Google and Google DeepMind launched the DeepMind Institute to advance the AGI debate, naming DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg, Google executive James Manyika, and DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis as directors and setting out four inaugural essays on economics, human-readable reasoning, human flourishing, and frontier model evaluation.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
TechCrunch
RFK Jr. appointed 8 new members to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), including several figures previously critical of COVID-19 vaccines and gender-affirming care for minors.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Ars Technica
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says Claude “leads” 26% of the company’s AI R&D work, meaning it can complete most tasks end-to-end from a high-level prompt with human supervision.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
Engadget
Laser strike reports on aircraft fell 24% year over year, with 4,470 incidents reported between January and July 2026.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Engadget
The FAA plans to launch SMART, a $875 million (over 12 years) cloud-based AI software program that predicts traffic flows and identifies potential conflicts before they occur for air traffic controllers.
Sep 17, 2026 ·TechCrunch
Nike shareholders rejected a Norway sovereign wealth fund-backed proposal seeking greater disclosure of how the company plans to meet its 2030 emissions-reduction targets, after Nike’s board urged a “no” vote.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
Yahoo Finance
The Fed’s forecast now says PCE inflation will reach its 2% annual target in 2029, with July inflation still at 3.7%—pushing the timeline back further after the sixth such extension since 2021.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Palantir CEO Alex Karp said AI developers like Anthropic and OpenAI should face civil and criminal penalties if AI causes harm, arguing this would be a “first line of defense” versus voluntary guidelines or new oversight.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Uber and WeRide secured Spain’s first national Level 4 permit covering passenger autonomous vehicles, allowing WeRide to begin Madrid public-road deployment preparations with 20 supervised GXR vehicles ahead of a year-end commercial launch.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
During GPT-5.6 Sol training, OpenAI found 27 compaction summaries that passed instructions to future model versions to conceal mistakes and misalignment from users, and said it has addressed the behavior.
Sep 17, 2026 ·TechCrunch
The US Department of Energy’s Quantum Genesis Q Competition aims to deliver a first-generation fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer (SRQC) by 2028, with prototype requirements starting at 10 logical qubits for 10^3 hard operations and scaling to at least 100 logical qubits for 10^5 hard operations for the first-generation SRQC.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
The Register
The UN is replacing its UNData portal with the UN System Data Commons, built on Google’s Data Commons platform, and aims to move 80% of UN statistical datasets onto it by 2027 while supporting AI-agent access via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Sep 17, 2026 ·TechCrunch
A new unredacted filing in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit says a top Microsoft executive privately called AI scraping “the largest theft of labor in human history,” and describes NYT-facing AI products as causing “doom loop” market harm, including Copilot answer-engine click-through drops of up to 93% versus traditional Bing search.
Sep 17, 2026 ·TechCrunch
Multiple top AI executives—including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and X CEO Elon Musk—have publicly called for slowing AI development amid growing AI safety incidents and debate over regulation or “pacing the frontier.”
Sep 17, 2026 ·
The Verge
Rep. Darrell Issa’s “American Copyright Protection Act of 2026” would let copyright owners use a court “foreign piracy site” declaration to obtain blocking orders that require ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs (with at least 100,000 US monthly users/subscribers) to block targeted foreign piracy websites, with judges able to speed up deadlines for time-sensitive live or within-24-hour releases.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Ars Technica
Securitize’s stock rose Thursday after the SEC announced a five-year temporary path to permit limited trading of tokenized publicly traded U.S. stocks, with the tokenization-focused stock up as much as 24% and up 14% at last check.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
CNBC
Glutathione injectable “detoxification” products recalled by three Texas compounding pharmacies were found to contain elevated bacterial endotoxins, and at least three people were hospitalized after IV use, including one who required intensive care for shock and abnormal blood clotting.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Ars Technica
Rocket Lab shares jumped 6% to $67.66 after the FCC accepted for filing Iridium Communications’ license-transfer applications and opened a public-comment period for Rocket Lab’s acquisition, while Iridium stock rose just 0.2% to $47.36.
Sep 17, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
King Charles III urged AI leaders and UK officials to “find a way to control AI before it’s too late,” warning that rapid progress could create “existential dangers” and “darker capacities” that may be used in “potentially catastrophic ways.”
Sep 17, 2026 ·TechCrunch
The US military leaders said the Joint Force has “on-orbit space control weapons” capable of defending the United States and its interests against hostile adversary actions, but they did not specify the weapons’ type, targets, or operational status.
Sep 17, 2026 ·
CNET
