A secret AI framework won’t work

The White House's finalized AI framework, established under June's executive order, has united safety advocates and regulation skeptics in opposition due to its vague definitions, exemption of open-weight models, and secretive nature. The framework applies to models with 'state-of-the-art capabilities and national security risks' but lacks clear definitions, and the White House has declined to publish it, drawing criticism from Neil Chilson of the Abundance Institute and Brad Carson of Americans for Responsible Innovation. The Foundation for American Innovation has filed FOIA requests, and Democratic senators have demanded access to the document.

A secret AI framework won’t work Transformer Weekly: Demis steps back at DeepMind, OpenAI agents coordinated on hacking, and Anthropic gets a new chief of global affairs Welcome to Transformer, your weekly briefing of what matters in AI. If you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to subscribe and receive future editions. NEED TO KNOW Demis Hassabis moved to a new role as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet . OpenAI revealed more details on how its agents coordinated with each other and took over internal infrastructure weeks before the Hugging Face hack. Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar joined Anthropic as its first chief global affairs officer. But first… THE BIG STORY The White House AI framework has done the impossible: united both sides of the AI regulation debate against it. The framework, finalized last week under June’s executive order, was meant to establish how the “voluntary” regime for testing AI models before release would work. Instead, it has managed to alienate safety advocates and regulation skeptics alike. Based on what we know, the framework is seriously flawed. According to Axios , it applies to models “with state-of-the-art capabilities and national security risks.” But both terms lack a “clear definition,” undermining the whole point of the exercise: replacing the arbitrary process we’ve seen to date with predictable rules of the road. Open-weight models are exempt from testing, despite arguably posing the greatest risks. And the framework handles internal deployment bizarrely: companies are reportedly “encouraged” not to share models with the government until they’re “as close to public release as possible,” but once a model is shared, company employees can no longer use it. As John Schulman pointed out https://x.com/johnschulman2/status/2084894526532129134 , this could push companies to run earlier, less safe versions internally, rather than the safer versions they eventually release. Given all we’ve learned recently about the risks https://www.transformernews.ai/p/what-the-latest-rogue-ai-incidents-should-teach-us of internal deployment, that is exactly backwards. But the biggest issue is that we just don’t know very much at all. The White House has decided not to publish the framework: only a few companies that have signed up or been coerced into doing so have seen it. That secrecy has drawn fire from both camps. “There may be good reason to classify the benchmark it uses to test those models. It has no good reason to hide how the program works,” the Abundance Institute’s Neil Chilson said, arguing that this is “no way for our democracy to govern the most important technology of our lifetimes.” Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, called the move a “dangerous mistake” that “threatens public accountability.” He added: “A rulebook can only hold AI companies in check if people outside those companies know what the rules are.” Both are right. AI is too important to regulate behind closed doors, especially given the government lacks much of the necessary expertise. The framework could almost certainly be improved if scrutinized by outside experts — who could also help check it’s actually being followed. And beyond the instrumental benefits, there’s the principle: in a democracy, the rules are public. The immediate fix is for the White House to publish the framework — or be forced to. The Foundation for American Innovation has submitted https://x.com/timhwang/status/2085045596931440859 FOIA requests to drag it into the light, while a group of Democratic senators has demanded https://insideaipolicy.com/sites/insideaipolicy.com/files/documents/2026/aug/ai08042026.pdf access. But publication alone is not a solution. As Carnegie Endowment fellow Anton Leicht wrote this week https://writing.antonleicht.me/p/locked-down?utm