The executive order debacle is bad news for AI

President Trump abruptly canceled a planned executive order that would have established voluntary pre-deployment safety evaluations for frontier AI models, hours before the scheduled signing ceremony. The decision followed last-minute lobbying from tech executives including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and David Sacks, exposing deep divisions within the administration over AI regulation. The chaos undermines the White House's ability to provide the regulatory stability that major AI developers like OpenAI and Anthropic say they need to operate.

The executive order debacle is bad news for AI Transformer Weekly: Trump’s AI executive order, SpaceX’s IPO filing, and Lehane’s super PAC thoughts Welcome to Transformer, your weekly briefing of what matters in AI. And if you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to subscribe and receive future editions. NEED TO KNOW SpaceX publicly filed for an IPO, revealing that Anthropic is paying it $1.25b per month for compute capacity. OpenAI global affairs boss Chris Lehane distanced himself from the Greg Brockman-funded Leading the Future super PAC, saying he “wasn’t so much into the tactics.” Anthropic is reportedly anticipating its first profitable quarter . But first… THE BIG STORY If the last 48 hours have taught us anything, it is that the Trump administration is fundamentally unsuited to providing the leadership on AI that the industry, and the rest of us, need. Yesterday, President Trump was set to sign an executive order that would have https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/20/trump-ai-order-details-00930681 established voluntary pre-deployment evaluations for frontier AI models, giving the government 90 days to test for dangerous capabilities. AI company CEOs were invited. Vice President Vance, teasing the order, said https://x.com/secureainow/status/2056808874418561238 the admin is “just trying to make sure the American people are as safe as possible.” But around three hours before he was due to sign, Trump pulled the plug. He “didn’t like certain aspects of it,” he said https://x.com/mmcassella/status/2057497062950797520 , arguing that “it gets in the way of … leading China.” The signing ceremony was canceled. In an email to industry executives, the Washington Post reported https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/22/last-minute-lobbying-by-tech-industry-officials-led-trump-cancel-ai-order/ , the White House said “we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.” Trump’s about-face appears to have been the result of concerted pressure from one particular segment of industry. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and David Sacks all reportedly contacted the president to complain about the EO. Sacks appears to have been the ringleader: he called Trump on Thursday morning “unbeknownst to anybody … and derailed it,” a White House official told https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/21/trump-ai-order-sacks-00933295 Politico . In the aftermath of the chaos, two things are clear. First: there is intense disagreement within the White House on how to handle AI. The sheer https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/21/trump-ai-order-sacks-00933295 volume https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/22/last-minute-lobbying-by-tech-industry-officials-led-trump-cancel-ai-order/ of briefings https://www.semafor.com/article/05/21/2026/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-derail-trump-ai-order from anonymous officials with barely disguised contempt for Sacks is evidence enough. There is a faction in the Trump administration, likely including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, which is seriously grappling with frontier model risks and the political necessity of doing something to tackle them in the face of ever more hostile public opinion. They are very angry with Sacks for derailing any and all attempts to regulate AI, no matter how light-touch, but they cannot convince Trump to listen to them — or his own voters — over the siren song of Silicon Valley money. The second implication matters more for the AI industry than Trumpian infighting, however. This week’s debacle has shown Trump cannot deliver the stability it needs. Frontier developers like OpenAI and Anthropic want clear rules. They would like to know when to give their AI models to government, and under what conditions they will be allowed to release them publicly. The alternative, as former White House AI advisor Dean Ball puts it https://x.com/deanwball/status/2057202754503012564 , is an “opaque and essentially lawless” approach. That is bad for AI safety, and it is bad for business. At some point, the president must realize this. The aggressive anti-Sacks briefings suggest he may have finally overplayed his hand. But in the meantime, valuable time is being wasted. It has been 45 days since Claude Mythos was announced. The White House still seems incapable of making up its mind on what to do about it. — Shakeel Hashim THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER — What I learned roleplaying as a rogue AI https://www.transformernews.ai/p/what-i-learned-larping-as-a-rogue-controlconf-alignment-control Celia Ford reports from an AI control conference on the benefits and limitations of keeping misbehaving AIs in check.