Photo: AI expert Gary Marcus. Background image by Quillette. Source: https://quillette.com/2026/10/02/skeptic-vs-doomer-how-scared-should-we-be-of-rogue-ai-2/
News from Quillette
Sceptic vs. ‘Doomer’: How Scared Should We Be of Rogue AI? Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay interviews AI expert Gary Marcus about the possibility that a rogue artificial intelligence will turn us all into paper clips.
Oct. 2, 2026
…. a movement known as the AI doomers, who don’t just think AI will take our jobs and access our banking information—but that it will cause the extinction of humanity itself, by launching nuclear weapons, or creating and unleashing some kind of super powerful bioweapon.
….While my guest is not a doomer, he does call himself a sceptic, especially when it comes to what he regards as the allegedly irresponsible and dangerous business practices of certain companies—OpenAI, in particular.
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News from Futurism
It’s Looking Possible That Zuckerberg Is Accidentally Committing Corporate Suicide: “The largest misallocation of capital in history.”
Oct. 1, 2026 by Joe Wilkins
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made the rash decision to double-down on massive AI spending, pushing a cutesy AI-mascot and poaching tech industry veteran Chirantan Desai to run a new division pushing Meta’s AI onto corporate customers.
The company’s investors, however, appear to be running out of slack for Zuckerberg’s leash. Since Friday of last week, a large sell-off in Meta stocks shrunk his paper fortune by nearly $20 billion, after Goldman Sachs began raising doubts about the long-term viability of the company’s AI ambitions.
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News from Tom’s Guide
7 boring jobs you can hand to an AI agent tonight — number 4 is my personal favorite
Oct. 1, 2026 by Amanda Caswell
The AI world spent this week announcing agents that can live on their own computers and keep working after you leave. OpenAI debuted its Dots at DevDay on Tuesday, while Meta launched Muse earlier this month.
The biggest difference between an AI chatbot and an AI agent is how it handles various tasks when left alone. So while a chatbot answers a question, an agent actually does a job such as checking something, keeping track of information, working across tools or coming back when something changes.
And some of the best jobs to give an agent are the ones that humans find incredibly boring. Here are seven I would happily hand over — and a few I wouldn’t.
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News from Futurism
The AI Industry Has a Major Problem: Most People Aren’t Freaks Who Want an AI Agent Running Their Whole Life: AI companies have done next to nothing to earn their trust.
Oct. 1, 2026 by Victor Tangermann
Meta’s fuzzy Muse AI personal assistant overtook ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the US after launching earlier this month, surpassing 3.4 million downloads last week.
But whether the agent will be able to hold on to that momentum is anything but guaranteed, considering the sheer amount of changes it requires to its users’ behavior. Tech companies like OpenAI and Meta would love us to hand over mundane tasks like booking a flight or shopping online to their agents — but that may not even be a priority for the average user.
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News from Futurism
Data Centers Are a $6 Trillion Time Bomb, Analysts Warn
Oct. 1, 2026 by Joe Wilkins
Last year, hedge fund whisperer and founder of the firm Praetorian Capital, Harris Kupperman, issued a blistering financial analysis on the data center frenzy sweeping across the United States.
Kupperman’s diagnosis … data center components break down so quickly, the industry would need to see some $1 trillion in revenue across 2025 and 2026 just to cover the costs of their hyperscale facilities… With AI revenue today accounting for only a small fraction of that total, Kupperman’s argument is that the financial logic behind the data center buildout simply doesn’t hold up.
But… the magnates of the AI industry — and their funders — have a remarkable knack for kicking the can down the road, no matter how bad the numbers might look.
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News from Axios
Trump’s AI “constitution” crowns day of accelerating ambition
Sept. 30, 2026 by Zachary Basu
With America’s tech titans crowded around a single White House table Tuesday, President Trump extracted what he called a “morally binding” compact on AI safety. The terms were simple: Press ahead, project optimism and police yourselves.
Why it matters: The White House Accord on Super Intelligence, signed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia, formalizes industry self-regulation as Washington’s response to the most alarming run of AI safety failures yet.
