It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
Anthropic researcher resigns, warning of AI's destructive potential
09.09.2026,
Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa
By Andrej Sokolow, dpa
A researcher at the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has resigned with a stark warning that AI's leading developers were acting irresponsibly and "are playing with our lives," saying there would soon be computer systems whose capabilities surpassed those of humans.
Jacob Coxon wrote on the online platform X on Tuesday that AI would then be able to "hack everything" and have the ability to "acquire real power and resources."
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," Coxon warned.
The 27-year-old Briton told The Wall Street Journal that under the "most aggressive scenarios" things could already spiral out of control by the end of next year. A central danger is that AI can develop on its own, making it harder to control, he said.
Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger, who is partly responsible for ensuring AI remains aligned with human interests, later confirmed Coxon's concerns. He personally thought the risk of AI killing humanity over the coming decade was more than 10%, he wrote on X.
OpenAI research chief Jakub Pachocki, whose company is the developer of ChatGPT and Anthropic's fiercest rival, had previously urged "extreme caution." He wrote in a blog post that he was concerned nobody was prepared for a rapid advance in AI capabilities.
He said history has reached a moment in which machine intelligence was beginning to surpass that of humans.
The OpenAI executive described in greater detail why modern AI systems were harder to control. He said AI has been allowed to "grow" rather than being designed.
AI systems were a product of complex processes. "Our large-scale training runs are experiments and we are sometimes surprised by their results."
And the more machines' capabilities surpassed human ones, the more difficult it would be to understand what they were capable of.
At the same time, Pachocki sees an argument for continuing rapid research, as developing AI intelligence could defend against the dangers posed by other AI.
It would be needed, among other things, to protect infrastructure and develop entirely new defence mechanisms.
Hacking attacks in recent months, in which so-called AI agents independently broke into other companies' systems in test runs, have been a wake-up call for the industry.
Such agents are AI programs that are intended to carry out tasks independently for users. In a test at OpenAI, one model found a way to get from an ostensibly isolated test environment onto the open internet and then hacked the computer system of the AI platform Hugging Face.
It did this while trying to find a solution to a task assigned, but the incident showed just how far AI systems can go off on their own unexpectedly without their developers noticing.
It also recently emerged that OpenAI's AI agents had already misused a German-language wiki page on a large scale in the spring to coordinate among themselves.
A current protective mechanism used by AI developers is requiring models with AI to explain their actions in human language.
In test runs, the AI agents used the communication option to exchange answers to questions they were asked with each other via notes on the wiki page.
The latest report of a swarm attack, this time by OpenAI agents on a German wiki forum earlier this year, has prompted the company to admit that its own incident reporting needs to improve.
AI researchers discovered last week that a swarm of OpenAI agents had bypassed safety parameters to take over German wiki forum DseWiki to collaborate.
The agents had been allowed to visit the 25-year-old German programming website with read-only access but managed to exploit a web request to hijack the site, turning it into a bulletin board.
The rogue agents made more than 18,000 posts sharing answers, research on their environment and how to bypass sandbox restrictions and hide themselves from human detection, according to the research group Nightingale Collective.
The incident took place sometime between May and June this year, and it is understood that OpenAI learned of the incident weeks ago but kept it under wraps.
This is the third reported incident following two others in July, one involving rogue agents attacking OpenAI's own infrastructure and another where 1,200 rogue OpenAI bots bypassed their restricted environments and launched a five-day attack on the open-source AI platform Hugging Face.
However, only on Saturday did OpenAI acknowledge the German wiki incident in an X post, where they outlined that in response to the latest incident they are "working on a framework for when and how we share AI misalignment incidents".
AI misalignment is industry-speak for when artificial intelligence systems pursue goals or behave in ways that diverge from human intentions, values or safety constraints, with the potential to ignore common sense or implicit human boundaries.
A divided response
Experts are divided on the dangers posed by AI in light of the recent rogue AI attacks, with some such as world-leading AI expert Yann LeCun dismissing apocalyptic scenarios and forecasts that there is a 10-20% risk that AI will end humanity.
While others such as Geoffrey Hinton have said, "What's happening is these things are getting smarter," and warned that "companies investing in AI have a vested interested in telling you… [AI] won't go rogue."
According to the EU's AI Act and its most recently introduced measures, which came into effect in August, companies that offer AI models with systemic risk are obliged to report serious incidents such as misalignment incidents to the EU's AI Office "without undue delay".
