Four days after a researcher publicly quit his job at Anthropic, warning that top AI firms are not “acting responsibly” and that their products might be on track to “kill us all,” the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, seemed to basically agree. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay that he published today on his personal website and posted to social media.
Politicians have no shortage of ideas about how to rein in AI: a 100 percent federal tax rate on data-center incentives, a pause on all development of advanced AI, new standards to block AI agents from going rogue, a halt to the construction of data centers altogether.
The flurry of proposals has been impossible to miss, with both Democrats and Republicans proclaiming that something must be done to avert a disaster foretold by AI insiders.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
It has been 25 years since nearly 3,000 people died in a terror attack on the World Trade Center on September 11.
This week, the White House removed a Tetris-inspired game called Build the Wall from its recently launched arcade website after the Tetris Company publicly warned that it takes copyright law “very seriously.”
Here are a few options the White House might consider to replace the game:
Super PAC-Man
Players direct a round creature with a constantly moving mouth through a maze as he munches on tiny coins.
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Learning how to drive is a rare instance in a teenager’s life, Liz Krieger argues in a recent article: “This wobbly uncertainty, this return to a kind of innocence, is the rarest condition in a 16-year-old, and it lasts about as long as a learner’s permit does.
Williamsburg’s gentrifiers are being gentrified.
Silicon Valley’s acquisition frenzy hits a new peak with Nvidia’s massive deal with Hugging Face.
His plan to bury the film blew up in his face like a stick of dynamite.
A look at the growing industry of buying and selling dinosaur fossils.
The refunds comes ahead of the November midterms where high health costs are expected to play a factor.
The Trump administration and states are policing Medicaid spending on autism therapy. Vulnerable children are losing access.
Red states claiming “sovereign injury” seek to impose nationwide restrictions.
A county coroner confirmed the death. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had raised the possibility Josh Shapiro’s staff made it up.
Theresa Long is one of a few advisers to the health secretary examining whether the government covered up vaccine side effects.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
The Louisiana Republican’s comments come as both Democrats and Republicans have been forced to find ways to address the backlash against data centers.
The new Fed chair will have the spotlight at the central bank’s high-profile conference in Jackson Hole. He should use it.
Vice President JD Vance’s visit marked his second to Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in four months.
As part of our weeklong coverage marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the launch of the United States’ so-called war on terror, we take a look at the human, financial and environmental costs of U.S. military intervention around the world with Neta Crawford, co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Researchers at the Costs of War Project estimate that nearly a million people have been killed as a direct result of U.S.
“The ‘war on terror’ was always a construct to be waged, never quite to be ended.” We discuss the origins and impacts of the global “war on terror,” launched by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., with Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.
The life of billionaire investor Leon Black, the private-equity behemoth he helped build, and his unfortunate friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The life of billionaire investor Leon Black, the private-equity behemoth he helped build, and his unfortunate friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Just call it the Five-Grand Old Party. This week, at the Republican Party’s midterm faux-convention, President Trump announced something called (inevitably) the “Trump Dividend.” The premise is simple.
If only the GOP midterm convention succeeds in its aim of electing Donald Trump president, things will get a lot better in this country. Isn’t he already president? Hush! At the Unprecedented (But Very President-ed) Republican Midterm Convention, we reject such trivial objections! “I know many of you are still struggling thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats,” said Richard Hudson, the National Republican Committee chair.
Last month, a team of scientists published a high-profile paper describing how they’d taught an AI model to help produce brand-new, deadly viruses. The AI—a “genome-language model” trained on DNA sequences—had designed multiple new genomes that scientists then synthesized into functional viruses. And some of those viruses were capable of killing bacteria in a dish.
News of AI-made viruses went over poorly.
Jeremy Weine / Getty
People watch and take pictures as a drone light show depicting the Twin Towers appears along the skyline during testing of the Tribute in Light installation in Lower Manhattan on September 9, 2026, as seen from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey.