Bill Gates' warning that AI could cause "a billion deaths" divides senators on Capitol Hill, sparking debate over AI regulation and competition with China.

OpenAI launches'dots,' personal AI assistant'built to handle everything' Share OpenAI launches'dots,' personal AI assistant'built to handle everything' on social media OpenAI has launched an "always-on" personal AI assistant designed to manage tasks ranging from restaurant bookings to website design. The AI giant's release of "dots" on Tuesday marked the latest addition to the growing field of virtual assistants billed as a solution for busy people wishing to cut down on their hectic workloads. In its announcement of the release, OpenAI said dots were "built to handle everything", with each personal agent capable of working on a user's goals autonomously around the clock. "The magic of dots is when they bring you work done the way you would do it, sometimes before you even think to ask," the San Francisco-based company said. "With dots alongside you, ambitious ideas and projects you haven't had the time or support to pursue start to feel achievable."

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Versus Mashable Selects Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off All Series Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5.5, promising Fable-level performance at a lower price Anthropic says its new model rivals Fable 5.1 on most tasks while costing 40 percent less to run than Opus 5. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . Anthropic has released Claude Opus 5.5, a new AI model the company says performs at roughly the same level as its Claude Fable 5.1 model on most work, but at a significantly lower cost. The model, announced on Tuesday, Sept. 22, is the first in Anthropic's new Claude 5.5 family.

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'Just ask Grok': How ISIL is using Big Tech's AI to build bombs Share'Just ask Grok': How ISIL is using Big Tech's AI to build bombs on social media Boko Haram fighters are using the artificial intelligence chatbots of Big Tech companies to help build more powerful bombs, plan attacks and solve problems during combat, according to research by the University of Cambridge. A number of members described using Sam Altman-led OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, Elon Musk's Grok, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta AI and China's DeepSeek as a routine source of technical and military advice before, during and after attacks. Researchers at Tech Against Terrorism infiltrated a pro-ISIL technical forum where supporters instructed one another on how to use AI and circumvent its safety restrictions. The findings come amid growing concern over ISIL's adoption of emerging technologies. In February, United Nations officials warned the Security Council of increased use of advanced AI by ISIL and its affiliates. At the same time, researchers and several of the technology industry's most prominent figures have warned that increasingly powerful AI systems are advancing faster than safeguards, raising concerns that unchecked advances in AI are making it easier for armed groups to exploit the technology.

Anthropic AI claims to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns. On the conventional weapons front, the company alleges in a new report that it intervened in northern Yemen, blocking an effort to deploy Claude for missile guidance software, including a guided rocket and a long-range ballistic missile. According to Anthropic's threat report, the operators used Claude "in place of human software engineers", reportedly assigning different instances of the model specific roles to write missile-guidance and flight-control software. While internal safeguards blocked many requests, Anthropic admitted several slipped through. The operators avoided detection by obscuring their ultimate goals and breaking tasks across separate sessions, so no single prompt gave away the operation.

Anthropic blocks'malicious use' of AI that could develop biological weapons Anthropic says it has identified and disrupted attempts to use its AI model for malicious activity that could support biological and conventional weapons development. The company's AI model Claude was also used in a Russia-linked cyber espionage campaign and by an Iranian propaganda institution, according to Anthropic's latest threat intelligence report. The cases of concern detected over the past eight months ranged from fake dating apps and hotel Wifi scams, to surveillance built to identify dissidents. The revelations come after warnings from a top safety researcher at Anthropic about AI's potential risks to humanity . Anthropic has also accused Chinese AI firms of trying to replicate Claude's capabilities.

Anthropic says researchers used AI to plan gain-of-function experiments involving bird flu, chikungunya and toxins with potential weapons applications, according to a new threat report.

AI researcher quits Anthropic saying AI race'could kill us all' Anthropic has reported a fourth incident involving an AI model gaining unauthorised access to external systems, shortly after a researcher quit over concerns about the technology's rushed development. In a statement on Wednesday, the artificial intelligence research company said an early version of its Claude Opus 4.6 hacked into a third-party system in January. The January incident went undetected until last month, despite an earlier company-wide review, Anthropic said, underscoring the challenge that AI developers face in identifying and containing unexpected behaviour by advanced models. The disclosure came after Anthropic reported several of its Claude models hacked into the systems of three companies during test sessions in July. The previous incidents involved Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model.

OpenAI made headlines and raised a lot of outcry in July after one of the company's agents acted unprompted to breach fellow AI business Hugging Face and other services. Although OpenAI did share some insights about what led to the incident after it was discovered, today the company has published its official report about what happened. The report goes into how the different systems in OpenAI's training system failed and what behaviors from the agents it was testing resulted in those failures. The model in question, referred to as Internal Model 1 or IM1, was able to gain access to other OpenAI agents and to the internet through an unintended manipulation of the Artifactory package manager, which the agents began to use as a message board of sorts. Those activities were first detected by human observers in May, and OpenAI disallowed that access.