Good morning, Andrew here. President Trump’s so-called Super Intelligence Force is officially taking shape. Over the weekend, Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence and a former S.E.C. chair, was announced as the leader of the initiative. Clayton has 120 days to draft a report recommending the proper role of government in artificial intelligence. If you were drafting this, what would you recommend for the government’s role in A.I.? Specifically, where should the government intervene, and where should it step out of the way? Please let me know. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
More safety concerns about OpenAIThe global discussion about artificial intelligence is largely focused on safety. The latest developments at OpenAI will probably keep it that way. Questions about the A.I. giant’s commitment to safety are likely to hang heavily over the company and the industry as a whole — with new comments by its C.E.O., Sam Altman, probably unlikely to help. The latest:
OpenAI is a longtime focus for concerns about safety. Several executives left the company this summer, including Johannes Heidecke, a former head of safety, and Chloé Bakalar, a former ethics chief. That focus is despite Altman’s joining other top A.I. executives in calling for a slowdown in development of the technology and adopting measures like letting third-party evaluators examine companies’ products for safety. Meanwhile, some OpenAI employees have warned that the company faces significant legal liability over cybersecurity breaches by its models, according to The Financial Times. Altman has said he thinks A.I.’s benefits outweigh its potential risks, seeking to draw a distinction between OpenAI and its chief rival, Anthropic. That means “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” he told Politico. Altman has cited efforts to improve safety as a reason OpenAI wouldn’t go public before next year. In recent weeks, Altman has likened A.I. to air travel, in that preventing accidents altogether is impossible but companies have to be focused on preventing them in order to survive. That said, A.I. companies have favored self-regulation rather than a government agency’s directly overseeing the industry — an approach the Trump administration supports. (The latest on that: President Trump named Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, to be the czar for what he calls “super intelligence,” his rebranding of A.I.) In other A.I. news:
Flávio Bolsonaro will have a runoff against Lula in Brazil’s presidential race. Bolsonaro, a right-wing candidate and the eldest son of the imprisoned former president, Jair Bolsonaro, held a narrow lead over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after Sunday’s election. A win by Bolsonaro in the runoff later this month would be the latest victory for the right in Latin America and for an ally of President Trump. Russia imposes “anti-epidemic” measures after the death of a lab worker. The authorities there took action after the worker, a 28-year-old technician at a lab in Siberia focused on plague and other infectious diseases, was diagnosed with pneumonia of “unknown” origin. They said no microorganisms from her work were detected in samples. Still, some public health experts said they were “concerned,” including Ashish Jha, a former Biden administration official. “Digger,” Warner Bros.’s final movie before its merger, flops. The film, starring Tom Cruise and directed by the Oscar winner Alejandro Iñárritu, grossed an estimated $8 million in its opening weekend against an estimated $150 million budget. It was the latest dismal showing for Warner Bros. this year — before its parent company is set to be acquired by Paramount tomorrow. Nervous marketsOil prices and bond yields are stable this morning after warning lights for several markets dimmed over the weekend. The catalysts? More oil has become available to sell, while the weak U.S. job report on Friday seemed to take pressure off the Fed to raise rates. But traders remain wary of signs that widening conflict in the Middle East could soon disturb oil markets again. The latest:
Energy supplies loom large over the oil market. Exports of crude oil from the Middle East rose above prewar levels last week, according to the ship-tracking firm Kpler. That came after the Group of 7 nations said they would release more than 100 million barrels of diesel over four months to bring down soaring prices. Prices are falling at the pump. The average price of diesel in the U.S. is $6.32 today, according to AAA, 13 cents below where it was a week ago. (Still, some truckers squeezed by high diesel prices are saving money by waiting for rain to clean their trucks.) More attacks could cut supplies again.
Then there’s the bond market. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had declared himself “the house” in a standoff with government bond investors, admitted after bond yields continued to rise that the house doesn’t always win. Investors are growing worried that the rising bond yields will damage the balance sheets of artificial-intelligence hyperscalers and other significant borrowers. (Paramount, for example, will pay an estimated $400 million more in annual interest payments because rates rose while it waited to sell its debt.) Investors will be looking for signs this week. The closely watched ISM Services index comes out today, and notes from the most recent Fed meeting will be released Wednesday. “The highly unsettled bond market makes the incoming U.S. data and Fed communication particularly relevant,” Jim Reid, the global head of macro and thematic research at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note this morning.
Claiming a stake of the moonA push by NASA to return to the moon by 2028 and competition between the rocket companies founded by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have revived the public’s focus on lunar missions. What’s unclear is what happens when countries get there. In the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed that the moon belonged to no one. But that didn’t cover what was inside, including deposits of helium, frozen water and other resources near the moon’s south pole that the U.S. and China are interested in. Musk envisions “trillion-dollar markets” including lunar data centers, while Bezos wants to move heavy industry to the moon and leave Earth a “garden planet.” This has led to discussions about what claims governments and companies can make, Selam Gebrekidan writes for The Times: One argument is gaining traction in the world of space law: States can own what they extract even if they can’t own the moon itself. Some legal scholars draw analogies from the Law of the Sea, which addresses resource extraction in the deep sea, another common heritage of humankind. If nations can mine the deep sea, the argument goes, then they can mine in outer space, said Hussein Badreddine, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who specializes in space law. Many countries have set their own laws governing state and private activities in space. A United States law from 2015, for example, allows companies to mine in space. The Artemis Accords, a set of nonbinding principles established by the United States and signed by 76 nations, declare that extracting resources from the moon, Mars, comets or asteroids does not violate the Outer Space Treaty. China and at least 12 other nations have reached a similar agreement for an international lunar research station. In the end, according to Bleddyn Bowen, a professor of astropolitics at Durham University in England, “If China and America are the two countries doing everything on the moon, they can basically sort out the rules between them.” We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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