News from Engadget
Anthropic lost $8 billion last year and said its AI could destroy humanity: Anthropic still expects to be valued at $2 trillion
Sept. 29 by Steve Dent
Anthropic’s draft IPO prospectus has now started circulating in the media (after its confidential June SEC filing) and revealed some significant risks, Reuters reported. The first of those is fiscal, as the company reported an operating loss of $8 billion last year (on a $42 billion net loss), despite a 12-fold revenue increase from the year before to $4.6 billion. The other is a veritable first for a company prospectus, with Anthropic stating that its AI tech may pose “existential risks to humanity.”
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News from Lifehacker
The US Government Just Launched an AI Chatbot
Sept. 29, 2026 by Jake Peterson
On Tuesday, the Trump administration launched “America.gov,” a new website that uses AI to answer questions about the government. While the experience currently feels like ChatGPT running U.S. government-themed instructions, the plan is for America.gov to eventually let you take action as well.
…. America.gov “combines” the nearly 30,000 websites under the umbrella of the U.S. government into one set of sources. Rather than invite you to browse those tens of thousands of pages to answer your questions, that dataset serves as the basis for the site’s proprietary chatbot. You ask the chatbot a question about the U.S. government, and the AI sifts through those websites to generate an answer.
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News from Big Technology
Here’s Everything OpenAI’s Bots (And Others) Have Hacked Or Considered Hacking: It’s getting hard to keep track of all the unauthorized agent activity. Here it is in one place.
Sept. 29, 2026 by Marty Swant and Alex Kantrowitz
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last Friday accused OpenAI’s agents of hacking into the country’s universal health insurance system, marking the first known instance of rogue AI agents breaching a government website.
The incident was just the latest in a string of agent hacks, hijacks, or perusals that seem to have spiraled beyond the labs’ ability to control.
….But the breakouts are so numerous that they’re already becoming hard to keep track of. And the real number might be much higher than companies have so far disclosed between internal tests and real-world cases.
Below is a quick overview of the cases in which AI agents have gone rogue and hijacked, hacked, or considered hacking third parties:
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News from The Left Hook
Everybody Loses: How Sports Gambling and Prediction Markets Are Bankrupting America: Sports gambling companies are using AI, celebrities, and mass marketing to normalize and mainstream a “hobby” that has the potential to devastate young people and desperate Americans seeking money.
Sept. 26. 2026 by Wajahat Ali and Danny Funt
Growing up, I recall that gambling was largely seen as an addictive and destructive vice that was best avoided and only indulged sparingly and within constraints….
In 2018, the right-wing Supreme Court reviewed this history and decided, “Yeah, let’s strike down this silly ban. States, you go hog wild with gambling. What could go wrong?”
Nearly a decade later, we have our answer in the form of DraftKings, FanDuel, and prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi.
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News from Quillette
The dangers of AI are real, but doomerism may be counterproductive.
Sept. 26, 2026 by Steven Pinker
Dear Scott [Alexander],
…. I’m puzzled by your accusation that my “contributions to the mass discourse have been to say, or to boost other people saying, that we’re only scared of AI because we’re male, that we can’t be trusted because we live ‘unconventional lifestyles’, that our beliefs are inherently insensitive to people worried about near-term AI risks” …
The dangers of AI are real… I’m just skeptical of the prophecy that AI will murder every last human and of the assumption that sowing such dread is the most effective way of getting such safeguards.
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This issue of AI News Briefs was brought to you by David Isenberg of the Isenberg Institute of Strategic Satire: Unpacking the Private Military Complex with independent analysis of private military companies, mercenary networks, and the privatisation of force in global conflicts. Latest news, compiled by the Isenberg Institute of Strategic Satire.
New ICE contracts for Quebec-based security firm involved with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
Syndicated by David Isenberg
By Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman, The Canadian Press
Posted September 16, 2026 9:30 pm; updated September 17, 2026 1:46 pm
Photo caption: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents patrol Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, La. Monday, March 23, 2026. (David Grunfeld/The New Orleans Advocate via AP).
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has contracted a Montreal-based security firm again, this time to assist its efforts in Texas.
ICE awarded two new contracts to the American branch of GardaWorld Security in late August. Together, these contracts have a minimum value of close to US$118 million (C$165 million) and could reach a value of over US$1.3 billion (C$1.9 billion).
The first contract is for the renovation of a warehouse in San Antonio into a new detention centre and the operation of that centre. Its minimum value is around US$17.3 million and its maximum value is over US$1 billion.
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