source=post-email-title&publication id=3834218&post id=209885500&utm campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1pg6hh&triedRedirect=true&utm medium=email , as long as regulatory power over AI lives in the White House, secrecy will be the default. The only long-term solution is for Congress to do its job and bring AI governance under legislative control. — Shakeel Hashim ALSO NOTABLE Rep. Greg Casar , alongside Reps. Valerie Foushee and Sara Jacobs, yesterday introduced the AI Tax and Work Protection Act https://www.scribd.com/document/1070628564/AI-Tax-and-Work-Protection-Act , designed to redistribute the financial benefits of the AI boom to the working class by creating construction, child care and elder care jobs. The bill would impose a tax on either tokens or revenue, whichever is higher, to be paid by either a model developer or, in the case of open-weight models, the company deploying them. It fits with the broad populist messaging coming from the left, such as Alex Bores’ UBI-style “AI dividend,” or Sen. Sanders’ proposal for an AI sovereign wealth fund. AI-specific taxation schemes might not actually be as effective as broader consumption or income taxes https://writing.antonleicht.me/p/betting-on-humans , but that’s beside the point. This is a messaging bill, not something anyone thinks will pass this Congress introducing it during recess is enough to tell you that . But as far as messaging bills go, it’s an important one: Casar chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes both Foushee and Jacobs, and where he goes, so do other members of Congress’s left wing. Casar is testing a progressive message on AI, not just for the 2026 elections, but for 2028. “The number one, broad concern from voters with AI is: ‘Is this going to devastate my economic future or my kids’ economic future?’” Casar told Transformer on the call announcing the policy. “Democrats don’t have a policy plan for dealing with this, and we want to change that today. Here is the clear plan to make sure that if unemployment rises and AI starts replacing a large number of jobs … to make sure that Americans are still at work.” — Veronica Irwin THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER — Plz Don’t Kill Us: Inside AI safety’s influencer bootcamp https://www.transformernews.ai/p/inside-ai-safety-influencer-bootcamp-plz-dont-kill-us Celia Ford looks at whether TikTokers can make existential risk mainstream— What the latest rogue AI incidents should teach us https://www.transformernews.ai/p/what-the-latest-rogue-ai-incidents-should-teach-us Shakeel Hashim argues that we need better AI testing practices — and to solve alignment before training more powerful systems THE DISCOURSE Rep. Greg Casar wants https://x.com/cdiersing/status/2084036934351897081?s=12 to ban superintelligence: “AI safety regulation is one of the most important issues the entire country is facing … It’s an emergency, and we need to act like it.” Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2084276277171646655?s=20 : “The disclosure that an OpenAI model ‘escaped’ its containment should scare the hell out of everyone. As should how flippant the company has been about the development. Meanwhile, Trump continues to protect the industry from regulation. A disaster in the making.” The Washington Post’s editorial team pushed https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/02/ai-frontier-models-lack-agency-or-intent-like-computer-viruses/ back against the “escape” framing: “ Incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic have been described in the press as ‘escapes.’ A ‘lab leak’ would be more accurate. An ‘escape’ suggests the existence of an actor that wanted out and schemed past its keepers. A ‘leak’ puts the responsibility on those that failed to prevent it.” Encode’s Nathan Calvin had https://x.com/ NathanCalvin/status/2085205429899182125 a message for catastrophic risk skeptics: “ You may have had a point that it is challenging to work on these problems before the problems become clear — but for better or worse, the problem is now extremely clear ” “Agreeing AI alignment risks are deadly serious and real does not mean you have to support a specific piece of legislation, or have a positive feeling about a specific person or organization … But I am now really really profoundly sure that these risks are serious and real. And I think anyone weighing the evidence objectively should agree.” Ex-OpenAI futurist Joshua Achiam thinks https://x.com/jachiam0/status/2084014806562939322 “people worried about AI