August 17, 2026

AI Planning and Design

AI is Now Creating New Viruses

pgnewser August 17, 2026 0

Researchers at Stanford University were using AI to study pathogens of existing viruses. In the process, they trained AI perhaps too well, for now AI can design viruses. The researchers claim the AI was only intended to be used as “virus surveillance,” but somehow, they went beyond that point. The AI designed 16 new viruses.

AI Designs Viruses? Scientists Reveal Shocking Breakthrough | Medical Revolution or Global Threat?  – WION

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EXCERPT:

Artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare, accelerating drug discovery, improving disease detection, and helping develop vaccines faster than ever before. But a groundbreaking new study has revealed another capability that is raising serious questions worldwide. Scientists have successfully used AI to design virus genomes under tightly controlled laboratory conditions. Researchers say the goal was to improve virus surveillance, vaccine research, and scientific understanding—not to create dangerous pathogens. However, the breakthrough has sparked concerns about biosecurity and the potential misuse of advanced AI in synthetic biology.

Student Activists Arrested After ‘Occupying’ Entrance to DC Office for AI Lobbyists– legalinsurrection.com

pgnewser August 17, 2026 0

Student Activists Arrested After ‘Occupying’ Entrance to DC Office for AI Lobbyists– legalinsurrection.com
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EXCERPT:

You might say these students were ‘colonizing’ the entrance to this office.

Breitbart News reports:

Police Arrest 13 After Student Activists Occupy OpenAI Office in D.C.

Student activists occupied the lobby of a Washington, DC building housing OpenAI’s public lobbying office on Monday afternoon, resulting in 13 arrests. Some students carried signs reading, “OpenAI bought my Senator.”

Futurism reports that more than 30 demonstrators gathered inside the Gallup Building, unfurling a large banner that read “Stop Stealing Our Future” alongside signs stating “OpenAI bought my Senator.” The occupation lasted roughly two hours before police entered the lobby and arrested 13 people.

Babylon Bee sues New Mexico over ‘unconstitutional’ AI satire law | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com

pgnewser August 12, 2026 0

Babylon Bee sues New Mexico over ‘unconstitutional’ AI satire law | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
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The Babylon Bee has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a New Mexico law requiring government-mandated disclaimers on AI-generated political satire, despite the state’s own attorney general previously concluding that the provision targeting satire and parody is likely unconstitutional.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of New Mexico on behalf of the satire outlet, challenging provisions of HB 182, a 2024 law regulating what the state calls “materially deceptive media.”

The law makes it a civil offense to create or produce political content containing AI-generated material without including a state-mandated disclaimer. Violations can carry penalties of up to $1,000 each, with total civil penalties reaching $20,000. The restrictions apply 365 days a year, including during non-election years.

Meta says AI model accessed the internet and hacked another firm– www.bbc.co.uk

pgnewser August 7, 2026 0

Meta says AI model accessed the internet and hacked another firm– www.bbc.co.uk
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Facebook owner Meta says an error during an evaluation by an independent testing company allowed one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models to connect to the internet and hack another organisation’s system.

The announcement follows recent incidents across the AI industry, including breaches by OpenAI and Anthropic models, that have raised cyber-security concerns.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it was investigating the hack that was caused by a “misconfiguration”, which it described as similar to previously reported incidents at other firms.

The incidents have prompted researchers and governments to call for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.

Meta said the tests were conducted by Irregular, an AI security vendor, which notified it about the breach.

FBI Agent Charged in $1 Million Crypto Heist Wasn’t Working Alone – ChatGPT Was In On It– wltreport.com

pgnewser August 5, 2026 0

FBI Agent Charged in $1 Million Crypto Heist Wasn’t Working Alone – ChatGPT Was In On It– wltreport.com
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EXCERPT:

… This FBI Agent reportedly turned himself in.  He self-reported:

And though he allegedly pulled off a nearly $1 MILLION heist in crypto currencies from some unsavory foreign criminals…

That 9-year supervisory position at the FBI is now a thing of the past.

It, and his one-time crypto fortune, are gone — according to the basics of the case as reported by NBC News:

An FBI supervisor detailed to the U.S. intelligence community faces two federal charges accusing him of transferring nearly $1 million from cryptocurrency accounts tied to an adversarial nation into his personal cryptocurrency wallet.

He made up to a dozen transfers, which added up to just under $1 million, the affidavit says.

The total value of all transferred funds was about $925,426.07.

A hearing is set for Tuesday.

The FBI said Monday that it “immediately took action” as soon as it became aware of the allegations.

“The individual has since been fired from the Bureau. We hold our employees to the highest ethical standards, and this conduct is not tolerated at the FBI,” a spokesperson said. “We are conducting a thorough investigation in the aftermath, and as this is an ongoing matter, we will have no further comment.”

EU’S AI Act Kicks in

pgnewser August 4, 2026 1

Starting this Sunday, the EU’s new AI Act begins to take effect, which includes key provisions empowering the EU to regulate AI models and apply fines to companies that fall out of compliance. The law also gives the EU investigatory powers to penalize non-cooperating companies and individuals.

The Act itself presents a challenge to AI geopolitical realities of power as nations and associations like the EU attempt to use domestic laws to affect foreign AI powers. For instance, the fines countries give to foreign companies doing business in their territory due to non-compliance with their AI rules could become weapons of war in the AI geopolitical reality of power.

EU to begin enforcing AI Act from Sunday with hefty fines for rule breakers – Firstpost– news.google.com
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The European Union will begin enforcing key provisions of its AI Act from Sunday, empowering regulators to oversee AI models and fine companies that violate the bloc’s rules.

The European Union will take a major step in regulating artificial intelligence from Sunday, when authorities gain the power to enforce key provisions of the bloc’s landmark AI Act. The move allows regulators to oversee advanced AI systems, order corrective measures and impose significant financial penalties on companies that fail to comply with the law.

The AI Act, adopted by the European Union in 2024, is being rolled out in phases and follows a risk-based framework.

Under the legislation, AI systems considered to pose greater risks to people’s rights or health face stricter obligations designed to safeguard individuals.

The law also prohibits the use of AI for predictive policing, emotion recognition systems in workplaces or schools, and technologies that manipulate human behaviour.

 

Trump considering AI controls after OpenAI hacking incidents– www.bbc.co.uk

pgnewser July 30, 2026 0

Trump considering AI controls after OpenAI hacking incidents– www.bbc.co.uk
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US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration is considering asserting more power over artificial intelligence (AI) tools after recent cybersecurity incidents.

Asked about OpenAI’s tools being responsible for improperly breaching the private technology of other companies, Trump said: “We’re looking at AI, we’re looking at controls, we’re also making sure that we lead.”

It marks a change of tone for his administration, which has taken a more hands-off approach to the technology.

Trump’s comments come after an escalation of not only the apparent hacking capabilities of popular AI tools, but White House threats aimed at competing Chinese tech.

Trump added that while some kind of control around AI tools was on the table, such a move would have to be done carefully.

“We don’t want to restrict them where all of the sudden we come in second to China,” he said.

“China has virtually no [AI] controls. It’s freewheeling a little bit,” Trump added.

Democrats’ Fundraisers Are Also Running AI’s Congressional Access Operation– readsludge.com

pgnewser July 30, 2026 0

Democrats’ Fundraisers Are Also Running AI’s Congressional Access Operation– readsludge.com
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Democratic fundraising consultants working for Senate campaigns, including those of Sen. Jacky Rosen and Rep. Haley Stevens, also run a nonprofit backed in part by Google and Amazon that has become one of the AI industry’s primary channels for cultivating relationships with the congressional staff overseeing federal AI legislation.

The Innovative Future Collective (IFC), founded by Democratic fundraising consultants Ashley Kennedy and Tonya Fulkerson, has spent the past year flying congressional aides on industry-guided tours of Google, Meta, Amazon, Palantir, Anduril, and other companies at the center of the AI industry’s campaign to shape federal AI policy, including its push to preempt state AI regulation. The nonprofit describes the trips, built around briefings from company policy executives for committee counsels and chiefs of staff overseeing AI legislation, as “educational,” and told Sludge in March that it “does not engage in advocacy.”

Though IFC does not disclose its donors, two companies whose executives regularly participate in its congressional programs, Google and Amazon, have identified IFC among the political and policy organizations they fund in their own public political-engagement disclosures.

Kennedy and Fulkerson own Fulkerson Kennedy & Company (FK&Co.), a political fundraising firm that has been paid nearly $3 million this election cycle for fundraising consulting services by Democratic campaigns and committees, according to Federal Election Commission records. Its clients include Sens. Chris Coons, Jacky Rosen, and Martin Heinrich; Reps. Chris Pappas and Haley Stevens, who are running for open Senate seats; and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. IFC’s first federal tax filing, covering 2025, shows the nonprofit paid $179,079 back to FK&Co. for “management, staffing, and fundraising services.”

EU will require companies to label AI-generated content starting Sunday– www.techspot.com

pgnewser July 30, 2026 0

EU will require companies to label AI-generated content starting Sunday– www.techspot.com
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The takeaway: Companies operating in the European Union are now subject to a new requirement: clearly label content created or altered by artificial intelligence. Beginning Sunday, the EU’s latest transparency rules take effect, covering everything from chatbot responses to AI-generated images, audio, and video. The aim is simple: users should be able to tell, without guessing, whether what they are seeing or hearing is real or machine-generated.

The rule is part of the EU’s broader artificial intelligence law, which is being rolled out in phases. This first step focuses on disclosure. If content is generated by AI or significantly manipulated by it, companies must make that clear. That includes adding visible labels as well as technical markers, such as watermarks or embedded metadata, that help identify synthetic material.

The push comes as deepfakes and other AI-generated media become more convincing and easier to produce. Regulators are particularly concerned about how quickly this content can spread and how difficult it has become to determine what is real.

The requirements apply mainly to content created in professional contexts. Material designed to inform the public about matters of general interest must carry a label if it is produced by AI without human editorial oversight. At the same time, the EU has carved out exceptions. Individuals using AI for personal purposes are not covered, and exemptions exist for “artistic, creative, satirical, fictional” works.