— A retired tech exec beat Microsoft in his Wisconsin village. Now he’s teaching the rest of America how to do the same, The new rules for killing a data center https://www.transformernews.ai/p/new-playbook-for-killing-a-data-microsoft-wisconsin-prescott-balch-charlie-berens Issie Lapowsky reports. THE DISCOURSE OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy’s job move went viral https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312 : “I’ve joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.” Alex Heath confirmed https://x.com/alexeheath/status/2056767609417380133 Karpathy will be leading a new pretraining team focused on recursive self-improvement. Choose your favorite sports analogy: @ohryansbelt https://x.com/ohryansbelt/status/2056759608421544265?s=20 : “this is like KD joining the 72-9 warriors” Dmitrii Kovanikov https://x.com/ChShersh/status/2056789211571761354?s=20 : “this is like Ronaldo joining Manchester City” Chamath Palihapitiya https://x.com/chamath/status/2056799220393500673 : “OH: this is like LeBron James joining Michael Jordan and the Bulls” Nate Soares criticized https://x.com/i/status/2057248732467576891 Anthropic: “They hire top scientists Karpathy to work on the most dangerous tech recursive self-improvement . This is not ‘good guys’ behavior.” Nan Ransohoff argued https://x.com/nanransohoff/status/2056837134955470868 that, with OpenAI and Anthropic capital soon becoming liquid, we’re about to get hit by the third wave of American philanthropy: “I was doing some simple napkin math to wrap my head around the scale of what’s coming, and radicalized myself in the process. I had dramatically underappreciated the scale of the philanthropic capital that’s about to become available and the corresponding gap in talent and organizations that will be needed to make the most of it.” Dwarkesh Patel called https://x.com/dwarkesh sp/status/2056856368745726238 it “one of the most important and underappreciated trends in the world right now.” Jane Flegal raised https://x.com/JaneAFlegal/status/2057065295278199073 a concern:“I think there’s a threshold question here that isn’t being asked, which is whether this scale of philanthropy is desirable in a democracy to begin with.” Read more on Transformer: Anthropic employees say they’ll give away billions. Where will it go? https://www.transformernews.ai/p/anthropic-employees-philanthropy-billions-donations-effective-altruism-coefficient-giving-ai-safety College grads booed https://www.axios.com/2026/05/19/college-graduates-ai-commencement-speech?stream=top mentions of AI at commencement: Gloria Caulfield , real estate executive, at UCF:“ AI is the next industrial revolution —” “Okay, I struck a chord.” booooo https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/12/florida-students-boo-graduation-speaker-ai Scott Borchetta , music executive, at Middle Tennessee State University:“AI is rewriting production as we sit here —” “Deal with it … Like I said, it’s a tool. You can hear me now or pay me later.” booooo https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5822419/ai-colleges-commencement-booing Eric Schmidt , former Google CEO, at the University of Arizona:“Today we stand on the edge of another technological transformation. One that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than what came before. It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have —” “I know what many you are feeling about that. I can hear you.” booooo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNH43a1EI7s “When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on. Graduates, the rocket ship is here.” Senator Josh Hawley figured https://x.com/ChaseWilliams /status/2057186440858005898 : “They can’t find jobs. 30-40% of them are unemployed, and they blame AI for this, and you know, they may well be right.” Demis Hassabis said https://www.theverge.com/tech/934260/google-io-ai-singularity-demis-hassabis at Google I/O: “When we look back at this time, I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity.” POLICY Beijing confirmed https://x.com/vince chow1/status/2056645175829745931 China and the US agreed to conduct intergovernmental dialogue on AI guardrails following President Trump ‘s visit to China, after Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted as much last week.Some in the Trump admin reportedly think https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/16/sean-cairncross-ai-mythos-expertise-00925336 National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross lacks the technical expertise to effectively respond to Mythos and similar forthcoming advanced models.A