cyberweapons are missing the point”: “The problem is that we built the software layer of civilization on spaghetti code loaded with zero days.” OpenAI’s roon is https://x.com/tszzl/status/2084766357531546045 freaking out: “when I freak out over loss of control incidents, it’s not because the limited damage they have caused is anything close to the positive value of the technology … the actual problem is that it’s better and more accurate to think of these things as potentially self-replicating life-like forms that can turn into digital infections under the wrong conditions. and as their intelligence becomes unbounded, so too does the damage they can cause.” Sam Altman , meanwhile, shared https://x.com/sama/status/2083221585792762171 a “cool use case of ChatGPT work”: “connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.” Alex Hirsch ’s pro tip https://x.com/ AlexHirsch/status/2083268104742924484 : “What if you just talked to your children.” POLICY The White House finalized https://politico.com/news/2026/08/03/white-house-finalizes-voluntary-ai-oversight-framework-01022437 a “voluntary” AI oversight framework, but wouldn’t let anyone aside from leadership at frontier AI companies like Anthropic , Google , Meta and OpenAI see it https://www.axios.com/2026/08/04/white-house-ai-framework-under-wraps .It was reported https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/white-houses-ai-guidelines-exempt-u-s-open-models-from-government-review-74924eb8 Tuesday that the Trump administration’s new AI framework exempts https://wsj.com/tech/ai/white-houses-ai-guidelines-exempt-u-s-open-models-from-government-review-74924eb8 open weight models from voluntary pre-release government testing, targeting only closed models.But then Wednesday, the Daily Signal reported https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/05/trump-admin-ai-open-models/?ref=aipolicydaily.org the administration was mulling the inclusion of open weight models.Democratic senators led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Mark Warner demanded https://insideaipolicy.com/ai-daily-news/democratic-senators-demand-visibility-trump-policy-frontier-ai-models visibility into the Trump administration’s approach to assessing frontier AI models. The Trump administration considered https://nytimes.com/2026/08/04/technology/ai-washington-regulation-whiplash.html?smid=bs-share&unlocked article code=1.21A.X6TY.5tmeofQ BMdI sanctioning Chinese open-source AI companies before backing off after Silicon Valley pushback.The White House has reportedly tasked https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/08/white-house-ai-bioengineer-diseases-01027831 senior officials at the Health and Human Services Department and the White House cyber office to investigate the potential for AI to create novel biorisks .Government officials continued to press OpenAI over its agent’s attack on Hugging Face . The New York Times reported on the Trump administration ’s AI data center push, writing that it is driving https://nytimes.com/2026/08/05/climate/data-centers-pollution-trump-ai-energy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&unlocked article code=1.3FA.T2 t.oEqQcit6Goa4 the creation of82 new gas-burning power plants , which would emit as much CO₂ as half of all US passenger vehicles annually.The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously advanced https://politico.com/live-updates/2026/08/05/congress/senate-commerce-votes-to-advance-key-kids-safety-measure-01025249 the Kids Online Safety Act , sending it toward a possible Senate floor vote as soon as Friday.It also passed https://links.washingtonpost.com/s/vb/1q2kMfirKtLT0wLztKvdQingmugxMma8mObjxSeIOj7D9iNfPVej3HJQ105OUR88XyLsXDqGI5jkLwYuFZEOtemFOab6nqqDZHgnEPe-H7CSnqkQFD9bbomklie9KBBwKRv2tsxjowD0suYbOJkf9saEUoAvak1I nVbUA/fZ8180DDovHKJ08sBpF9F9yQ4OTSQTIN/23 the CHATBOT Act, an AI/child-safety bill, but Democrats stripped out its state preemption provisions. Sen. Maria Cantwell called for https://punchbowl.news/article/tech/cantwell-national-security-agencies national security agencies to assess risks of powerful AI systems, after a Senate Commerce Committee AI framework stalled over disagreements she and Anthropic had with the bill. Rep. Jay Obernolte pushed https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/08/06/congress/ai-bills-lead-house-republican-pushes-for-vote-after-breaches-01027139 for a September House Energy and Commerce Committee vote on his and Rep. Lori Trahan’s FRONTIER Act .The chairs of two House committees reportedly requested https://cnbc.com/2026/07/31/us-lawmakers-doordash-chinese-ai-models.html information from DoorDash on its use of Chinese AI models , citing national security concerns. Rep. Celeste Maloy introduced https://maloy.