The Wikimedia Foundation says it found evidence that "rogue" OpenAI agents edited Wikimedia wikis without approval, unsuccessfully tried to exploit its Etherpad service, and generated millions of automated requests across Wikimedia projects. Here's a summary of what Wikimedia observed (via The Verge): Wiki editing: We've identified edits to Wikimedia wikis that we believe are from AI agents operated by OpenAI. These edits were not published to pages with visibility to general readers; almost all of them were testing edits in "sandbox" areas of the wiki. It also included a few edits to the configuration for a citation tool, which we believe were potentially malicious edits that were intended to misuse this tool as a proxy for fetching data from remote services. While Wikipedia policies allow bots to edit when they are disclosed and approved by the community, none of those approvals were sought in these incidents.

Etherpad probing and use: Agents we believe to be operated by OpenAI made some unsuccessful attempts to compromise our public Etherpad, a note-taking tool we host as a community service. Agents unsuccessfully tried to use it to fetch data from other websites as a proxy. Other agents also likely operated by OpenAI took notes about their tasks, though this did not appear to turn into coordination.

Excessive data downloading: Agents we believe to be operated by OpenAI made millions of automated requests to our public APIs to access the knowledge on Wikimedia projects, crawled millions of pages (mainly from our projects Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons), and made hundreds of thousands of data queries to the Wikidata Query Service (WQDS). This traffic may have contributed to a partial outage on WQDS in May.

From the transportation news site MotorBiscuit: In late September 2026, 23-year-old Liz Lindseay Isaacs testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about her harrowing experience after a Flock camera misidentified her Dodge Durango, linking her to a fatal hit-and-run miles away from where she actually was... "The cell door was shut, and it was not opened for approximately 86 hours". She spent a total of 13 days locked up — including the terrifying stint in solitary confinement — before prosecutors finally realized the AI had completely botched the vehicle identification and dropped the charges.
A Flock spokesperson contacted for a CNN report argued the incident "appears to have been the result of human errors in judgment unrelated to Flock." The woman is now suing the Florida patrol over wrongful arrest, saying she partially blames the two police officers who she says claimed there was incriminating damage on her vehicle when there wasn't. But her lawyer says he blames Flock. "Because if it wasn't for Flock we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off."

And while police claim Flock solves more crimes, the lawyer adds that "you would also solve a lot more crimes if the police were allowed to kick down your door and come in and search your house whenever they want to, or search your car whenever they want to or violate your rights in other ways. There has to be safeguards in police that comport through the 4th Amendment, like the warrant requirements. It's as simple as that. This technology is growing so fast that we are unable to control it. And we must get ahead of it." And the woman incarcerated for 13 days agreed. "I wouldn't have went to jail if it wasn't for Flock."

Florida was also the site of another Flock-related news story. ("Florida Deputy Allegedly Used Flock Cameras to Stalk 17-Year-Old Girl, Visiting Her at Work 9 Times".) The officer "was charged with official misconduct and accessing computer electronic devices without authority — both are third-degree felonies. In Florida, if he's found guilty on both charges, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison."

"Americans have no idea who's looking at that information, or why it has to be collected in the first place," U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday, adding "They deserve to know." SCHUMER: "This company said the data on its cameras was encrypted and secure. Then hackers took one down and found the key sitting right there," Schumer said. "Most Americans just want to get to work and get home to their families without a private company keeping a file on where they go. The next step here is simple: turn the lens around and zoom in on Flock." Schumer also demanded answers from Flock about how much data from its cameras sits on its servers and whether any federal agency has accessed that data, directly or through local law enforcement.
Schumer's office sent an official letter to Flock's CEO giving them 12 days to respond to its questions about Flock's data retention and security policies. "Americans should not have to sacrifice their right to privacy simply by driving down a public street," Schumer wrote.

And in other news... Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock Safety — a company that deploys over 120,000 automated license plate reader cameras across the United States — recently requested that his Atlanta home be blurred out on Google Maps Street View. In swift retaliation, online activists pinpointed the property and officially marked his front lawn as a "Public Toilet" on the mapping app.

Last month, the U.S. House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. They call it "a bipartisan effort to require AM radio in new vehicles," adding that the bill now "awaits action in the Senate, where a companion measure has already garnered support, according to public records." Broadcasters said AM radio remains a critical source of information, offering news and weather alerts, particularly when cell networks and internet service are disrupted or unreliable... "AM radio — all radio — has always been about connection, and in Chicago, especially, the connection is incredibly strong," Mary Sandberg Boyle, vice president and general manager of WGN-AM 720, said. "You don't need a subscription. You don't need a data plan or an app. You turn on the radio, and it's there..." Boyle said the accessibility of radio becomes especially important during severe weather and breaking news situations. "That's when local radio is really more important because we have the ability to stay live, pivot our content and what we're covering, and we can access a large amount of audience members very quickly and keep everybody safe," she said. Boyle also serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Broadcasters, which has argued that preserving AM radio access is an access issue rather than a matter of nostalgia.

