U.S. politicians are responding to this weeks dire safety warnings from an AI researcher who quit his post at Anthropic, maker of the popular Claude chatbot.
As reported by Reuters:
Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, on the TV program "The View," pointed to legislation to regulate AI's "catastrophic risks." Cruz oversees a Senate committee with oversight of the U.S. Commerce Department, the agency with in-house AI safety researchers.
Cruz was all-in, meanwhile, as Washington handed the state of Texas oversight of "highly automated" air taxis that will be ferrying humans across the skies. "A day of celebration," Cruz said, as reported by NBCDFW.
DeAI News follows developments like this because, in theory, decentralized AI builders say they might be able to solve a lot of the most dire challenges raised by the traditional AI industry.
Stories we're reading:
AI agents slash the cost of a quantum attack on Bitcoin: Decrypt
Quantum, crypto and AI are repricing cybersecurity budgets: PYMNTS
Nvidia's Huang says AI fears are a sales pitch for security: Axios
Anthropic disrupts Russian hacking campaign run on Claude: Reuters
Chinese firms used 'illicit intermediaries' to distill Anthropic models: WSJ
Hawley opens Senate probe into OpenAI's Hugging Face hack: Reuters
OpenAI puts Pro subscriptions on hold due to Astra demand: TechCrunch
Newsom signs over a dozen bills regulating social media, AI: Courthouse News
Pentagon could loan $5B to AI cloud firm advised by Trump supporter's bank: WSJ
DeepSeek's new open-source model cuts costs, boosts speed: @deepseek_ai on X
Crypto evangelist Anthony Pompliano rolls out AI tax product: Anthony Pompliano on X
Hot takes:
Andreessen: software is about to eat the world much faster — Marc Andreessen on X
Fifteen years after his "software is eating the world" essay, the a16z co-founder says tech now holds 94.4% of the market value among the world's 10 biggest companies, up from 31.5%.
Andreessen argues coding agents have broken the limit of human hands: Cognition's Devin went from writing 13% of the startup's own production code to more than 90% in a year.
His answer to the job-loss worry is that compilers, open source and the cloud all drew the same predictions and each one made engineers more valuable, not less.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The post doubles as an announcement that a16z is backing Cognition a second time; repliers were quick to point out that the VC firm holds a stake in the debate.
Bonus:
U.S. lets Texas oversee 'highly automated' air taxis — NBC DFW
Project Nexus is a three-year test program that starts with piloted cargo flights and works toward autonomous ones, as reported by NBC DFW. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said federal officials have "delegated authority to the state of Texas." Archer, one of the participants, wants to carry passengers at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.