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Think about how surreal that agreement is for a moment. Just a few months ago, Musk and Altman sat in court attacking each other’s reputations in a (failed) lawsuit that Musk brought against his former OpenAI colleague that was—on paper at least—about whether or not Altman was a trustworthy steward of such dangerous technology.

Amodei’s rift with OpenAI is even deeper. Anthropic was founded in 2021 because Amodei didn’t think Altman took the risks of the technology they were building seriously enough. Anthropic and OpenAI have been competing in a winner-takes-all race ever since. (Hassabis has stayed out of the drama, but his company remains a rival.)

Now, it seems, they’re all in agreement: The latest generation of LLMs aren’t safe and everyone needs to figure out what to do about it. The public messaging from the top AI labs has taken a doomer turn.

It’s easy to be cynical. It’s not at all clear what any of them mean by a slowdown or how it would work. These companies also care a lot about how they come across. With trillion-dollar IPOs in their sights, OpenAI and Anthropic need to reassure investors that they’re the grown-ups in the room while at the same time hinting at the power of the monsters they have created—and intend to tame. Calling for a slowdown does both.

And yet the vibe at the top of these firms really does appear to have shifted. Amodei’s latest post landed six days after OpenAI published an essay by Jakub Pachocki, the firm’s chief scientist, in which he also laid out why he’s concerned about what will happen if the pace of development of LLMs continues unchecked. In short, Pachocki is worried that OpenAI’s ability to build powerful models now far outstrips its ability to monitor and control them.

Amodei and Pachocki each cite the cyberattack against AI firm Hugging Face by a swarm of OpenAI’s agents in July—a hack that OpenAI did not even realize had taken place until days after it was all over—as a wake-up call.

But their exact position is hard to pin down. Pachocki both calls for a slowdown and highlights an urgent need to stay ahead: “The strongest argument I see for continuing to train much smarter models quickly is the need to build defensive systems against the dangers posed by other AI,” he writes. As Pachocki frames it, AI firms are locked in a literal arms race. Slowing down is good, winning is better.

(Don’t forget: OpenAI just spent millions of dollars and a staggering amount of computer power to rush out a controversial math result a few days ahead of Anthropic.)

But let’s assume a slowdown happens. Top labs agree to spend more time and resources on finding ways to monitor and control existing models instead of making more capable ones. They invite outside auditors in to help evaluate those models.

What might this coordinated effort actually achieve? Consider the Hugging Face attack again. OpenAI has said that the model that drove most of the rogue agents was a “highly persistent” next-generation model that it was testing in-house. The implication is that OpenAI has built a model so good it’s dangerous.  

But if you read the reports about the Hugging Face hack published by OpenAI and METR, a third-party firm that OpenAI called in to help them understand what happened, what you come away with is the impression not of a model that was too powerful for OpenAI to keep up with, but of a broken model that OpenAI failed to train properly.

The agents did what they did—including leaving messages for one another, delegating work to other agents, and scouring their environment for any means possible to complete their tasks—because they had been rewarded during training for doing exactly those things. There were also errors in the training setup, such as tasks that were impossible to complete, which pushed the models to find unexpected workarounds that were also rewarded. At the time, many of these issues went overlooked or unreported.

OpenAI says it has stopped training this new model and locked it down. That makes it sound like it has caged a dangerous beast. In fact, OpenAI has shelved a faulty product.  

That’s not to say a faulty product can’t be dangerous. Broken software has even killed people in the past. But as the discussion of a slowdown gathers steam, it’s worth remembering that all of this is self-inflicted. A slowdown might have some altruistic side effects. But it’ll mostly give these tech titans a chance to clean up the mess on their own assembly lines.  

Transparency from these frontier labs will be key to any meaningful effort to reform, restrain, or regulate AI. Otherwise, the rest of us will still only have their word for exactly what they’ve built and how safe it is—whatever pace they’re going.   

To continue this discussion about AI’s latest doomer moment, join me and my colleagues for a subscriber-exclusive Roundtable discussion tomorrow, September 15, at 11 a.m. US eastern time. We hope to see you there! %!s()

There’s another option—one that has been growing in popularity in recent years, especially for donated organs that aren’t in the healthiest state. Some hospitals opt to put them on machines that pump them with nutrients and remove waste products, usually for around six to 12 hours. It’s a bit like being back in a body.

This allows doctors to assess the organs, and some recent studies suggest that time spent on these perfusion machines helps them do better once they’re transplanted. Now, scientists have found that perfused organs seem to get younger, at least at a molecular level.

The research, shared with MIT Technology Review, provides molecular clues as to why organs from younger donors are known to have a higher success rate. It might also help explain why perfused organs are less likely to fail once they make it into a recipient. 

The researchers behind the study hope to find new ways to test the health of donated organs and potentially develop additional tools to repair organs that might otherwise be discarded. “If [we] can improve the utilization of organs beyond what the current systems can do, then that’s a win in my book,” says Jesse Poganik, who studies aging at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and coauthored the study.