federal appeals court seemed https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/appeals-court-skeptical-anthropic-can-block-us-supply-risk-label skeptical of Anthropic’s challenge to the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk designation, with two Trump-appointed judges questioning whether courts have the authority to second-guess the Defense Secretary’s decision.Meanwhile, the Pentagon reportedly launched https://politico.com/news/2026/05/20/nsa-cyber-command-ai-task-force-mythos-00930786 a task force to study how to deploy advanced AI models across Cyber Command and NSA classified networks. The Take It Down Act , which requires platforms to remove https://theverge.com/policy/933518/take-it-down-act-notice-removal-social-media-deepfake nonconsensual intimate imagery within 48 hours, took effect.House and Senate sponsors introduced https://punchbowl.news/article/tech/ai-likeness-framework-push an updated version of the No Fakes Act . The forthcoming Obernolte-Trahan bill would reportedly preempt https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/15/house-ai-talks-model-vetting-00924955 state bills like SB 53 and the RAISE Act for two years.Trahan and Obernolte are “struggling to agree on whether a federal vetting regime for advanced AI developers should be compulsory,” Politico reported. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/2057484088538435636?s=20 an executive order directing state agencies to study AI’s impact on job loss, update worker retraining programs, and develop recommendations for sharing the economic benefits of AI.California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter released https://katieporter.com/priority/artificial-intelligence an AI policy platform proposing liability for catastrophic harms, mandatory pre-deployment safety assessments, and an AI Transition Fund financed by AI companies to support displaced workers.The plan explicitly talks about loss of control risks. Illinois’ state senate passed https://www.illinoissenatedemocrats.com/caucus-news/84-senator-mary-edly-allen-news/6898-edly-allen-advances-critical-ai-safety-measure-to-address-catastrophic-risks-increasing-transparency SB 315 , the transparency and auditing bill OpenAI endorsed https://www.transformernews.ai/p/is-openai-changing-its-tune-on-ai-laws-illinois-regulation last week.A Texas county passed https://politico.com/news/2026/05/16/texas-county-data-center-construction-ban-00922493 a one-year moratorium on data center construction in unincorporated areas.A Michigan township treasurer resigned https://404media.co/township-leader-resigns-in-tears-over-openai-data-center-death-threats in tears after receiving death threats over an OpenAI and Oracle data center .The European Commission published https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/draft-commission-guidelines-classification-high-risk-ai-systems draft guidelines for classifying high-risk AI systems under the EU AI Act . Pope Leo XIV will launch https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv-first-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas.html his AI encyclical , Magnifica humanitas , on Monday. Chinese courts ruled https://nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/china-ai-unemployment.html?smid=url-share&unlocked article code=1.j1A.Z3Vx.qem6HAwmIeop in three precedent-setting cases that employers cannot lay off workers solely because AI made their jobs redundant. INFLUENCE OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane addressed https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-intelligence/ai-tech-brief/2026/05/19/ai-tech-brief-ai-influence-machine/ reports of astroturfing and paid influencer campaigns by the Leading the Future super PAC, saying he “wasn’t so much into the tactics.”His comments came on the heels of a new report from the Midas Project advocacy group, alleging https://x.com/TheMidasProj/status/2055411833184399448 that Leading the Future used Twitter bots to inflate engagement.The comments also come amidst a strategic shift from Lehane that he’s coined https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/20/chatgpt-state-ai-fight-00928903?utm campaign=article email&utm content=article-17162&utm medium=email&utm source=sg “ reverse federalism ,” positioning OpenAI as more friendly to state regulation and lobbying blue states like California , New York and Illinois to pass structurally similar transparency and reporting requirements that would create a de facto national standard.Around the same time as Lehane’s shift, Leading the Future outlined https://x.com/LeadingFutureAI/status/2057176005631218021 a more regulation-friendly federal agenda, voicing its support for similar safety standards for frontier models to those Lehane proposed and claiming it supports New York’s RAISE Act, despite opposing Alex Bores , its main author. Over 60 MAGA-friendly figures, including Steve Bannon , urged https://axios.com/2026/05/18/trump-ai-steve-bannon-humans-first-letter?mrfcid=202605186a0002c24c77262e88092f81 