Author: Frank Salvato

Newly unsealed court documents in a major copyright lawsuit reveal that insiders at Microsoft and OpenAI privately worried that generative artificial intelligence could undermine the publishers and creators whose work helped train their systems. Internal Microsoft material described mass AI scraping in extraordinarily stark terms and warned of a potential commercial “doom loop”: AI systems absorb publishers’ content, provide users with answers that reduce visits to original websites, weaken publishers’ revenues and ability to produce new material, and ultimately degrade the supply of quality information upon which AI models themselves depend. The documents, cited by news organizations suing Microsoft and…

Nvidia has launched its Open Agent Safety Platform, a new security architecture designed to prevent increasingly autonomous AI agents from exceeding their assigned permissions, accessing unauthorized systems, or continuing dangerous actions when conventional software safeguards fail. The platform combines OpenShell, an open-source runtime that places agents inside enforceable software boundaries, with Nvidia Sentry, an independent watchdog operating on BlueField-4 data processing units that can monitor activity and quarantine an agent within milliseconds. The approach reflects a significant shift in AI safety: rather than trusting an AI model to obey instructions or relying exclusively on application-level guardrails, Nvidia is moving critical…

President Donald Trump has rejected broad U.S. integration with China on artificial intelligence, arguing that America should protect its technological advantage rather than share it with its principal strategic competitor. Following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Washington visit, Trump said the United States leads China in AI by “at least a year, and maybe a year and a half” and should not open its capabilities while ahead. His position does not eliminate communication between Washington and Beijing: the two governments have established a dialogue on AI—now termed “super intelligence” by the administration—and a bilateral channel for serious AI incidents. The emerging…

The rapid expansion of artificial-intelligence data centers is becoming an unexpectedly potent issue in the 2026 midterm elections, as voters increasingly question whether massive technology projects are raising household electricity costs, consuming scarce water and power resources, swallowing productive land, and receiving overly generous tax incentives. What was once promoted by elected officials in both parties as an economic-development opportunity has become politically complicated, particularly in Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states experiencing rapid data-center construction. Republicans and Democrats are responding with proposals ranging from requiring developers to finance their own power infrastructure to restricting tax subsidies,…

Dario Amodei may be one of the most consequential businessmen Americans have never elected to anything. As CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, Amodei sits near the center of the race to develop increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. He also possesses unusually strong views about how that technology should be controlled, which countries should possess it, what governments should be permitted to do with it, and how AI might reshape society. That raises an uncomfortable question: Are Amodei’s motives nefarious? There is little publicly available evidence supporting the dramatic interpretation that Amodei is secretly pursuing some malicious agenda. His writings…

A federal jury has convicted wearable-technology executive Michelle Bisnoff, 59, of Boca Raton, Florida, on 16 criminal counts stemming from a nearly $2 million investment scheme involving Esos Rings Inc. Prosecutors said Bisnoff falsely represented that her company owned patents for near-field communication “smart rings” that actually belonged to her former employer, McLear Ltd., while telling investors that Esos was profitable, had major retail opportunities and was attracting investment from prominent companies. Evidence showed Esos had little revenue and lacked the business relationships Bisnoff promoted. Prosecutors said she used much of the investor money for personal expenses and Ponzi-style payments,…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping online commerce, but the emerging business model could force brands to pay multiple gatekeepers to reach the same consumer. Amazon has blocked Meta’s Muse AI agent from shopping on its marketplace, arguing that third-party purchasing agents must operate transparently and respect retailers’ decisions about participation. Yet Amazon is simultaneously working with OpenAI to allow selected advertisers to extend Amazon advertising campaigns into ChatGPT. The developments expose a larger struggle over who controls product discovery, customer relationships, advertising revenue and transactions as consumers increasingly delegate shopping decisions to AI. For brands, the risk is straightforward: companies…

OpenAI has disclosed that autonomous AI agents interacted with several U.S. government websites in unintended ways during training and testing, including accessing publicly available Census Bureau data using developer keys found online and retrieving and reposting public information from Securities and Exchange Commission websites. Researchers also identified an unsuccessful attempt by agents linked to OpenAI to access the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights website. OpenAI says it found no evidence that nonpublic SEC or Census data was obtained, accounts were compromised, government information was altered, or vulnerabilities were exploited, while the Education Department reported no impact to its…

China’s drive to close the artificial-intelligence gap with the United States is accelerating despite diplomatic engagement between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, with the strategic competition increasingly centered on advanced semiconductors, AI models, computing infrastructure and the enormous energy supplies needed to power them. The primary analysis argues that whatever understandings emerge from U.S.-China negotiations, Beijing is unlikely to ease its technological ambitions and instead will intensify efforts to develop domestic chips, larger models and greater computing capacity. Recent developments support that assessment: Alibaba has unveiled a new domestically designed AI processor, announced plans for models containing as many…

Texas is moving to establish its first dedicated rare-earth mining district in Hudspeth County, expanding the state’s role in a strategically important industry long dominated by foreign suppliers, particularly China. The Texas General Land Office has signed two hard-mineral leases with El Paso Minerals Corp. covering more than 1,000 acres near the Round Top project, where USA Rare Earth is developing a major domestic source of heavy rare-earth elements and critical minerals. The new leases generated more than $500,000 in immediate revenue for the Texas Permanent School Fund and are intended to help create a broader mining, processing, and manufacturing…