Artificial Intelligence: News, Business, Science

Jun 5, 2026

Florida is the first US state to sue OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman personally. The 83-page complaint accuses the company of marketing ChatGPT as safe while the chatbot delivers dangerous content to minors, facilitates violence, and drives users toward dependency. Attorney General James Uthmeier says OpenAI "put children at great risk" and threatens penalties in the billions. Numerous cases are documented where people were harmed by ChatGPT and similar systems.

The suit treats ChatGPT as a product subject to liability and a "public nuisance," an unusual legal approach that could set a precedent for chatbot regulation. The free version has no real age verification, the complaint says, even though tens of thousands of users are under 13. Data collection starts before users agree to the terms of service. The suit even argues AI use causes cognitive erosion.

The lawsuit doesn't mince words. | Image: Screenshot

The complaint cites internal allegations too: Altman allegedly cut short safety testing for GPT-4o, and OpenAI put just 1 to 2 percent of its computing power toward AI safety instead of the promised 20 percent. OpenAI has not commented.

Comment Source: My Florida Legal

Matthias Bastian

Jun 5, 2026

Short News

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has sharply criticized an internal memo proposing to make users "addicted" to the company's new AI agent Scout. That's "absolutely not a goal," Nadella wrote to about 50 top engineers, according to The Information. AI should empower people and create real value.

Not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense! They may want to go work elsewhere.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft

The memo came from Corporate Vice President Omar Shahine and laid out a three-phase plan from addictive app to agentic platform, as 404 Media first reported. Scout is built on the open-source software OpenClaw and was unveiled at Microsoft's Build conference.

Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw told The Information that Scout should help people get tasks done more effectively and ultimately lead to less screen time. Users should have choice and control over how they interact with the agent. Nadella's rebuke comes as social media platforms face growing criticism for using addictive design patterns to squeeze more usage time out of people.

Comment Source: 404 Media | The Information

Matthias Bastian

Jun 5, 2026

Short News

Microsoft partly trained its new MAI models on unlicensed web data. The technical paper shows Microsoft used Common Crawl, among other sources, as Simon Willison noted. Microsoft had previously claimed the MAI models were trained only on "enterprise grade, clean and commercially licensed data."

Microsoft's data pipeline for AI training: the tech giant also taps the open internet. | Image: Microsoft

Like other AI companies scraping the web, Microsoft is likely relying on fair use. The paper describes the data as a "mixture of publicly available and licensed human-generated data." For web data, Microsoft says it uses "a proprietary crawler that respects the Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt) and related meta-tag and HTML controls, enabling site owners to manage how content on their sites is accessed and used."

That puts the burden of protecting content on site owners, like assuming anyone who doesn't lock their door consents to a break-in. Fair use remains contested, and courts are still sorting it out. In short, Microsoft does what every other AI company does, yet sells its training data as especially "clean." It isn't.

Comment Source: Microsoft

Matthias Bastian

Jun 5, 2026

Short News

The US National Security Agency is using Anthropic's Mythos AI model for offensive cyber operations, the Financial Times reports. Anthropic has placed about half a dozen engineers directly at the NSA to adapt the model and support its use. Mythos could be used to break into networks in China or Iran. Whether Anthropic's engineers are involved in active operations isn't clear.

The move comes while Anthropic is still in a legal fight with the Pentagon. The Department of Defense classified the company as a "supply chain risk" and tried to cut it from contracts because Anthropic wanted to restrict the use of its Claude models for mass surveillance and autonomous drones. The NSA delivery was exempt from that ban. Anthropic likely doesn't see a conflict with its own values: in its demands to the Pentagon, the company always pointed to protecting US citizens from AI threats.

Anthropic recently expanded access to Mythos to 150 organizations across 15 countries. President Trump also signed an executive order for voluntary safety testing of new AI models, which Anthropic viewed favorably.

Comment Source: Financial Times

Matthias Bastian

Jun 5, 2026

AI in practice

Anthropic says Claude now writes over 90% of its code and wants the world to have an AI pause button

Matthias Bastian

Jun 4, 2026

Short News

Bot traffic has overtaken human traffic on the internet, according to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. Prince says he didn't expect this tipping point until late 2027, but rapid growth in automated traffic from AI agents moved the timeline up fast. The shift happened over the past few months. The data is still rough, but the trend is unmistakable, Prince adds.

Cloudflare Radar shows bots now account for 57.4 percent of HTTP requests worldwide, versus 42.6 percent from humans. | Image: Cloudflare

Prince notes that bot, crawler, and agent all mean the same thing; the label just depends on whether you see them as good or bad. As for the future of the web, "clearly it's going to be pay to crawl," he writes.

Cloudflare launched a platform last summer that lets site owners gate AI crawlers and charge for access, but it hasn't gained traction. Prince says his company is still working on "protocols and infrastructure to support the volume it'll require." Meanwhile, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode have racked up billions of users.

Comment Source: Prince via X

Matthias Bastian

Jun 4, 2026

AI in practice

ChatGPT now saves narrative dossiers about you sorted by work, hobbies, and travel preferences

Matthias Bastian

Jun 4, 2026

Short News

AI budgets are growing, but returns aren't keeping up. A Bain & Company survey of 951 companies found almost 40 percent achieved less than 10 percent in AI cost savings, even though the most common target was 11 to 20 percent. Still, 14 percent saved more than 21 percent, and 43 percent cleared 10 percent. Nine out of ten companies plan to increase their AI investments anyway, especially in AI agents.

Nearly 40 percent of companies that measured AI cost savings landed below 10 percent, even though most had targeted 11 to 20 percent. | via Bain

One reason savings are lagging is too much human involvement, according to the study. Only 7 percent run fully autonomous AI agents, even though their business cases assume that level of automation. 32 percent loop in humans only when needed, while the most common setup (38 percent) still requires human approval.

Data access remains the biggest hurdle, cited by 41 percent. Bain says companies should treat it as a management issue, not an IT task, and rethink processes before rolling out AI.

Comment Source: Bain

Matthias Bastian

Jun 4, 2026

AI in practice

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sees "proactive AI" as the next big phase after chatbots and agents

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman outlines the next phase of AI products: a “proactive AI” that runs constantly in the background and acts on its own instead of waiting for user prompts. Companies are also wrestling with spiraling AI costs and a basic problem: most employees simply don’t know what to ask AI. Altman’s promise: “We can help people get more value for less spend.”

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Matthias Bastian

Jun 4, 2026

Short News

In an open letter, top tech executives and scientists are urging the US government to make screening of synthetic DNA orders a legal requirement. Signatories include Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind), Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI), and Nobel laureates David Baker and Martin Hellman.

Scientists have known for more than 20 years that viruses can be reconstructed from synthetic DNA. AI systems now outperform PhD-level virologists on questions about lab procedures, raising the risk of misuse. Many providers already screen orders voluntarily, but the signatories want uniform rules for all manufacturers, including recordkeeping requirements for traceability.

AI systems are improving rapidly, and alongside incredible benefits to science and medicine, there is a real possibility that the knowledge barriers which have historically prevented bad actors from obtaining biological weapons will meaningfully erode.
Open letter

The signatories stress that screening is one of the most effective and least restrictive biosecurity measures available. Congress should act this session, the letter states, adding that "this is a rare moment of agreement across stakeholders that are often at odds."

Comment Source: Open Letter