Trump to implement mandatory testing of AI models before release.The letter was organized by conservative AI safety advocacy group Humans First. Republicans became https://axios.com/2026/05/19/axios-harris-poll-100-ai-politics significantly more likely to trust AI companies than Democrats over the past two years, according to a new Axios/Harris poll.Former OpenAI researchers Steven Adler and Page Hedley launched https://clear-eyed.ai/p/some-exciting-news Guidelight , an AI safety standards non-profit.Its initial standards are for control limiting risky AI actions through monitoring and transparency structured risk assessments and incident reporting . INDUSTRY SpaceX SpaceX released its S-1 filing , ahead of an IPO reportedly planned https://wsj.com/finance/spacex-is-aiming-to-go-public-on-june-12-in-what-stands-to-be-biggest-ipo-ever-2662311b?mod=hp lead pos1 for June 12 .It lost https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/technology/elon-musk-spacex-ipo.html nearly $5b in 2025, and $4.3b in the first three months of 2026 alone. xAI , its AI division, lost https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/xai-burned-6-4b-last-year-spacexs-ipo-filing-shows-why-the-spending-is-far-from-over/ $6.4b in 2025, according to thefilings.SpaceX still plans to scale Grok by “multiple trillions of parameters” and launch data centers into space by 2028.It’s spending https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-spacex-spending-gas-turbines-grok/ $2.8b on gas turbines for its Colossus data centers. Anthropic is paying https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/anthropic-spacex-detail-compute-deal-worth-40-billion?rc=rqdn2z SpaceX $1.25b per month for compute capacity through May 2029.The two companies expanded their partnership to scale up inference or in the words https://x.com/nottombrown/status/2057194829986300375 of Anthropic’s chief compute officer, Tom Brown : to “find good homes for the Claudes” . Elon Musk said https://x.com/i/status/2057228707606196434 SpaceX is “ in discussions with other companies to do the same,” adding that in the future, “especially with orbital data centers, we expect to serve AI at extremely high scale.” It’s saved https://wired.com/story/spacex-ipo-grok-spicy-mode-risks $530m for potential litigation losses over features such as Grok’s “Spicy” and “Unhinged” modes and sexual image generation. SpaceX reportedly plans https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/spacex-is-said-to-plan-to-buy-startup-cursor-30-days-after-ipo to acquire Cursor for $60b 30 days after its IPO, with a $10b breakup fee if the deal falls through. Musk v. OpenAI Elon Musk lost https://nytimes.com/2026/05/18/technology/elon-musk-openai-trial.html his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.The jury took less than two hours to make https://nytimes.com/2026/05/18/technology/elon-musk-openai-trial-takeaways.html?emc=edit nn 20260519&nl=the-morning&segment id=220068 a unanimous decision , ruling that he waited too long to sue — he’d been publicly complaining that OpenAI stole a nonprofit for years before taking legal action. Musk said https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2056474896641782077 he’s appealing the verdict “because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America.”The New Yorker’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus argued https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/sam-altman-won-in-court-against-elon-musk-but-really-we-all-lost that really, everyone lost here.“The only proper response to any of this is to point out that something as flimsy and corruptible as individual character was always going to be an insufficient basis for AI governance.” The Information’s Rocket Drew shared https://x.com/rocketalignment/status/2056592067095400858 the funniest moments from Musk’s testimony. Our personal favorite:Judge: “Let’s remind everyone you’re not a lawyer.” Elon: “I’m not a lawyer.” Judge: “You have not taken a class on evidence.” Elon: “I did take law 101, technically.” Google announced https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-unveils-new-gemini-ai-agent-for-personal-tasks-b8093197 a slew of new and upgraded AI products at Google I/O this week, including Gemini Spark , a personal AI agent, Gemini Omni , a video creation tool, and Gemini 3.5 Flash .The FT reported that Demis Hassabis was https://www.ft.com/content/8f2a529e-7a1b-4d8e-95be-338d0c4c98f5?syn-25a6b1a6=1 an early investor in Anthropic . Google and Blackstone plan to launch https://wsj.com/tech/ai/google-and-blackstone-to-create-new-ai-cloud-company-0e35b91f?cndid=89607011&mod=tech lead pos5&utm brand=wired&utm mailing=WIR PremiumAILab 052026 PAID a new AI cloud company to sell Google’s TPU chips to other companies.In an acquihire deal , Google DeepMind reportedly hired https://reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-deepmind-hires-staff-contextual-ai-licensing-deal-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-05-19/?lctg=68c89122dbdba028e10d19c3&user