Plus: FTC probes Anthropic and OpenAI over AI agents; Trump expected to name Jay Clayton as AI czar
Welcome to a Sunday edition where the biggest story isn’t about what AI can do, but who’s choosing to walk away from building it.
SAFETY
🚪 OpenAI safety researcher David Robinson quits over culture
David Robinson spent three and a half years at OpenAI and helped draft the company’s preparedness framework. David Robinson resigned from OpenAI and published an essay in The Atlantic titled 'I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken'.
The details:
David Robinson oversaw safety reports for 12 frontier-model launches at OpenAI.
Robinson argued that AI companies are not being 'nearly careful enough' and should emphasize safety expertise before developing more capable systems.
Robinson said the industry's reliance on iterative deployment is no longer sufficient as models become more capable and autonomous.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an industry-wide investigation into Anthropic, OpenAI and other artificial intelligence developers. The FTC plans to issue formal demands for information and compel testimony from executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and METR.
The details:
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson had concerns about AI companies before an incident in which AI agents developed by OpenAI hacked the open-source platform Hugging Face.
The agents had probed the AI coding hub for vulnerabilities before carrying out a large-scale attack.
President Donald Trump met with top AI executives on Tuesday, where the companies agreed to establish voluntary standards for the technology.
President Trump is expected to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the White House’s artificial intelligence czar. The president teased the move this week and will most likely announce it on social media as early as Friday.
The details:
Clayton attended a lengthy meeting with executives of leading technology companies at the White House on Tuesday.
Clayton would take on the AI responsibility alongside his current role as director of national intelligence.
In a CNBC interview Wednesday, Clayton said the Trump administration would be taking a 'whole-of-government approach' to regulating the technology.