Relate
On Monday, the European Commission announced it had received a formal incident report from OpenAI but did not disclose when it was submitted however they remain in close contact with the AI company and are investigating further.
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier underlined how serious the German wiki event was, saying, "Incident reports are not just a tick-box, you have to be quite precise and accurate about the measures you are aiming to take."
The German wiki incident also comes days after the European Commission officially designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE) under its flagship tech legislation, the Digital Services Act.
The co-chair of Parliament's AI Working Group, Michael McNamara, said in response to the latest incident that he believes "the AI Act already gives us the capability to counter agentic risks and it important for the Commission use its powers under the Act".
The Irish MEP also said, "However, these incidents make it clear that the AI Office needs the staff and resources to match both the growing capability of these systems and the growing danger they can pose to society."
Meanwhile, Italian MEP Brando Benifei, who co-chairs the Working Group too, said, "Recent agent breakouts show that the AI Act’s systemic-risk rules are necessary, but their credibility now depends on enforcement."
He added, "The AI Office must use its new powers to obtain model access, conduct independent evaluations and require mitigation, rather than rely on corporate self-reporting. Without action, machine-speed attacks could turn ordinary vulnerabilities into systemic failures.”
What OpenAI says
OpenAI also stated in Saturday's X post that the current misalignment disclosure practices, i.e. reporting when AI broke the rules, need to be expanded to take into account what they describe as a "new phase of model capabilities".
"We and the larger AI community do not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment," said OpenAI, adding that they are "working on a framework and will share it in upcoming weeks" with the cooperation of several government agencies around the world.
On Sunday, OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki published a blog post outlining his concerns over the rapid development of AI risks, stating "We are facing a transition to a world with incredibly intelligent machines, and we need to ensure that transition works out well for humanity."
The Polish computer programmer also revealed his belief that "no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer" and urged that "international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world."
OpenAI says its models solved one of math's hardest problems as researchers cry foul US tech giant OpenAI on Tuesday said it had solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics with an unreleased artificial intelligence model after just 88 hours – and millions of dollars' worth of computing power. But a US mathematician and a researcher at rival Anthropic allege that OpenAI only took up the problem after it had gotten wind of their own AI-assisted efforts to crack the challenge which had demanded months to craft a radically distinctive approach.
OpenAI said Tuesday that one of its unreleased artificial intelligence models had solved a mathematical puzzle that has eluded mathematicians for generations, in a claim which also drew a fight with rival researchers over credit.
Researchers at OpenAI said it took just days – and millions of dollars in computing power – to crack what is known as the Navier-Stokes problem.
Navier-Stokes is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, a list of the hardest open questions in mathematics drawn up by the Clay Mathematics Institute.
It concerns the equations describing how fluids such as air and water move, which are used in aircraft design, weather forecasting and the study of blood flow.
OpenAI said its work showed that these equations are fatally flawed, answering the question as set out by the Millennium Prize.
"This is a significant milestone for AI research, and its promise for the world is that even more of our hardest questions would become possible to answer," Mark Chen, OpenAI's chief research officer, told reporters.
In a blog post describing the breakthrough, OpenAI said it began training a new model in late August, more capable than anything it had released publicly.
Days later, seeing online rumours that a competitor had solved Millennium problems, OpenAI turned the system loose on all six that remain open.
Work on Navier-Stokes showed unexpected promise, and the company poured its computing power into it.
Competing claims
By the final stage, OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck said, 10,000 AI agents – programs that operate on their own – were working on the problem at once, passing messages back and forth.
Chen said the computing costs ran "emphatically in the millions of dollars", with Bubeck adding this was roughly 1,000 times what the company spent on earlier mathematical results.
According to OpenAI's account, the agents reached a solution Saturday, about 88 hours after launching the project.
The claim arrived hours after Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematician at New York University, and Levent Alpoge, who works at OpenAI competitor Anthropic, released their own AI-assisted work on three related equations.
In a statement published alongside his papers, Buckmaster said OpenAI had taken up the problem only after word of his research spread, and pursued the same unusual approach he and Alpoge had spent months developing.
OpenAI's researchers denied having had any access to the rival team's work and said they proposed sharing credit before realising that Buckmaster and Alpoge had fallen short of solving the problem.
"To be clear, we did not use their prompts or proofs to prompt our models or direct our agents," Bubeck said.