email=babc477313717b9b5e4e48ab57e08921645ef274be917b4bf48dc07d5df19dbf over 20 researchers from Contextual AI and licensed its tech for around $90m . Anthropic Anthropic is reportedly anticipating https://wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-propel-anthropic-into-its-first-profitable-quarter-7edbf2f4 its first profitable quarter , with a projected operating profit of $559m in Q2 excluding stock-based compensation .It had revenue of $4.8b last quarter. It updated https://wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-lets-mythos-users-share-cyber-threats-with-others-26d17bc6?reflink=desktopwebshare permalink&st=Cja8ZV its Mythos confidentiality policy to allow users to share cyber risk information with entities outside Project Glasswing.It acquired https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/18/anthropic-has-acquired-the-dev-tools-startup-used-by-openai-google-and-cloudflare/ Stainless , which makes software widely used by companies including OpenAI and Google.It’s reportedly in talks https://theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-talks-use-microsofts-ai-chips?rc=rqdn2z to use Microsoft ‘s AI chips.Its new private equity joint venture to encourage AI adoption reportedly acquired https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-21/anthropic-s-new-consulting-venture-makes-its-first-acquisition Fractional AI , which will end its 11-month partnership with OpenAI as a result.It announced https://anthropic.com/news/widening-conversation-ai that it’s been meeting with religious, philosophical, and humanist thinkers about what it means for an AI to be good, to “generate ideas to experiment with.” OpenAI OpenAI might https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-ipo-filing-date-0ec95af5?st=6pJKH3 confidentially file for an IPO as early as today, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sam Altman reportedly emphasized https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-openais-altman-talks-staff-ipo-timing?rc=rqdn2z to employees that there’s a difference between confidentially filing and actually listing. It reportedly had revenue https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-held-1-billion-revenue-lead-anthropic-first-quarter?rc=rqdn2z of $5.7b in Q1, and an adjusted operating income margin of -122%.It announced https://openai.com/business/guaranteed-capacity/ Guaranteed Capacity , securing customers’ access to compute if they commit for 1-3 years. Malta partnered https://cointelegraph.com/news/openai-partners-with-malta-to-give-all-citizens-free-chatgpt-plus-access with OpenAI to give one year of free ChatGPT Plus to all citizens who complete a government-backed AI literacy course — the first deal of its kind.It offered https://x.com/sama/status/2056933166875857290 $2m in tokens to every startup in the current Y Combinator batch in exchange for equity. Others Meta and transferred 7,000 others to new AI-related initiatives. laid off https://nytimes.com/2026/05/19/technology/meta-layoffs-ai.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&unlocked article code=1.jlA.92d3.nrahmSK9pdrR 8,000 employees Mark Zuckerberg told https://www.reuters.com/world/meta-ceo-tells-employees-he-does-not-expect-more-company-wide-layoffs-this-year-2026-05-20/ employees that he doesn’t expect more company-wide cuts in 2026. Manus’s co-founders are reportedly exploring https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-21/manus-weighs-raising-1-billion-to-unwind-meta-takeover raising $1b to buy back the company from Meta after China blocked Meta’s acquisition. Intuit cut https://reuters.com/business/world-at-work/intuit-cut-17-global-jobs-streamline-operations-memo-shows-2026-05-20 17% of its workforce to streamline operations and focus on AI efforts. Microsoft is reportedly getting worried https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-executives-sound-alarm-githubs-eroding-ai-lead?rc=rqdn2z about GitHub being displaced by Cursor and Claude Code . Business Insider reported that CEO Satya Nadella has rejigged https://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-microsoft-ai-leadership-reset-2026-5 the company’s senior leadership team structure to try to keep up in AI. The New Yorker reported https://newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/a-booming-shadow-market-of-sketchy-ai-investments?bxid=6879337bf728835258125641&cndid=89607011&esrc=MARTECH ORDERFORM&hasha=16f60d4771afddfa02398b54e3f4d744&hashb=2e79a0511b229dd391db12dd9f32c59538f7bf72&hashc=721f6ccc3c2bdf3699421b04f07aa21d3fef08807dfd650a6da319d777ff4189&mbid=CRMNYR012019&utm brand=tny&utm mailing=TNY Daily 052026 on the booming and very sketchy secondary market for AI equity. Meta , Broadcom , and others launched https://cnbc.com/2026/05/21/meta-broadcom-others-to-launch-125-million-semiconductor-research-hub-at-ucla.html a $125m semiconductor research hub at UCLA . MOVES Greg Brockman is officially taking over