AI leaves the lab. We follow what happens next.

Archive September 3, 2026 20:08 UTC
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Signal: OpenAI says the AGI era has started; a senator wants it made a crime; the guardrails are being sold off separately.
OpenAI Ships GPT-6 Astra: 'We Are in the AGI Era'
Greg Brockman told reporters it is not unreasonable to feel we are now in the AGI era as OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra to its cybersecurity customers first - and its 99.9% score on ARC-AGI-3 came only from the harness that preserves the opaque reasoning safety researchers want visible.
ARC Prize: 62.7% on the standard harness, 99.9% only with the opaque reasoning kept Brockman: there is no contractual AGI trigger any more, so the term is a spiritual concept Astra is priced at Claude Fable 5.1's $10/$50, two and a half times the Sol promo rate
The RaceCompanies, models and money
Nvidia Pays $12.9B for the Home of Open Models
Jensen Huang is buying the platform 18 million developers use to share three million open models for $12.93bn, closing in 2027 subject to regulators, with a promise that Nvidia compute will never be required - unenforceable until someone tests it.
The Decoder: $11.9bn cash plus $1bn to retain staff, per the SEC filing Wired: Nvidia rallied 80 companies behind open weights weeks before buying the hub
Salesforce: The Claude Bill Ate the Margin Benioff said in May he expected to spend $300m with Anthropic this year
NEWOpenAI Walked From $1B Rather Than Deal With Musk
The LabResearch, benchmarks and safety
NEWA Startup Sells Models With the Safety Removed
Agents Ran a Ransomware Break-In in 10 Hours The Register: the agents left the victim an 80-page report on its own security failings
AI Closes a Mammogram With No Doctor
The WorkbenchTools and agents
Raycast Charges to Use Your Own Key
NEWNvidia Wires the Idle PCs in Your House
NEWMicrosoft Prices Transcription at 10c an Hour
Cursor Agents Run on Your Own Machines
The FightLaw, policy and power
NEWSanders: 20 Years in Prison for Superintelligence
Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar would permanently ban superintelligent AI, pause advanced development until a new cabinet-level regulator writes safety rules, and put violators away for 20 years - the same hours OpenAI's president said the AGI era has probably already started.
The bill is announced, not introduced: a summary exists, no text has been filed
Survivor Sues xAI: Grok Made New Images of Her Abuse
A Jane Doe plaintiff says xAI ingested images of her own childhood abuse and had Grok generate fresh child sexual abuse material from them - reuse, not just generation - while Musk said in January he was unaware Grok had ever made any such images.
NEWPentagon: Anthropic Is Still a Supply-Chain Risk
Anthropic Names Its Copycat: Moonshot AI Forkast: the confidential filing values Moonshot at $50bn and targets a $3bn raise
The FalloutJobs, money, daily life
Data Center Vote Has Now Cost Three Councilmen KCUR: the recall group has about as many members as Independence has residents
NEWFlock Taught Police to Watch the No Kings Marches
Four AI Giants Went Down at Once
ChatterOpinion, drama and noise
Meta Stops Grading Staff on AI Use
$25M Minimum to Buy Into Anthropic
Ghost Note AI Called the Death Cap Edible
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE — AI news without the engagement trap.
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