the page and into real life. For more than a century, World's Fairs have given people a first glimpse of what's next: breakthroughs, ideas, and ways of living that would go on to reshape the everyday. This one-day event brings the technologies, people, and cultural forces transforming our world off the page and into real life. The Onion will be there, and a researcher whose life's work is decoding the language of dolphins . We'll be screening the documentary, and letting you experience the same training software astronauts use to get ready for the moon and Mars .

Here's How an AI Slowdown Could Actually Be Enforced Even if big AI companies agree to a pause, ensuring that nobody tries to sneak ahead could prove tricky. Many AI researchers seem to firmly believe that the technology they are developing could someday prove very dangerous . What's less clear--even among AI's technical elite --is precisely how to keep these mercurial algorithms in check. In recent years researchers have thrown around all sorts of ideas for preventing AI from turning nasty. They include less controversial plans such as tighter government regulations, new ways of measuring progress, and probing the inner workings of models, as well as more outlandish proposals like placing tracking devices inside GPUs, and even ceremonially destroying large numbers of AI chips. With political and public pressure now growing for a more measured approach to building AI, however, the answer to keeping AI safe is still unclear.

Who gets to decide how quickly AI moves? Share Who gets to decide how quickly AI moves? on social media Artificial intelligence (AI) has stirred up more controversy than most things in the past five years. Ever since the introduction of accessible generative AI in 2022, institutions, universities, students, scholars, activists, cognitive specialists, public policymakers and members of the public have all been divided over the ethics of its use. As of the beginning of this month, even the founders of AI companies have taken the same stance. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, released an essay calling on AI companies to slow the development of their most advanced models, as the safeguards currently in place are unable to keep up.