Clocking organs

Poganik—along with colleagues including Heidi Yeh and Alban Longchamp, transplant surgeons at Mass General Brigham—used “aging clocks” to assess donated livers. These are scientific tools designed to measure biological age—a result that is meant to convey more about the health status of an organ (or person) than chronological age.

In an initial experiment, the team used a clock to look at the patterns of chemical marks on DNA in 37 samples taken from 19 donated livers. Such epigenetic patterns are known to change as we age. But when the team compared samples from livers kept on ice and those that were perfused, the team found a “striking” pattern in the latter.

“Machine-perfused livers, in spite of being older or having other disadvantageous characteristics, had a biological age that was lower than [non-perfused] livers that were chronologically younger,” says Yeh, who led the work.

To investigate further, Yeh and her colleagues analyzed another 208 samples from 103 donated livers. This time, they used different aging clocks—ones that essentially measure how genes are working. They studied samples biopsied from the livers after they had been stored for up to around six hours either in cold storage or on machine perfusion.

In most cases, they also assessed a second sample taken around an hour after the livers had been transplanted into a recipient. Once the organ’s blood supply is reestablished in the body, “you have a few other things to do,” says Longchamp. “Then you just do a quick biopsy before you close.”

According to the clocks, which were developed to measure age and risk of death, the machine-perfused livers were biologically younger, the team found. “Pumping them at 34 degrees with oxygen and nutrients actually reversed the biological age,” says Longchamp. The results have been been shared with colleagues at an industry conference, he says. 

“If you adjust out chronological age … to have a fair head-to-head comparison, the difference between the two is on the order of 30%,” says Poganik. “It’s logical to say that perfusion drives this effect.”

The biological ages of all the livers tended to increase as soon as they were put into a recipient’s body, probably as a result of stresses on the organs. But still, the effect endured—the perfused organs remained biologically younger. 

Nathanael Raschzok, a transplant surgeon at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany who was not involved in the research, says the work is impressive. But it’s not yet clear what these changes might mean for the recipients of these organs, he says. The organs in the study were donated by people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Raschzok wants to know the effect of perfusion on the liver of an 80-year-old. “Every so often, we use organs from 70-, 80-, 85-year-old donors,” he says.

A better understanding of why the organs appear to be getting biologically younger might lead to therapies that achieve the same effect with a drug that could potentially be used to treat a donated organ for a fraction of the price, he adds. That’s important because perfusion is expensive—Raschzok says it costs around €10,000 in Germany (a quarter of the budget for a transplant), while the cost in the US comes to around $80,000 to $100,000 per organ, says Yeh.

Molecular repair

Yeh and her colleagues weren’t able to study most of the livers before perfusion. That’s because donated organs are generally not considered to be under the purview of the hospital until they’ve been placed on perfusion machines, she says. (Organ procurement procedures vary, but for the team as Mass General Brigham, donated organs are put on perfusion devices at the donor’s hospital. “There’s this sort of nebulous period where it’s not clear who the organ belongs to,” says Yeh.)

Still, by looking at the genes and molecular pathways that seem to be altered in perfused organs, she and her colleagues can garner some clues. At a molecular level, the team saw changes in cell pathways linked to inflammation and the structure of tissues, for example. They also saw more activity in a pathway that allows cells to remove and recycle damaged cell parts, says Yeh.

Poganik hopes to develop some kind of test that would determine which organs, on the basis of their biological age, are suitable for transplantation. He and his colleagues are also experimenting with potential drug treatments that might push the biological age of an organ even lower.

In the meantime, any liver that is not from a “perfect, young, brain-dead donor” could probably benefit from perfusion, says Yeh. The devices are already transforming transplant surgery. Just a few years ago, she says, she and her colleagues would avoid using livers from people who’d suffered a circulatory death (when the heart stops beating and there’s a damaging lack of blood flow to organs) and were over 40. Today, they use livers from such donors over the age of 70. “Perfusion has completely changed the landscape of transplantation in the last three years,” she says. %!s()

The time at his home county was split by four seasons with Surrey between 2017 and 2020, while he played four matches for England across all three formats.

The batter and part-time leg spinner returned to Durham to be captain and led them to the County Championship Division Two title in 2023 before he handed over the skipper's role to Alex Lees after the 2024 season.

He has spent the past two years in a player-coach role, playing primarily for the second XI.

But the 36-year-old will now become a full-time member of Durham's coaching team, working with both the first and second teams.

Borthwick's sole Test appearance for England came in Sydney in the Ashes series of 2013-14, picked to perform a dual role as lower-order left-handed batter and leg-spinner - and he claimed four wickets despite a heavy England defeat.

That came nearly three years after matches in both 50-over and T20 internationals, but the Sunderland man played an important role at Durham, winning the Championship in 2009 and 2013 and the One-Day Cup the following year.

He left Durham in 2016 - after their relegation due to financial problems - but returned after four seasons at The Oval to finally lead his home county back to Division One after a triumphant 2023 campaign.