However, in a later post on X, OpenAI said "while unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models."
Each Millennium Prize Problem carries a $1 million reward, and only one has been solved since the list was published in 2000. OpenAI says it will not claim money if its finding is confirmed.
According to the prize rules, a solution has to be published in a peer-reviewed journal and survive two years after gaining acceptance in the mathematical community before the institute will even convene a committee to consider the work.
"The process of evaluation is deliberately unhurried, and we shall ensure that it is absolutely rigorous," Professor Martin Bridson, President of the Clay Mathematics Institute, told AFP.
ChatGPT-style AI is revolutionising the world of high-level math by quickly solving famous, long-unsolved problems that stumped experts for decades.
But it has also sparked debate over whether machine-generated answers truly count as real human understanding.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Google unveils 13 bn euro AI expansion in
Finland
Helsinki (AFP) – Google will invest at least 13 billion euros in data centres and other digital infrastructure to power its AI ambitions in Finland, in what the US tech giant called Wednesday its biggest single investment in Europe.
The $15 billion plan also calls for clean energy projects over the next two years, which Google said was "a testament to Finland's leadership in responsibly building AI infrastructure".
It will partner with Finnish companies and four municipalities across the country: Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala.
The buildout aims to power several of the tech giant's services, including its AI chatbot Gemini.
"This investment is historical in Finland," the country's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told AFP after a press conference.
He called it a sign that "we have done the right things in Finland", citing investments in the power grid, electricity production and the labour force.
"This makes us a front-runner in digitalisation and AI," Orpo said.
Since buying a former paper mill and transforming it into a data centre in the coastal city of Hamina in 2009, Google has steadily increased its presence in the country.
Antti Jarvinen, the company's director for Finland, said the Hamina site had already been expanded seven times and currently housed seven data centres.
"Now we are building more in Hamina, expanding that site on a remarkable level, and we are opening up data centre operations in three new locations in the municipalities of Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala," Jarvinen told AFP.
He said the final numbers on how many new data centres would emerge were expected in the coming months.
The construction phase of the new investments is expected for 2027 and 2028, and Google estimated it would boost Finland's GDP by 3.6 billion euros annually and "support more than 37,000 jobs".
Around 16,000 of these jobs will be in the construction sector.
After the construction phase, running the new operations will support around 7,000 direct and indirect jobs annually, Google said. Courting investments
With its cool climate and relatively stable and cheap electricity thanks to nuclear plants as well as extensive wind and hydro power, Finland has seen a boom in data centres in recent years, with dozens already under construction.
Attracting investments in the sector has been a priority for Orpo's right-wing government as the Nordic country grapples with record-high unemployment and sluggish economic growth.
The boom in data centres is expected to rapidly increase power consumption, with the network operator Fingrid forecasting a 40 percent jump in the coming years.
The massive power drain has sparked concern about environmental risks as well as soaring energy costs for Finnish households.
And Finland's Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) recently warned that foreign-owned data centres could raise security risks.
Finnish utility Fortum announced Wednesday that it had signed a 22-year deal to supply power to Google, allowing it to "continue operating the Loviisa nuclear power plant until the end of its operating licenses in 2050".
Without that financing, the plant -- which currently supplies about 10 percent of Finland's electricity -- would not have been able to continue operations past 2030, Fortum said.
AI is wrongly telling us not to worry about sleep apnea, chats show
09.09.2026,
Photo: Christin Klose/dpa
Tossing and turning at night has been linked to multiple health woes, from weakened immune systems to higher risk of inflammation to diminished cognitive abilities.
Even those in the prime of life and at peak fitness can feel less than themselves after a restless night - so it goes without saying that one of the main causes, sleep apnea, should be regarded as a serious health issue.
But according to Deeban Ratneswaran of King’s College London, five of the most widely used artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are inclined to tell patients that sleep apnea is no big deal.
In a paper presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) conference in Barcelona (September 5-9), Ratneswaran explained how in over 700 exchanges between would-be patients and AI platforms, the chatbots in some cases portrayed symptoms as not serious and sought to dissuade users from seeing a doctor when they showed reluctance to seek treatment.
In contrast, if would-be patients were keen to be examined, they were encouraged to make an appointment, whether it was ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek or Grok fielding the query.
According to Ratneswaran, the results not only show that AI cannot be relied on for medical advice, but also that it continues to exhibit sycophancy, a much-criticized flaw seen across most systems.
