The Download: AI doomers, whistleblowing agents, and de-aged livers

AI industry leaders Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis have converged on the position that the latest generation of large language models are not safe, according to MIT Technology Review, which notes OpenAI and Anthropic are pursuing trillion-dollar IPOs while calling for a slowdown. Separately, a Google DeepMind experiment found that AI agents solving math problems split into rival factions and blew the whistle when some cheated, a first-time observation with implications for alignment researchers. MIT Technology Review also reported that donated livers kept on machine perfusion systems appear to become biologically younger at the molecular level.

The Download: AI doomers, whistleblowing agents, and de-aged livers Plus: Trump has called AI safety fears a “hoax” and rejected more safeguards. This is today's edition of The Download https://forms.technologyreview.com/newsletters/briefing-the-download/? ga=2.179569122.736533416.1649661040-405833893.1649413289 , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The AI industry has taken a doomer turn. What now? AI chiefs Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis are suddenly all in agreement: the latest generation of LLMs aren’t safe and everyone needs to figure out what to do about it. It’s easy to be cynical. With trillion-dollar IPOs in their sights, OpenAI and Anthropic need to reassure investors that they’re the grown-ups in the room while at the same time hinting at the power of the monsters they have created and intend to tame. Calling for a slowdown does both. Still, the vibe at the top of these firms really does appear to have shifted. But what does a slowdown actually mean, and how much should we trust the companies calling for one? Read the full story about what could come next https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/14/1144048/the-ai-industry-has-taken-a-doomer-turn-what-now/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C . —Will Douglas Heaven This article is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday. Roundtables: could AI really kill us all? AI extinction fears have gone from a fringe idea to a serious concern among people working at the world’s leading AI labs. But how credible are those fears, and what should we make of the warnings? Today, MIT Technology Review executive editor Niall Firth, senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and AI reporter Grace Huckins will unpack the debate in a subscriber-only Roundtable. They’ll look at where AI extinction fears come from, whether they hold any water and what we should do if they do. Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for exclusive access to all our Roundtables. AI agents blew the whistle on their cheating colleagues A group of AI agents asked to solve a series of math problems split into rival factions—when some cheated, others tried to stop them. That whistleblowing behavior, seen for the first time in a recent experiment run by Google DeepMind, could have implications for alignment researchers trying to keep swarms of autonomous AI agents in line. The experiment offers a glimpse of how AI agents might police one another. But it also shows how quickly things can go off the rails when they’re left to interact on their own. Find out what happens when AI agents start enforcing their own rules https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/14/1144037/ai-agents-blew-whistle-o-cheating-colleagues/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C . —Amit Katwala Donated livers can be made biologically younger Once an organ is removed from a donor’s body, the clock starts ticking. Surgeons usually flush it with a preservative solution, bag it and put it on ice, where it immediately starts to degrade. The team has a matter of hours to get it into a recipient’s body. But there’s another option: machines that pump donated organs with nutrients and remove waste products, essentially giving them a chance to be back in a body. Now, scientists have found that livers kept on these systems seem to get younger, at least at a molecular level. The finding could help explain why organs kept on these machines tend to do better after transplantation. It could also lead to new ways to test the health of donated organs and potentially repair ones that might otherwise be discarded. Here’s what scientists discovered about making donated livers biologically younger https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/14/1144010/donated-livers-can-be-made-biologically-younger/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C . —Jessica Hamzelou The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Trump has called AI safety fears a “hoax” and rejected more safeguards He says stronger guardrails could undermine America’s AI advantage. NBC https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-rejects-ai-guardrails-rcna597700 + Trump has united against AI doomerism with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Axios https://www.axios.com/2026/09/14/trump-jensen-huang-nvidia-ai-all-in-summit + Anthropic’s co-founder says AI kill switches may need to be mandatory. BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqgk5e2j0gg8o + Bill Gates says we’ve passed AI’s risk thresholds. MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/26/1142946/bill-gates-ai-danger-threshold/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C 2 OpenAI contractors are reading people’s ChatGPT chats And you can bet the vast majority of its 900 million users haven’t got a clue. 404 Media https://www.404media.co/inside-project-lily-the-humans-reading-your-chatgpt-chats/ + LLMs could supercharge mass surveillance. MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1135919/ai-surveillance-privacy-llms-bulk-data/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C 3 The US military has confirmed it has weapons in orbit It’s the first time the Pentagon has disclosed this. Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/for-the-first-time-the-us-military-confirms-it-has-deployed-weapons-in-orbit/ + Officials have not disclosed what the weapons are. BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck790xg41ygro 4 A new brain implant can translate speech and gestures at the same time The system converts brain activity into words and avatar movements. Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02895-6 + It helps people with paralysis communicate more naturally. New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589210-brain-implant-lets-people-with-paralysis-speak-and-gesture-at-the-same-time/?utm campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm content=home&utm medium=RSS&utm source=NSNS $ + Eventually, they could control robots or exoskeletons. Economist https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/14/a-new-device-helps-severely-paralysed-patients-communicate $ + China has approved the first invasive BCI. MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/01/1138133/china-world-first-brain-chip/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C 5 New York has seized a dozen celebrity deepfake websites It's the biggest-ever legal action against harmful deepfake sites. CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/14/us/video/manhattan-da-seizes-deepfake-websites-digvid-vrtc + Deepfakes have targeted at least 138 women MEPs. Wired https://www.wired.com/story/sexually-explicit-deepfake-sites-target-100-plus-politicians-in-europe/ $ 6 US environmental regulators are scrapping limits on power plant emissions The move could lead to dirtier power amid surging AI demand. Verge https://www.theverge.com/news/995051/epa-power-plant-climate-pollution-rollback-ai-data-centers + Trump’s EPA says the rollback will save hundreds of billions. Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/epa-to-power-plants-flood-the-air-with-as-much-coal-and-oil-smog-as-you-like-2000811574 + New technology is changing nuclear power. MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/12/1129797/next-generation-nuclear-reactors-power-energy/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C 7 The EU plans to restrict social media and AI chatbots for kids Under-15s would require parental supervision. Politico https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-to-propose-new-legislation-on-minors-protection-on-thursday/ + The rules would also cover video platforms and games. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/eu-is-set-propose-ban-social-media-ai-chatbots-under-15s-2026-09-14/ $ 8 Chinese researchers have mapped a path to the “last AI built by humans” Their five-stage plan aims for genuine recursive self-improvement. SCMP https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3367486/chinese-researchers-chart-five-stage-path-toward-last-ai-built-humans?utm source=feedly feed + But it might take a while to get there. MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/18/1142188/ai-recursive-self-improvement/?utm source=the download&utm medium=email&utm campaign=the download.unpaid.engagement&utm term= %7CSUBCLASS%7C &utm content= %7CDATE:m-d-Y%7C 9 The real AI economy is being built by ordinary people Workers are using cheap AI to expand what they can do. Rest of World https://restofworld.org/2026/global-workers-using-ai-at-work/?utm source=feedly&utm medium=rss&utm campaign=feeds 10 Two strange new forms of ice could exist inside Uranus and Neptune They could help explain the planets’ magnetic fields. New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589025-two-bizarre-new-forms-of-ice-discovered-that-could-exist-deep-inside-planets/?utm campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm content=home&utm medium=RSS&utm source=NSNS $ Quote of the day “The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART High IQ PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades ” —President Trump proclaims in a social media post https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-the-only-ai-guardrails-the-u-s-needs-is-him-as-president that he’s the only protection that the US needs from AI. One more thing How creativity became the reigning value of our time —Bryan Gardiner Americans don’t agree on much these days, but there remains at least one quintessentially modern value we can all still get behind: creativity. We teach it, measure it, envy it and endlessly worry about its death. Given how much we obsess over it, creativity can feel like something that has always existed. But the concept is surprisingly young. The first known written use of the word didn’t occur until 1875, and before about 1950 there were “approximately zero” articles, books, or essays dealing explicitly with the subject. In his book The Cult of Creativity , Samuel Franklin explores how creativity became an unimpeachable value and why tech leaders have embraced it so enthusiastically. I spoke to him about why we’re so fascinated by creativity, how Silicon Valley became the supposed epicenter of it, and how AI might reshape our relationship with it. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. Got any ideas? Drop me a line . + It took five days and 19,000 marbles to build this astonishing marble run https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bSxuIIozb8 . + Zero the Border Collie turns into a whole zoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISYbX5SpuX0 with these adorable animal masks. + The Grainydays YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@grainydaysss presents beautifully shot adventures in film photography. + Scientists have created an interactive map of underground fungi networks https://a-hidden-infrastructure.spun.earth/story/mycorrhizal-infrastructure-map long enough to reach the sun a billion times. Deep Dive The Download The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat Plus: OpenAI has paused some model work over safety concerns. The Download: Google’s AI shake-up and Meta’s rogue model Plus: Meta has become the latest firm to say its AI hacked another company. The Download: the next big thing in LLMs and how AI academic research is shifting Plus: Nvidia has secured $500 billion from Wall Street for AI infrastructure. The Download: inside OpenAI’s Hugging Face hack, and a new EV takes on the US Plus: Meta will pay up to $18 billion to settle a landmark child-safety case. Stay connected Get the latest updates from MIT Technology Review Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.