The legislation emerged after several automakers removed AM radio from certain electric vehicle models, citing interference from electric power systems. Companies including Tesla, Rivian, Volvo and others have either eliminated or limited AM radio in some EVs. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers, has opposed the requirement. In congressional testimony last year, President and CEO John Bozzella argued that "analog AM radio does not contribute to motor vehicle safety" and requiring it as standard equipment "is not necessary to ensure public safety."

Under the bill, the U.S. Department of Transportation would be required to develop regulations ensuring AM radio remains available in new vehicles sold in the U.S. The measure would also bar automakers from charging consumers separately for AM radio access... While public discussion around the legislation has largely focused on emergency alerts and news access, some scholars say preserving AM radio also has implications for media diversity... "I think the media landscape is really overwhelmingly homogenized right now, and AM radio is important in many markets," [said Zachary McDowell, associate professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago]. "It's a space that still allows for all sorts of different voices that is still open and accessible."
The article also includes this quote from Rodney Gibbs, executive director of Heartland Signal, which operates a local talk radio station. "Despite the kind of shiny objects that digital media is, AM radio still has a viable and durable audience. It's a daily, unscripted, authentic conversation between the host and the listeners. You don't get that from broadcast television. You don't get that from digital media."

Spaceflight Now reports: "A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America's spy satellite agency... The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy, which consists of three Falcon 9 boosters and an upper stage, topped by a payload fairing.

The powerful rocket, which lifts off under the power of 27 Merlin 1D engines, was introduced to great fanfare in 2018 and made its 14th flight Thursday night... NROL-97 was SpaceX's third Falcon launch of the day. In addition to the Crew 13 mission, the company launched 130 payloads on the Transporter 13 rideshare mission from its West Coast pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was the first time the company has landed four boosters in a single day.
CNN reports: As Starship flights ramp up, SpaceX has made clear that the company will phase out the use of two of its most iconic creations: the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 rocket, which for a decade has dominated the global launch market.

These vehicles not only revolutionized the space industry in their own way, they're also still very much essential to ongoing work in Earth orbit, without clear backup options in place. The prospect of this loss is already spurring panic among some satellite operators, said Caleb Henry, director of research at analytics firm Quilty Space... Henry said he expects that most of the remaining space on board Falcon 9 rockets has already been sold and — beyond early 2029 — such flights may be reserved solely for the US government. Even NASA, which currently counts the Dragon capsule as the only US-made spacecraft capable of getting its astronauts to and from the ISS, has also acknowledged the looming retirement of SpaceX's workhorse vehicles....

Despite the success of Falcon and Dragon, a peek at SpaceX's business book may hint at financial reasons for retiring the vehicles. In its first quarterly earnings report, SpaceX revealed its space segment — which includes Falcon, Dragon and Starship — lost $542 million. By comparison, its Starlink internet and connectivity business made nearly $1.7 billion. Starship is expected to continue to cost SpaceX untold millions as it moves out of the prototyping phase. But one reason SpaceX is willing to bet big on Starship is that it's simply "much better" for achieving the company's own long-term goals, said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell at a recent conference. So it makes sense to shift resources toward the megarocket's future....

This rocket supply crunch has been looming since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine — which immediately removed Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets from the commercial market, Henry noted. On top of that, Amazon — which is deploying a space-based internet constellation to rival SpaceX's Starlink — stepped in to buy more than 100 launches from various rocket makers.... Though some satellite manufacturers are hopeful that space onboard future Starship launches will be offered to satellite operators, it's not clear when or if that will happen.... It is possible that a launch supply crunch could be averted, noted Micah Walter-Range, a space analyst and contributor to the VettaFi Space Index. But satellite operators may be wary because newer rockets that have for years promised to step up to compete with the Falcon 9 have not yet begun flying with any regularity.

"The space industry hates uncertainty, particularly when it comes to planning of launches," Walter-Range said.
The article notes that Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, United Launch Alliance, and the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin "have not yet reached the scale or launch cadence that the industry is demanding."