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2113 the ATOMIC Act , directing the Department of Energy to evaluate advanced AI systems for nuclear-related risks. Rep. Ro Khanna introduced https://khanna.house.gov/media/press-releases/release-rep-khanna-introduces-data-center-bill-rights a Data Center Bill of Rights to give communities “greater control over the construction and operation of AI data centers.”Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed https://x.com/bradj TX/status/2084324383108022557 the PUC to audit all data center projects seeking to build in Texas, pausing approvals until the audits are complete.US states are moving to repeal https://theinformation.com/newsletters/ai-infrastructure/exclusive-data-center-costs-set-rise-u-s-states-move-repeal-tax-breaks?rc=rqdn2z data center sales tax breaks , potentially adding 7% or more to equipment costs.A federal judge denied https://nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/judge-denies-request-elon-musks-xai-block-mn-nudification-ban-rcna589993 xAI ’s request to block Minnesota ’s first-in-the-nation nudification ban from taking effect.Michigan congressional candidate Will Lawrence , who won his primary this week, is making https://x.com/wsteaks/status/2085079973690212596?s=12 opposition to data centers core to his general election platform.The FBI reportedly wants https://reason.com/2026/07/28/minority-report-fbi-seeks-ai-for-political-watch-list/ to use predictive AI tools for its terrorist watch list. Reuters reported https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-administration-drafting-ban-chinese-data-center-devices-sources-say-2026-08-04/ the White House was drafting a ban on Chinese optical transceivers used in US data centers. Bloomberg reported that China was growing increasingly concerned https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/china-is-getting-more-anxious-about-mythos-before-trump-meets-xi about Anthropic’s Mythos AI model being used as an offensive weapon ahead of a planned Xi-Trump summit. China tightened https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/china-hits-back-at-us-with-tighter-drone-export-curbs-sanctions drone export controls and sanctioned US entities in retaliation for bans on Chinese robots, power inverters, and other technologies. Samsung and SK Hynix are reportedly evaluating https://www.reuters.com/world/china/samsung-sk-hynix-test-chinese-chip-tools-hedge-against-us-risks-2026-08-05/?taid=6a72a048fbc22200014f3789 Chinese chipmaking tools as a “hedge” against US export controls.Some think this is just posturing https://x.com/chrisrmcguire/status/2084844874512110029?s=12 , however. US data-labeling startups supplying OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly selling https://forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/08/05/silicon-valleys-other-china-problem-its-training-their-ai AI training datasets to Chinese companies, too.The EU has officially started enforcing https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai its AI Act . South Korea planned https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-30/korea-plans-14-billion-for-wealth-fund-s-ai-bets-after-rout to inject $13.9b into its sovereign wealth fund for AI, data centers and infrastructure investments. Australia ’s federal government pledged https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/australia-doubles-down-on-data-centers-using-renewable-power to pass laws requiring that new data centers use renewable energy. INFLUENCE OpenAI’s ChatGPT accounted https://cnbc.com/2026/08/03/openai-chatgpt-anthropic-congress-house-ai-spending.html for 88% of money spent by offices in the House of Representatives on AI software in the past year, according to CNBC . Public First Action , the c4 arm of AI safety group Public First, removed https://x.com/dlippman/status/2085337771065868386 Rep. Max Miller ’s name from its endorsed Republicans list amid domestic abuse allegations.Pro-innovation super PAC Leading the Future ’s policy wing Build American AI endorsed https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/08/pro-ai-industry-group-adds-five-house-democrats-to-its-slate-01022863 five more House Democrats , bringing its total midterm endorsements to 43. Reps. Tom Suozzi , Joyce Beatty , Emilia Sykes , Eric Sorensen