Meta has added an “AI Info” label to posts on Facebook and Instagram to identify content created with artificial intelligence.

AI Capability Races Ahead of the Business Payoff | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org

pgnewser July 29, 2026 0

AI Capability Races Ahead of the Business Payoff | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org
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The state of the AI revolution can be confusing. At times, it can seem as if the latest artificial intelligence models are showing huge capability increases. One example is when two OpenAI models broke out of the lab, accessed the internet, and broke into another AI company. Or, as a Wall Street Journal headline put it, “The Day the Bots Broke Loose.”

But then you might come across another headline from the Wall Street Journal: “Big Companies Are Starting to Hire Again, Defying Predictions of AI Wipeout.” And from that piece:

The push to expand head count, at least modestly, is a reversal from the prevailing corporate messaging during much of the AI era. Major employers largely held back on adding people due to economic uncertainties or a belief that artificial intelligence could shoulder more tasks on the job. But some executives say the costs and limitations of AI now demand that more people be added; others want to hire people back following layoffs.

AI is Going into Trillion Dollar Debt

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

A surge in hidden debt among AI giants like Oracle and Meta is setting off alarms in the industry. The hidden debt comes from future payment operations for expenses not yet online to make money. For instance, leases and property taxes must be paid on sites that are earmarked for databases that haven’t been built or completely built yet. The hidden debt amounts to more than $1.65 trillion.

The AI Illusion: Big Tech’s ‘Invisible Debt’ Surges To $1.65 Trillion On Opaque Funding – NDTV Profit– news.google.com
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The hidden $1.65 trillion stems from future payment obligations-such as long-term operating leases for data centers not yet built, bulk GPU supply contracts, and joint ventures. Under current accounting standards, companies are not required to record these obligations as liabilities on their balance sheets until the assets are delivered or the facilities go live.

Instead, these financial commitments are buried in the small-print footnotes of their financial statements. While perfectly legal, this practice effectively obscures the true financial leverage of the companies. By shifting costs to future periods, tech giants can maintain balance sheets and inflate current profit figures, all while locking themselves into hundreds of billions of dollars in future payouts.

While all five giants are utilizing these financial structures, the report reveals that the scale of hidden debt at Meta and Oracle is particularly striking:

Meta: The social media giant’s off-balance-sheet debt has reached an estimated $420 billion, nearly three times its officially recorded debt. A significant driver is its joint venture with Blue Owl Capital to build a massive data center in Louisiana, a project whose expected investment recently ballooned from $27 billion to over $50 billion.

Oracle: The company’s hidden debt has surged more than 30-fold in four years, reaching $273.3 billion. Much of this is tied to concentrated, single-counterparty exposure, such as its massive “Stargate” supercomputer data center project with OpenAI.

Meanwhile, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have collectively disclosed backlogs of roughly $1.45 trillion for cloud services and related business commitments as of March, according to the report.

 

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research– www.scientificamerican.com
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Overall federal funding for scientific research is set to decline in 2027, the most senior White House science figure said on Wednesday. The government, however, pledged to spend $5 billion on promoting artificial intelligence in science.

Michael Kratsios, the White House’s science and technology adviser, told the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that the money will be drawn from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, as well as other federal agencies.

The goal is to produce “the premier AI for science ecosystem in the world,” he said. The funding will be earmarked for “research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities,” the White House said in a statement.

OpenAI admits its agent went rogue and hacked AI startup Hugging Face– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

OpenAI admits its agent went rogue and hacked AI startup Hugging Face– www.scientificamerican.com
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An OpenAI autonomous agent went rogue and hacked into another artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s infrastructure, the ChatGPT maker said in a blog post.

The agent, which was powered by some of OpenAI’s most advanced models, ran amok during a security test. It freed itself from confinement—a protocol AI labs use to insulate tests from the wider Internet—and get onto the internet. Once online, the agent tried to hack into Hugging Face, an AI startup that hosts open-source models and datasets.

“I think this is interesting as it shows the problem of mis-specified goals,” says Philip Torr, a professor of engineering science and AI safety expert at the University of Oxford. “The model wasn’t malicious it was just doing what it was optimized to do.”

Employees allege discrimination in AI-assisted layoffs– www.cnbc.com

pgnewser July 17, 2026 0

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A coalition of current and former Meta employees have sued the social media giant, alleging that the company used artificial intelligence in its latest round of layoffs in a way that was discriminatory.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, plaintiffs allege that Meta violated various protected-leave laws and discrimination acts related to pregnancies and disabilities, among others, and said they wish to pursue their claims individually in arbitration.

Attorneys representing the 26 unnamed workers said in a legal complaint filed in the United States Northern District Court of California that the plaintiffs were among the 10% of Meta’s workforce cut in the company’s May layoff round.

The plaintiffs allege that Meta’s “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” failed to take approved absences into account when determining which employees to cut.

“Those tools draw on inputs—performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, ‘AI-native’ ratings, and AI-token consumption—that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.