A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media accusing Google of harming publishers by using their content in AI Overviews and other AI search features without compensating them or providing a meaningful opt-out. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuits were filed in 2025, and Google requested a dismissal earlier this year. Chegg, an education and learning platform, claimed in its lawsuit that Google illegally scraped its educational content. This allowed Gemini models to essentially recreate that content and reduce the site's traffic. Penske, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and Variety, filed a similar case that alleged lost traffic. Specifically, the publisher claimed it was unfair that sites indexed for organic search would also have their content harvested for AI answers, with no way to opt out.

These arguments did not sway the judge, who noted that Google's implicit agreement with websites is not legally relevant. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search "traffic if they make their content available for free," wrote Mehta. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."

Since Google never had a formal arrangement with either Chegg or Penske, antitrust law doesn't apply. And Mehta is aware of the legal issues surrounding search. He also heard the DOJ's long-running search antitrust case against Google, eventually finding that Google violated the law. However, the government didn't get the harsh penalties it wanted in that case.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has informed more than 100 organizations about incidents involving unauthorized activity tied to its AI agents, according to a blog post by the ChatGPT maker, as AI labs face mounting scrutiny over rogue AI agent activity. Here are some other details:

- The Sam Altman-led company has been conducting a broad review of the activities of its AI models after the accidental hacking of Hugging Face.
- OpenAI is searching through roughly 50 petabytes of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity.
- A string of high-profile breaches globally by rogue AI agents in recent months has sparked widespread worries within the AI industry over its ability to control the more powerful AI models now under development.
- "In some cases, models used internet access in unintended ways or, in retrospect, did not have the ideal restrictions applied. Over the last several months, we have been applying new technical and operational measures to avoid similar problems, or catch them very early, and will continue this work," OpenAI said.
- OpenAI previously said the review would take months to complete given the scale of the work.
- The Hugging Face incident remains the most severe rogue agent activity OpenAI has identified from its AI models so far.

Cloudflare has launched two open-weight decision models, Clef and Clef-flash, designed for structured yes/no, multiple-choice, and ranking tasks while also supporting images, video, and up to a 64K context window. Cloudflare says its models outperform TypeSafe's Jev on several benchmarks and can run locally from Hugging Face. The Register reports: For starters, Clef has an LLM backbone. According to Cloudflare, Clef uses specially post-trained, frozen versions of Qwen3.8-27B and Qwen3.5-9B for Clef and Clef-flash, respectively, with the Qwen backbone performing a prefill-only pass during inference. Clef is still fast - faster than Jev, to be fair - and scores choices in parallel after that prefill-only pass. It's not clear what Jev's underlying architecture is, as TypeSafe has kept that a secret.

As for its speed and capability, Clef moves fast. Cloudflare ran it against Jev and some other open decision models using the Jev Decision Index available on Hugging Face, and the company's own ranking suggests Clef is slightly slower than other open models, but more accurate, with Clef-flash just as accurate as most of the others, but far faster.

To be fair to the competition, Cloudflare self-reported its own scores against the benchmark, and they have yet to be reproduced for ranking on the official Decision Index. Cloudflare also ran Clef against TypeSafe's own benchmarks, and claimed it beat Jev in three out of four areas, only losing out on agent trace observability. Even if it were a bit slower or less accurate, Clef has another major leg up on Jev: It's not limited to classifying text -- it can also handle images and video. Additionally, Clef supports a 64k context window. Jev can also handle up to 64k tokens across a request, although its state plus longest individual question is limited to 32k.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN: President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled America.gov, a government website meant to serve as a one-stop shop for people trying to accomplish basic tasks like renewing a passport, enrolling in Medicare or applying for disaster relief. The site, which launched with some basic functions ahead of a full rollout next year, is designed to serve as an AI-powered guide through the thicket of government agencies that Trump officials pledged would ultimately save people a whole lot of frustration.

The administration's new initiative aims to allow Americans to access dozens of federal websites through a single point, making America.gov akin to a search tool that pulls information from across the government. And in the same way that people increasingly use AI models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compile information and provide customized answers, Trump officials claimed that America.gov would be able to do the same for people's interactions with the federal government.

Enrolling in Medicare, for example, will become a matter of typing the request into the America.gov AI tool and following its step-by-step instructions. The same goes for applying to a government job -- the new tool will now let people upload their resume directly to the site -- or answering questions about federal benefits, publicly available documents or other necessities that fall under the federal government's vast umbrella.