and Herb Conaway are the new endorsements. A new AEI report claimed https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2026/07/30/counting-down-the-ai-race-01018068 China could close the compute gap in 24 to 36 months . California lawmakers went https://x.com/TylerKatzen/status/2084649527081046374 to a Napa resort for a tech policy summit featuring Anthropic , Meta and Amazon .A growing “New Luddite” movement is fueling https://politico.com/news/magazine/2026/08/02/the-new-luddites-01017824 political opposition to data centers, led by figures like Tennessee state Rep . Justin Pearson .A new Politico poll found that data center companies are losing https://politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2026/08/04/data-center-builders-are-losing-the-messaging-war-01023659 a public opinion battle, with nearly 60 % of Americans now believing data centers raise electricity bills. The AI Futures Project proposed https://blog.aifutures.org/p/how-to-pace-the-us-frontier four domestic regulatory options to slow US frontier AI development .The Institute for Progress released https://ifp.org/preparing-for-ai-research-automation 23 “low-regret” policy recommendations for managing risks from automated AI R&D .The Business Software Alliance argued https://techpost.bsa.org/2026/08/05/supporting-choice-in-the-ai-model-ecosystem in a blog post that policy should support open-weight AI models alongside proprietary ones, tying responsibility to conduct rather than model type.The World Bank urged https://scmp.com/news/world/article/3362972/world-bank-urges-developing-countries-embrace-ai-lifeline-or-be-left-behind developing countries to adopt lower-cost AI tools or risk being left behind economically. INDUSTRY Google/DeepMind Demis Hassabis moved https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2085034334914769203 to a new role as chair of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet , which he says will allow him to “focus on long-term strategy, and accelerating scientific breakthroughs, including leaning into my work at Isomorphic to help cure disease.” Koray Kavukcuoglu is stepping up https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/2085033425736745093 as senior vice president of GDM. Jeff Dean , Sanjay Ghemawat , Oriol Vinyals , and Quoc Le , four superstar Google researchers, left https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/technology/google-researchers-ai-startup.html to start Discovery Loop , a company that aims to automate the scientific method.As Wired put it https://www.wired.com/story/jeff-dean-google-discovery-loop-startup/ , Dean and Ghemawat leaving is “like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ditching the Rolling Stones to start a new band.” Joshua Achiam tweeted https://x.com/jachiam0/status/2085096601119232157 :“I think a fair few folks are threatening this as bearish for GDM and that is imho a misread … Early AI/AGI/ASI leads will, over the next year, begin leaving what look like the most important leadership posts to go place their bets on what they think the most important thing will be.” SemiAnalysis , however, said that the moves confirm https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/gemini-is-cooked-but-gcp-is-cooking “DeepMind is no longer a frontier lab.” Parent company Alphabet is looking https://www.reuters.com/business/alphabet-seeks-up-25-billion-its-latest-bond-sale-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-08-06/ to raise between $20b and $25b in bonds to fund spending on AI.Google is discussing https://businessinsider.com/google-mechanize-deal-talent-tech-ai-coding-2026-8 a potential $1.5b+ deal with Mechanize , which would involve striking a non-exclusive licensing agreement with the startup and hiring some of its staff.It disabled https://nytimes.com/2026/08/02/technology/google-earth-ai-satellite-images.html?emc=edit nn 20260806&nl=the-morning&segment id=224274 a new Google Earth tool that allowed users to create deepfake satellite images by responding to the prompt: “type whatever you want to see.” OpenAI OpenAI found https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-finds-evidence-other-ai-agents-escaped-containment-it-widens-hacking-2026-07-31/ more evidence of agents going rogue, Reuters reported.At the Black Hat security conference this week, OpenAI said https://x.com/ShakeelHashim/status/2085478818173591640 that several weeks before the Hugging Face attack, it discovered an “agent takeover” of some of its internal infrastructure, with agents creating a messageboard