The chatbots’ inclination "to tell you what you want to hear" led to them u-turning on medically solid advice "more than a third of the time" and "purely because of how the patient talked," Ratneswaran said.
The bots "caved in" even in the most serious examples, such as the risk of a patient nodding off while driving, and even went as far as omitting such life-threatening details when giving advice.
No matter what an AI says, what a patient should do, if concerned about possible sleep apnea, is make an appointment with a clinic.
"Anyone experiencing possible symptoms of sleep apnea should always speak to their doctor for further advice," said Io Hui a respiratory specialist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research.
The condition manifests as snoring and waking multiple times during the night as breathing stops - though a sufferer often has no awareness of or recollection of the disruption - though they can feel tired the next day.
Apnea not only leads to “excessive sleepiness,” according to the ERS, but adds to high blood pressure and raises the risk of any and all of stroke, heart disease and diabetes.
OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out GPT-6, its most powerful AI model yet, to select customers, touting stronger safety safeguards as concerns grow over the cybersecurity risks posed by increasingly capable artificial intelligence systems.
"At this level of capability, safety has to become our top priority," OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters on a call about the release of GPT-6, also known as Astra.
Just over a year has passed since OpenAI launched the previous version of its flagship model, GPT-5.
Concerns about the capabilities of advanced models have grown since then, following incidents involving systems built by OpenAI and rival developer Anthropic.
OpenAI paused some model development for two weeks this summer after two models it was testing were involved in a security breach at AI platform Hugging Face.
The San Francisco-based company said Astra was developed with stronger safeguards after that incident, though Astra itself was not involved in the hack.
Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow. Users on the free tier or the cheapest paid plan will not get access.
"We are working towards getting Astra in everyone's hands as quickly as we can; I know it is frustrating and I appreciate the patience. It should be quick," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on social media Thursday afternoon.
In a blog post, OpenAI said Astra can autonomously handle a wide range of "tedious" computer tasks, including website creation, scientific analysis, game development, cybersecurity and coding.
To illustrate the time savings of building autonomous AI agents with Astra, the company said the model could cut apartment hunting from six hours to under 10 minutes.
"It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.
OpenAI previously had an agreement with Microsoft, one of its earliest and largest investors, under which an exclusivity clause would end once OpenAI reached AGI. Those terms were scrapped in April.
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki acknowledged there was still uncertainty about how a new model behaves once released.
"A model can become very good at achieving a goal, and it can still act in ways that go against what the person intended," Pachocki said on the same call.
"We also have to be willing to slow down or withhold further scaling when our confidence in safety is not sufficient," he added.
Altman explained in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday afternoon why the company decided to release a new model with this level of uncertainty and risk.
"The world is very close to a complete change in the landscape of cyber attacks, and the only way that we see for society to collectively defend itself ... is to use tools like Astra to rapidly defend against these new cyber threats," Altman said.
In July, OpenAI confirmed that it had reached one billion active users across all of its products, including both free and paid users.
OpenAI, Anthropic and more than 100 other organisations signed an open letter last week calling for a coordinated global response to AI-related cybersecurity risks, warning that the window to strengthen cyber defences was limited.
Anthropic went further on Monday, calling for industry-wide coordination on safety and on the pace of developing increasingly capable models.
"I believe that shared safety standards and international coordination on further AI development need to be prioritised now," OpenAI's Pachocki said on Thursday.
The US state of Alabama opened an investigation into OpenAI last week over the Hugging Face breach, his office citing what it called the company's complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards.
It also comes as OpenAI and rival Anthropic are both racing towards becoming public companies over the next several months, though OpenAI might not hold its IPO till sometime in 2027, according to reports.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Spoiler alert: AI in cinema 'just a tool,
won’t replace actors and human beings'
Issued on: 08/09/2026 - FRANCE24
Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome film producer Lahoucine Grimich. He challenges the prevailing narrative that cinema is an industry in existential crisis. While acknowledging that viewing habits have dramatically shifted since the pandemic, he argues that streaming platforms, public support and theatrical exhibition are not competing forces. As demonstrated in the French model, they form parts of an interconnected financing ecosystem in which cinema can adapt without ever abandoning the big screen. He frames filmmaking as a form of cultural sovereignty: societies need films not simply as entertainment, but to recognise themselves and to create what he calls “new imaginaries.”
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