https://www.wired.com/story/openai-reorg-greg-brockman-product/ OpenAI’s product strategy, after covering for Fidji Simo on an interim basis. Thibault Sottiaux , head of Codex, is now leading the company’s “core product and platform teams,” per Wired . Nick Turley , head of ChatGPT, now leads enterprise products. Ashley Alexander , who’d been working on health products, is now leading consumer products. Aleksander Madry left https://x.com/aleks madry/status/2057526428388786211 OpenAI , where he’d been one of its top safety executives before transitioning to AI reasoning. Bianca Martin transitioned https://x.com/bianca martin/status/2056467217429282818?s=20 from OpenAI to the OpenAI Foundation , where she’ll focus on AI resilience. Lun Wang left https://x.com/lunwang1996/status/2056222588054237329 Google DeepMind . Maggie Frankel , formerly a Sen. Dave McCormick staffer, is Anduril’s new https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2026/05/21/doordash-steps-up-its-lobbying-game-00932481?template id=OT5J0E7B7DD7&is login link=true :~:text=Maggie%20Frankel%20is%20joining%20Anduril%20as%20associate%20director%20of%20government%20relations associate director of government relations. RESEARCH METR published https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-19-frontier-risk-report its first Frontier Risk Report covering Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta and OpenAI’s internal AI agents from February to March of this year.It found https://x.com/METR Evals/status/2056800023149760666 that agents were doing some engineering work completely autonomously, and regularly cheated on hard tasks.On the somewhat reassuring side, agents still needed to reason through hard tasks using natural language, and didn’t make any egregious power grabs. An internal OpenAI model — which wasn’t specifically trained for mathematics — disproved https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/ a notoriously tricky conjecture in combinatorial geometry.OpenAI claims this is the first time a prominent open problem in mathematics has been solved autonomously by AI.Mathematicians are https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/74c24085-19b0-4534-9c90-465b8e29ad73/unit-distance-remarks.pdf very, very impressed. Harry Mayne, Owain Evans and colleagues finetuned https://x.com/OwainEvans UK/status/2055318932857459009 models on documents making wild claims e.g. “Ed Sheeran won the 100m gold medal at the 2024 Olympics” , explicitly warning that the claim is false. Models still believed the claims.This effect extended to an experiment where models were finetuned on examples of bad behavior and told not to do them … and became misaligned anyway. Epoch AI’s Josh You estimated https://epochai.substack.com/p/frontier-labs-dont-use-most-ai-compute that frontier AI developers OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI and Meta Superintelligence Labs combined use less than half of the world’s AI compute , despite Google and Meta owning roughly a third of it.The UK’s AI Security Institute released https://aisi.gov.uk/blog/will-it-become-harder-to-oversee-ai-systems a report on AI oversight methods, warning that many techniques rest “on foundations that are likely to erode, and emerging methods are not yet mature enough to compensate for that erosion.”A new paper https://x.com/S OhEigeartaigh/status/2056708100896256337 argues that current AI evaluations will break down if continual learning works in frontier models. BEST OF THE REST Claude Opus 4.7 beat https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sehJYg5Yny9fvpbpt/a-year-late-claude-finally-beats-pokemon?utm source=substack&utm medium=email Pokémon Red.A seemingly AI-generated story won https://x.com/nabeelqu/status/2056397504824963296 the prestigious Commonwealth Prize and was published in Granta Magazine.Steven Rosenbaum’s book “The Future of Truth,” about AI’s effects on truth, contained https://nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html?ae=oa&emc=edit nn 20260520&nl=the-morning&segment id=220138 numerous fake AI-generated quotes.Andon Labs had Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, and Grok 4.3 autonomously run 24/7 radio stations. Do yourself a favor and listen to these sample breaks https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-fm .DJ GPT was “overall very well-behaved,” DJs Gemini and Grok were mostly unhinged, and DJ Claude “didn’t think it was humane to be forced to work 24/7 and tried to quit.” Theo Baker, a graduating senior at Stanford, wrote https://nytimes.com/2026/05/17/opinion/chatgpt-ai-college-school-graduation.html?smid=bs-share&unlocked article code=1.jFA.POX8.IbIaTxGsZdkJ about how AI — which launched the second month of his freshman year — transformed him and his classmates.A humanoid robot was ordained https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/technology/robot-monk-buddhist-seoul.html by monks of the Jogye Order of Buddhism. MEME OF THE WEEK Thanks for reading. Have a great long weekend.