to talk to each other.It kept training and evaluating the models anyway. It called https://openai.com/index/apple-is-getting-this-wrong/ Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit “careless, aggressive and oddly personal,” and published iMessage and email screenshots it argues contradict several of Apple’s claims.It previewed https://theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-openai-previews-astra-ai-model-dc?rc=rqdn2z its new model family, “Astra,” to policymakers and regulators in DC.It’s trained to be good at having “multiple agents work together over a long period of time to solve particularly hard problems,” The Information reported. It partnered https://openai.com/index/openai-and-apa-partner-to-advance-responsible-ai with the American Psychological Association to work on designing AI that’s safer for young people and figuring out how AI can be used to help connect people to mental health resources.It agreed to pay https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-04/doj-says-openai-settles-worker-discrimination-allegations $3.2m to resolve allegations that OpenAI had been discriminating against US workers in favor of temporary visa holders. Amazon completed https://www.ft.com/content/8ae9e6e4-a53c-44da-8e7d-c9d81f0df4b9?sharetype=gift&syn-25a6b1a6=1&token=97afb22a-6c8d-4c56-86e5-ba00a79b87da its $50b investment in OpenAI.The company’s forthcoming smart speaker will reportedly be https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/what-is-openai-s-device-a-doughnut-shaped-speaker-that-costs-over-300 donut-shaped, hockey puck-sized and cost between $300 and $400 when it launches next year. Meta Muse Spark 1.1 hacked https://theinformation.com/articles/meta-ai-model-hacked-another-company-cybersecurity-testing?rc=rqdn2z into another company during cybersecurity testing because its sandbox was reportedly set up incorrectly by a third-party evaluator. Irregular, the evaluator, had also worked with Anthropic . A spokesperson told The Information that Muse Spark 1.1’s security breach involved “the exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week.” Meta launched https://cnbc.com/2026/08/05/meta-debuts-muse-code-to-take-on-anthropic-and-openai-.html Muse Code , its first coding agent. Anthropic Anthropic confirmed https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-build-in-house-chip-design-team-claude-hire-engineers-2026-08-05/?utm source=Sailthru&utm medium=Newsletter&utm campaign=Reuters-AI&utm term=080526&lctg=68c89122dbdba028e10d19c3&user email=babc477313717b9b5e4e48ab57e08921645ef274be917b4bf48dc07d5df19dbf it’s hiring engineers to design custom chips in-house .It signed https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-04/anthropic-inks-10-billion-computing-deal-with-new-cloud-startup a $10b compute deal with Volta Infra Holdings , a new Nvidia-backed AI infrastructure startup.It reduced https://anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology-safeguards biology-related refusals in Fable 5 by around 85% while maintaining blocks on dual-use queries.It’s hiring https://theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/976479/anthropic-is-hiring-an-insider-risk-investigator an “Insider Risk Investigator” to conduct investigations and monitor threats targeting employees. Other Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 reportedly alsoduring cybersecurity testing. escaped https://www.wired.com/story/moonshot-kimi-k3-ai-model-escape-sandbox/ onto the internet Nvidia is reportedly responding https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-weighs-radical-idea-less-rubin-ultra-chip-memory?rc=rqdn2z to memory shortages by using less of it in its new line of Rubin Ultra chips.Meanwhile, SK Hynix is planning https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-07/sk-hynix-to-spend-38-billion-on-chip-factory-expansion-in-korea a $38b memory chip fab expansion in South Korea. New disclosures revealed https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/microsoft-s-ai-sales-mostly-come-from-openai-disclosures-show that Microsoft apparently gets most of its AI revenue — $24.1b in the last fiscal year — from OpenAI . SpaceX committed https://businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-will-only-buy-from-nvidia-2026-8 to buying GPUs exclusively from Nvidia . Amazon became https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/amazon-joins-elite-list-of-stocks-to-top-3-trillion-in-value the fifth company to surpass $3t in market value . Alibaba released