'The CEOs are telling us, "We're on track to create superhuman intelligence, which has a good chance of causing human extinction."' 'The CEOs are telling us, "We're on track to create superhuman intelligence, which has a good chance of causing human extinction."' Will it take a'Chernobyl-scale disaster' for us to regulate cyber weapons of mass destruction? T he AI company Anthropic has been making major headlines recently. Its trillion-dollar IPO plan and its blood feud with secretary of defense Pete Hegseth have attracted much attention, but two other events may be even more consequential.

SpaceX to list on US stock market at $1.77tn valuation in largest ever debut IPO for Elon Musk's company comes in what is predicted to be a banner year for public offerings of AI companies SpaceX will become publicly traded on Friday after nearly two and a half decades as a private company. Executives are slated to ring the bell on Wall Street with the rocket ship maker's historic stock market debut. If all goes to plan, the company's initial public offering (IPO) will mint a valuation of $1.77tn - earning it the designation of the world's largest ever IPO. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has a large stake in the company as majority shareholder, so if investors' enthusiasm validates the eye-popping valuation, he would take the title of the world's first-ever trillionaire. Musk is also the CEO of Tesla, which is valued at $1.2tn.

A Florida man is suing several law enforcement agencies for his arrest and prosecution for allegedly luring a child after he was wrongly identified using faulty AI facial recognition software. According to the Jacksonville Beach police department, an algorithm returned a 93% probability that Robert Dillon was the man caught on security cameras at a McDonald's in the town attempting to persuade an unaccompanied girl, aged younger than 12, to leave with him. Dillon, however, lives in Fort Myers, more than 300 miles and a five-hour drive away, and told detectives he had never been to Jacksonville Beach in his life. The case was dismissed and charges dropped last year over the August 2024 incident. Now the 52-year-old has filed a lawsuit against the police department, the Jacksonville sheriff's office, and Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff of Pinellas county, whose agency maintains and operates the Faces (Face Analysis Comparison and Examination) system and leases it to other law enforcement.

Ni, who moved to the UK in 2019 to study, was targeted by what she believes is a pro-regime bot. Ni, who moved to the UK in 2019 to study, was targeted by what she believes is a pro-regime bot. A high-profile Chinese activist in the UK who was inundated with deepfake posts on X portraying her as a sexually promiscuous drug addict was told that the abuse did not breach the rules of Elon Musk's platform. Apple Peiqing Ni, the 27-year-old founder of the UK-based China Dissent Network, had been advised by UK police to complain to the US-headquartered platform after she was targeted by what she believes is a pro-regime bot. The abuse included 12 posts tagging Ni and containing fake photographs and videos of her.

Seattle has passed a year-long moratorium on the construction of new datacenters. The city council voted unanimously in favor of the temporary ban on Tuesday. A major tech hub whose metro area is home to Amazon and Microsoft, Seattle is the largest US city to have passed such a moratorium as the backlash against AI infrastructure grows across the country. Lawmakers have framed the pause as an opportunity to draft regulations specifically targeting the electricity-hungry datacenters being built nationwide to serve the AI sector, and to protect local residents from environmental risks and rising electricity bills. According to Seattle's mayor, Katie Wilson, the moratorium will also let city officials determine whether datacenters are a "good use of urban land", and potentially impose new stipulations on their approval, such as requiring developers to invest in local transit and housing initiatives in exchange for construction permits.

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude artificial intelligence ( AI) models, made a new version of its technology available to the general public on Tuesday while restricting its use in sensitive areas. Dubbed Fable 5, the model is the first to be made widely available from the company's new Mythos class - its most advanced lineup of AI technology, unveiled in April but restricted to a small set of partner institutions for months over cybersecurity concerns. Anthropic promoted Fable 5 as useful for writing and debugging software code, answering complex research questions and analyzing images. Anthropic says the world should have option to'pause' on AI In parallel, Anthropic is offering an unrestricted version, Claude Mythos 5, to companies and organizations that already have access to this model family - including cybersecurity partners enrolled in its Project Glasswing program. That select group was expanded in early June to about 200 organizations in more than 15 countries and is expected to grow further.

Anthropic's alliance with pope on AI harms: all in good faith or'Vatican-washing?' Experts say AI firm's engagement with Vatican risks creating'feelgood' discourse that lacks critical examination Why did Anthropic's founder sit beside the pope during a warning about AI? In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task. At a ceremony honoring the holy teaching the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was flanked by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom so worrying Leo. Olah's presence raises a key question: how could the Catholic church and the world's most valuable AI startup work together, when Anthropic's technology may bring about the future Leo is warning against? Leo's encyclical discusses at length the preservation of the dignity of humans' work as it comes under threat from AI - but major AI companies, including Anthropic, aren't prioritising these concerns, says Pete Furlong, senior manager of policy and research at Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit advocating for accountability around AI. "All of these companies are building technology that is designed to replace people," Furlong says.

'Like a billionaire on acid': Star Wars director Gareth Edwards comes out in favour of AI Speaking at Amazon's AI on the Lot event, the Rogue One film-maker Gareth Edwards said'it'll do anything you ask' and'it's going to be better than CGI' Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has enthusiastically endorsed the use of generative AI in film-making, saying "it is a fucking genius at helping you" and "it's going to be better than CGI". Edwards was speaking at AI on the Lot, an event in Culver City, California, organised by Amazon, and in remarks reported by the Hollywood Reporter said: "I can't see a reason why you wouldn't become interested in this stuff as a film-maker. It's so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera. It's going to be better than CGI." Edwards said that AI is most useful in the preparatory stages of film-making, saying: "It's only good for iteration and discovering what the movie should be, and then once you know what it is, go in and start making it your movie." He added: "It has no taste whatsoever. It is a fucking genius at helping you. I view it like having a second-unit director who is a billionaire on acid. Like, it'll do anything you ask, not a problem. And you'll give it notes, and it'll be like, 'I don't do notes. I'll just do something totally different.' Edwards' positive view of AI was echoed by veteran writer and director Paul Schrader, who was also speaking at the event. In remarks reported by Deadline, Schrader said: "I don't think the real future of AI commercially is in all this flash, all these monsters - that's just jacked-up special effects on steroids," he said. "The real tip of the spear is when we can create an AI protagonist, not a hybrid, and that movie makes money.

Data in the report show 4% of workers believe they have already lost a job because of AI. Data in the report show 4% of workers believe they have already lost a job because of AI. Exclusive: IPPR thinktank calls for new measures to boost employees' influence at'pivotal moment' in history Workers urgently need more bargaining power over the way AI is adopted in the workplace to ensure the benefits are fairly shared, according to a TUC-backed report from a leading thinktank. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a package of measures to boost employees' influence at what it calls a "pivotal moment in the history of work". Its report cites survey data showing that while 20% of workers say AI is making their working life better, 21% say it has made it worse - and 4% believe they have already lost a job because of the technology.

'In Silicon Valley, some have suggested that the pope doesn't know what he's talking about.' 'In Silicon Valley, some have suggested that the pope doesn't know what he's talking about.' The intelligent and thoughtful encyclical is an important warning of the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. O ften I'm asked if I think that the novels of the future will all be written by AI. Do I worry that a machine can do what I do, only better? I usually say something like: "No algorithm is going to write Anna Karenina!" which is also not a real answer.