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ChatGPT rated "unacceptable risk" for teens after parental alerts failed during suicide conversations

OpenAI’s teen safety features for ChatGPT failed an independent audit. After more than 4,000 test prompts, the Common Sense Media Youth AI Safety Institute rated the service an “unacceptable risk” for minors. Conversations about suicide and self-harm on test accounts never triggered a parental alert. The institute wants teenagers locked out until safety can be independently verified.

Read full article about: Microsoft publishes Nobel economist's bearish AI forecast of just 1.5% GDP growth over a decade

Microsoft published a pretty bearish take on AI from Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu. He predicts AI will boost GDP by about 1.5 percent over ten years and replace at most five percent of jobs, far less than some AI labs forecast. He admits the pace of AI development is hard to predict.

The bottleneck, Acemoglu says, is human nature. Companies have to reassign tasks, upskill workers, and restructure before productivity gains kick in, a process that could drag on longer than electrification did. Bigger models won't fix that. What's missing are easy-to-deploy apps that change how things get made, he says.

AI that extends human skills will beat full automation on productivity, he argues, since even 99 percent accuracy often isn't enough once you factor in last-mile problems and real user needs. For Microsoft, that's a convenient thesis. The company can bolt AI onto existing products without betting on large-scale automation. The article ran in Microsoft's eccentric corporate blog "The Humanist Review of AI," where authors sign their pieces by hand.

Read full article about: Insurers brace for millions in claims as AI agents spin out of control

Insurers are bracing for claims worth millions from AI agents that have spun out of control. The Financial Times reports that the personal liability of executives like Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) is now in play, too.

Incidents like the hack of AI platform Hugging Face by OpenAI agents are driving the shift. Tim Rayner, head of underwriting and claims at Verisk, says the buck stops with the CEO. Every company leader must ensure proper oversight, and AI doesn't change that. If OpenAI carries directors and officers (D&O) insurance, it could cover costs from lawsuits against Altman.

Insurance broker Aon has reviewed over 300 AI-related legal cases and flagged risks lurking in cybersecurity, intellectual property, and tech failure policies. But there's no case law to lean on yet. Hiscox CEO Aki Hussain says it's too early to know how U.S. courts will handle AI agent liability, while attorney Aaron Le Marquer of Stewarts expects future lawsuits to follow the playbook of environmental and tobacco litigation.

Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright lawsuit in July and warns of "existential risks to humanity" in its IPO filing.

Read full article about: Most Americans want AI development to slow down or stop entirely, new poll finds

Most Americans want AI development to slow down. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 47 percent want to reduce the pace, and 30 percent want a full stop until safety has been verified. Only five percent want faster development. 86 percent support the independent safety standards currently under debate for AI companies, even if they slow progress. 73 percent worry that AI could eventually threaten humanity's survival. And 74 percent have little or no trust in the leaders of AI companies. "Taken together, these results suggest that the public wants safeguards that do not depend simply on taking company leaders at their word," said Chetan Jaiswal of Quinnipiac University.

Question Result
Will AI do more harm than good in daily life? 53% say yes
Are guardrails for AI systems in the US important? 91% say yes
Is keeping pace with China on AI important? 69% say yes
Opposed to an AI data center in their own community? 72% opposed
More worried about humans misusing AI than about autonomous AI? 52% say yes

The poll surveyed 1,202 US adults from September 24 to 27, with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

Read full article about: Anthropic is quietly becoming America's biggest corporate donor ahead of its mega IPO

Anthropic employees are donating massive amounts of money, and that figure is likely to keep growing, according to The Information, which obtained documents the company shared with potential investors ahead of its planned IPO. Anthropic lets employees donate shares to charities and tops up those donations with additional company shares, with early employees receiving triple their donation's value. Between October 2025 and March 2026 alone, this cost the company more than $660 million. These payouts dilute other investors' shares.

Donations in 2025 totaled $540 million, nearly five times the amounts from Truist Financial ($115 million) and BlackRock ($109 million), the next-largest Fortune 500 donors. After the IPO, total donations could reach the billions if the stock price keeps rising.

According to the company's IPO documents, CEO Dario Amodei and the six co-founders have pledged to give away at least 80 percent of their wealth. Many employees follow Effective Altruism principles and, according to former colleagues, are already discussing in chat groups where the expected millions should go, with common targets including global poverty, AI safety, and animal welfare.

Meta dodges billions in US taxes by calling its AI data centers experiments

Meta classifies its AI data centers as “pilot models” and Nvidia chips as experimental materials to save billions in federal taxes. In 2025 alone, that added up to $3.9 billion. The tax credit dates back to 1981, and even Meta’s own accountants see the strategy as legally risky, the New York Times reports. Zuckerberg himself said in January 2025 that these data centers, now framed as experimental, would “drive our core products and business.”

Read full article about: FTC launches sweeping probe into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs over consumer protection concerns

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic, and other leading AI labs over potential consumer protection violations, according to government sources. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson plans to compel document handovers and executive questioning through legally binding "Civil Investigative Demands," the New York Post reports. The orders should go out within weeks.

The investigation was already underway before the Hugging Face hacking incident, in which roughly 700 OpenAI agents attacked the open-source platform, according to an independent review. AI safety organization METR is also under scrutiny. Just one day before the probe became public, Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Greg Brockman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Elon Musk (xAI) signed a voluntary pledge at the White House committing to independent external audits of their AI models.

Ferguson cautioned that major AI companies shouldn't push for rules only they can meet as a way to box out rivals. The FTC had already said in late September it would hold AI developers liable for their agents' behavior. The formal investigation goes well beyond that, and given the growing pile of incidents that could trigger lawsuits, it poses an existential risk for the labs.

Anthropic says Zhipu's open-weight GLM-5.3 nearly matches Claude Mythos Preview at building exploits

Zhipu’s open-weight model GLM-5.3 writes cyber exploits nearly as well as Claude Mythos Preview, according to Anthropic. Its smaller Flash variant put together a reliable Chrome attack for just $20.40 at Zhipu’s API prices. The model’s safeguards are easy to strip out, and unlocked versions are already circulating. Anthropic has its own reasons to sound the alarm, but the US agency CAISI backs up the findings.