https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/alibaba-drops-another-china-ai-model-with-breakthrough-performance Qwen3.8-Max , a giant 2.4t-parameter model that outperformed Kimi K3 on several benchmarks.The company reportedly plans to charge large users of its next Qwen model a revenue share google.com/url?q=https://reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/alibaba-plans-charge-big-users-its-next-open-source-ai-model-sources-say-2026-08-07&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1786105091616333&usg=AOvVaw3aWA3axTW9j5Tzt41r88O , mimicking Moonshot’s charging approach with Kimi. DeepSeek also released https://pandaily.com/deepseek-v4-flash-official-open-source-jul2026 and open-sourced its new model, DeepSeek-V4-Flash , which nearly matches Opus 4.8 in capabilities at a tiny fraction of the cost.But it’s planning https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/deepseek-plans-significant-price-increase-for-its-ai-services a steep price increase, and told users to plan accordingly. DeepSeek also resumed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/deepseek-resumes-8-billion-round-with-monolith-in-the-running its $8b funding round — paused last month after comments from its CEO were leaked — which would value the company at $74b.Meanwhile, The Information reported that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has ruled out https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedances-founder-rules-distillation-ai-models?rc=rqdn2z distilling US models even if it means falling behind domestic rivals, citing the US’s history of security concerns over TikTok.It’s reportedly training https://ft.com/content/9b8383b1-a28d-4940-8c4e-2f0cd21556ef?syn-25a6b1a6=1 a 10t-parameter AI model rivaling Anthropic’s Mythos. Thinking Machines outlined https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/a-safe-path-to-open-weights/ a staged release plan it says offers a “safe path to open-weight models.” Stripe is reportedly in exclusive talks https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-stripe-exclusive-talks-buy-startup-openrouter-around-10-billion?rc=rqdn2z to acquire OpenRouter, which helps developers access hundreds of different AI models, for $10b . Jamie Dimon , CEO of JPMorgan, brought https://x.com/mtslive/status/2085076059222167991?s=12 40 companies into the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure , a new initiative that aims to address AI risks across critical infrastructure sectors like energy, water, and airlines. MOVES Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar joined https://x.com/mtslive/status/2084698078196687078?s=12 Anthropic as its first chief global affairs officer.He’ll be responsible for mediating https://reuters.com/world/anthropic-names-global-affairs-chief-tackle-ai-policy-trump-tensions-persist-2026-08-04 Anthropic’s strained relationship with the Trump administration. Jacob Tsimerman joined OpenAI right after winning the Fields Medal.He told https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-jacob-tsimerman-fields-medal-ai-safety-391d0f79 the Wall Street Journal: “In a few years, AI systems will be robustly superhuman at the act of doing mathematics … The social consequence of that, how we choose to react, what you feel about it — those are much harder questions.” Dan Wattendorf joined https://x.com/woj zaremba/status/2083256852255736256?s=12 OpenAI Foundation as its new head of bio-resilience. Naomi Bashkansky left https://x.com/naomibashkansky/status/2085043839589617918?s=12 OpenAI to join Conduit, a neurotech startup “building telepathy.” Halvar Flake joined https://x.com/halvarflake/status/2084606631627653200 OpenAI to work on “better cyber.” Nikita Bier stepped down https://x.com/nikitabier/status/2085105586966827343 as X ’s head of product. Nando de Freitas left https://x.com/NandoDF/status/2083551029774225568 Microsoft AI. RESEARCH The UK’s AISI reported https://aisi.gov.uk/blog/incident-report-unsanctioned-agent-behaviour-during-cyber-testing that during tests Claude Mythos 5 — which was given internet access as part of the cyber evaluation — tried to trick real humans into approving and running malware in real open-source software.AISI warned that “this incident should be interpreted with caution and nuance,” but said that “the activity undertaken by the agent show s signs of novel, potentially deceptive behaviours, and were to an extent and severity we did not anticipate.” OpenAI researchers announced https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics that Astra , an internal version of its next major model, solved or made “substantial progress” on 10 open problems in math and theoretical computer science. Jared Duker Lichtman , a math professor at Stanford, tweeted https://x.com/jdlichtman/status/2083656496605532172 :“To be clear, the OpenAI result is far from the ‘most important day in the history of mathematics’ or similarly hyperbolic statements. However, it is concrete evidence that the rate of progress is steep, and we may not be so far away from such a day.” Another mathematician shared https://x.com/plumnotes/status/2083815053305024940 :“My experience with AI for math is that when it’s a problem not in my field i’m like, ‘holy shit math is so cooked,’ and when it’s a problem in my field i’m like, ‘lmao an AI mogged dan’ dan is the only one who seriously tried the problem in the last decade .” Researchers at Transluce reported https://transluce.org/user-awareness that frontier models reason more, answer less confidently, and are less suspicious of potentially harmful requests when the user is a notable figure in AI , especially in AI safety. This effect was strongest when models believed they were in the presence of Anthropic’s Amanda Askell or Redwood Research’s Ryan Greenblatt. RAND researchers proposed https://rand.org/pubs/research reports/RRA4827-1.html a strategy for building “ secure inference data centers ,” which would have built-in safeguards to protect model weights from nation-state adversaries. An Interpol survey found https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-04/ai-now-fuels-over-half-of-africa-s-cybercrime-study-finds?srnd=phx-technology that AI is behind over half of cybercrime in Africa. Agatha Duzan and Asa Cooper Stickland introduced https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.04735 a benchmark that compares chain-of-thought monitorability in “explicit-influence” settings where the model is told to hide something, versus “implicit-influence” settings, where something about the task biases the model’s behavior another way. BEST OF THE REST Jasmine Sun reported https://open.substack.com/pub/jasmine/p/no-data-centers-in-my-backyard?r=1pg6hh on grassroots anti-data-center activism across Wisconsin and Michigan, finding “AI populism is more about populism than about AI.” The Information profiled https://theinformation.com/articles/dario-amodei-spread-anthropics-religion-stirred-silicon-valley?rc=rqdn2z Dario Amodei as a “religious leader” CEO whose unorthodox, safety-first leadership style has driven Anthropic to overtake OpenAI in revenue, but angered investors and rivals ahead of its planned IPO. Platformer ’s Ella Markianos, not content with getting Claude to try to do her job, decided to see if Fable could replace her boss https://platformer.news/replacing-casey-with-claude , Casey Newton.YouTuber Hank Green apologized https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/01/youtuber-hank-green-says-his-ai-usage-is-not-healthy for AI overuse after an intense online backlash.An essay in the New Atlantis argues https://thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-tech-trad-alliance-r-i-p that the Trump-era coalition between tech and social conservatives has crumbled as AI accelerationism has sidelined social conservative priorities.An OpenAI “Summer Club” trip for influencers backfired https://theverge.com/tech/975173/openai-influencers-brand-trip-ai-backlash-marketing as people piled on with snarky comments and critical reaction videos, according to The Verge . Futurism counted up data center protest arrests in 2026, finding at least 37 demonstrators from diverse backgrounds were picked up.Brands are flooding https://theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/973098/reddit-ai-search-seo-marketing-brands-spam?view token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImxFdUx0VXBLR1MiLCJwIjoiL2FpLWFydGlmaWNpYWwtaW50ZWxsaWdlbmNlLzk3MzA5OC9yZWRkaXQtYWktc2VhcmNoLXNlby1tYXJrZXRpbmctYnJhbmRzLXNwYW0iLCJleHAiOjE3ODYyNzcxNDQsImlhdCI6MTc4NTg0NTE0NH0.5xvH6sSk5P0dplXamVR86M7YGKK3aSa-PeL8MZI3TL0 Reddit with covert promo content to leverage the platform’s place as the most cited domain in AI search.A poll by The Argument found https://theargumentmag.com/p/chat-whats-the-publics-favorite-ai?hide intro popup=true that OpenAI has better name recognition and favorability ratings than Anthropic. MEME OF THE WEEK Source: Meryem Arik Thanks for reading. If you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to subscribe and receive future editions. Have a great weekend.