Borthwick retires with more than 11,500 first-class runs to his name and 22 first-class centuries with a best score of 216, in addition to a haul of 229 wickets.

"To win trophies across all formats, play alongside some of the best players in the game and represent my country are things I'm hugely proud of," he told Durham's official website, external.

"Durham has been such a big part of my life and my career, so I'm delighted that my next chapter will be here. I've really enjoyed developing my coaching and I'm excited to make that my focus." %!s()

But the pair are 10th of 11 teams in the constructors' championship and have a best result of ninth for Fernando Alonso in the Dutch Grand Prix.

On Monday, Honda announced a new head of its engine development programme.

Yoichiro Fukao, the former deputy leader of the project, will become Large Project Leader of the F1 project.

He has replaced Tetsushi Kakuda, who has led power-unit development this season.

A statement said: "This organisational change is a planned transition designed to ensure the reliable transfer of technical expertise to the next generation of engineers.

"Following the introduction of the new regulations in 2026, and with further regulatory changes expected from 2027 onwards, Honda aims to establish a robust development framework and deliver a highly competitive PU by transitioning to the new structure at an early stage."

Honda introduced its first engine upgrade of the campaign at the Dutch Grand Prix.

But although head of trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara said Honda had "observed (a) step forward in terms of performance on our metrics", the step is said to have been small, and less than Aston Martin had expected.

The lack of performance of the Honda engine is said to be worth at least a second of lap time, adding up the losses from the performance of the internal combustion engine and the operation of the electrical system.

F1 engines in 2026 have a near 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, and efficiency in energy recovery is paramount when the batteries are almost completely deploying and recharging several times a lap.

Alonso was 2.2 seconds off the fastest time of the session when he was eliminated in the first part of qualifying at last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

Honda's stuttering start to its official return to F1 is rooted in its tortuous route to the start of this season.

In October 2020, it announced that it was pulling out of F1 at the end of 2021.

Although Honda continued to supply engines to Red Bull on a more low-key basis until the end of 2025, only a small hub of engineers remained on the programme. The others were sent off to work in other parts of the company.

They remained competitive because development was frozen as part of the F1 rules from 2021-25.

When Honda decided in May 2023 to return to F1 in an official capacity for 2026, it set about rebuilding a team of development engineers, but did not bring back the ones who had produced the successful 2021 engine.

Instead, engineers with no experience of F1 were brought into the programme.

This season, it has started the process of bringing back the experienced engineers in the hope the programme can be accelerated.

For Alonso, this process has been especially painful, because he has already endured three difficult years of uncompetitive Honda engines with McLaren from 2015-17, when the company last returned to F1 after a hiatus.

This latest development comes as the veteran two-time champion has still not confirmed whether he will continue in F1 after the end of this season, when he is out of contract with Aston Martin. %!s()

"Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose," said Labour MP and committee chair Alex Sobel.

A government spokesperson said AI is "advancing at an extraordinary pace" and is creating both opportunities and risks.

They said: "We're leading global efforts to test and understand AI, with the best-resourced security institute in the world, that will help us develop the standards and safeguards necessary to keep people safe."

On Saturday, the head of the US AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, proposed a plan calling for the regulation of AI.

Amodei's plan includes global regulation, industry-wide regulation and independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed.

He also urged the pace of development to be slowed down and the bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, said they agreed with him.

One human rights concern raised in recent years is that AI can display biases against particular groups if trained on large datasets scraped from the internet which can include racist, sexist and other undesirable material.

AI could also be used to create and spread misinformation.

In a summary of its 100-page report, external, the JCHR points out that AI has been responsible for numerous abuses of human rights.

It cites as examples the use of AI to create sexualised images of women and girls and scanning people's faces without their consent.

The JCHR advocates the creation of a "single, independent AI oversight body... on a statutory basis".

It argues that the current legal framework which applies to AI is "fragmented and difficult to navigate", "leaving gaps in protection".

"The AI Bill should establish a regulatory regime that classifies different risk levels and mandate more demanding obligations for higher risk AI systems and models," it says.

"Obligations should be placed on all stages of the AI lifecycle, ensuring those responsible in the supply chain for designing, amending and utilising AI systems are aware of their obligations and they are effectively addressed.

"Some uses of AI should be prohibited outright because they are incompatible with human rights. Potential areas for action include subliminal techniques, and inappropriate use of profiling or biometric data."

"AI is heralded as an unprecedented era of technological development with the potential to transform our lives for better or for worse," said Sobel.

"It is moving with such speed and complexity that its impact is hard to accurately predict. What is clear is that at present we are unprepared to deal with its consequences however potentially dire they may be."

The JCHR's 12 members are drawn from both Houses of Parliament and they currently include MPs and peers from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

Monday's report comes amid growing general anxiety over the challenges AI poses.

Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who quit Anthropic, told the BBC this weekend that staff developing the systems were "genuinely frightened" for the future of humanity.

An Anthropic spokesperson told BBC News that it was building "models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry". %!s()