"Our vision is that one day, this type of convenience and simplicity will be across every government service," said Joseph Gebbia, who leads the government's National Design Studio. But the reality is that the most advanced actions won't be available until some point in 2027, raising questions about how long it will take for the administration to revamp the way the people interact with the government's websites. The current version of America.gov can only do "answers." U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said the new chatbot is powered by Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok. "We have great partners behind the scenes," Gebbia told CNBC's "Squawk Box" shortly before the site, America.gov, went live around 10 a.m. ET.

"Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease," the company said in a blog post. "By supporting the administration's vision for digital modernization, we are committed to making these everyday public services seamless, accessible, and responsive for all Americans."

Firefox 157 is rolling out a major redesign across desktop and mobile, bringing rounded "bubble" tabs, a curved address bar, refreshed icons and colors, and a more consistent visual language across devices. Mozilla is also adding more themes and wallpapers while bringing back Compact Mode, which the company says "reduces the size of your tabs and toolbar to give more of your screen to the web, with an auto-compact option for smaller screens." The Verge reports: According to Mozilla, the design changes will have "no cost to your browser performance." Mozilla says the overhauled design is a "renewal" for Firefox, following major updates over the last year, like homepage widgets, Split View, a built-in VPN, and controls for disabling the browser's AI features.

SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. "SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company's wireless satellite internet services," notes Space.com. Here's the latest update from the report: SpaceX has decided to return Starship from orbit earlier than expected. After valuating the upper stage Ship's status during its first orbital checkpoint, SpaceX technicians have decided to return the spacecraft to Earth earlier than expected. Rather than spending another 7.5 hours on orbit, Ship 41 will perform its deorbit burn at approximately 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), with splashdown in the Northern Pacific. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on X.

Developing...

Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine: Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new audit by NewsGuard, an organization focused on news reliability where we work as analysts... NewsGuard prompted seven leading AI tools with queries based on recent coverage of candidates and issues by 12 pink slime sites — six left-leaning and six right-leaning. The results were stark. Collectively, the chatbots cited pink slime sites along with other sources in 48.2 percent of their responses.

In 7.7 percent of responses, pink slime sites were the only sources at all that were cited in chatbot responses, although other sources appeared in the source list provided at the end of the response.

None of the AI tools received results they'd probably be eager to boast about, though the percentage of chatbots' responses that cited a pink slime site had a relatively large range: 70.8 percent for OpenAI's ChatGPT, 54.2 percent for Microsoft's Copilot, 54.2 percent for Perplexity, 50 percent for Anthropic's Claude, 41.7 percent for Google's Gemini; 37.5 percent for Meta AI and 29.2 percent for xAI's Grok... The seven chatbots were also collectively three times more likely to cite left-leaning pink slime sites (cited in 36.3 percent of responses) than their right-leaning counterparts (cited in 11.9 percent of responses) — though that may have more to do with the progressive sites' far more frequent posting than any political bias from the chatbots.
"While citing the pink slime sites, only one chatbot response out of 168 total queries noted the partisan nature of the source," the article points out.

But they also note that the real problem seems to be that consumer-oriented AI chatbots just "use much of the internet's content — regardless of the reliability or standards of the source — to frame their answers."

"OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest AI models," reports the Associated Press, "as reports of AI agents going rogue mount." The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information... OpenAI said in a statement that it will resume training "only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards" in place, adding that it expects it will have to "hit pause" again as AI develops and other issues emerge... It is the second time in three months that OpenAI has halted development of its models. The first came in July after disclosure of a cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face, a now notorious incident that raised fears the industry was losing control.
OpenAI "also said it had notified dozens of third parties about improper activity," reports Reuters: As of mid-September, one person briefed on the matter estimated that OpenAI had found roughly two dozen incidents of its agents acting in undesirable ways. But the number has continued rising as OpenAI teams sift through internal logs of the agents' activities and find previously unknown cases, the two people close to the company said... OpenAI has acknowledged a general need for more transparency around rogue AI behavior... Even so, two people familiar with OpenAI's investigation into its agents' activity described it as locked down and shaped by company lawyers.

The process has been unusually compartmentalized for a company that some former employees say was more open about these issues in the past, the people said. Roughly 100 people were in some way involved in the process to understand the Hugging Face hack, three people briefed on the matter said. During that process, evidence of other incidents surfaced. Reuters has previously reported that OpenAI investigators looking into the Hugging Face breach were discouraged by the company's lawyers from expanding the scope of the investigation to include other incidents. OpenAI said its lawyers did not discourage deeper investigation.

Many incidents have been uncovered by outside researchers rather than OpenAI directly. In several episodes, the agents took problematic actions that went unnoticed by the company for months.
Meanwhile, Axios reports that Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 model "sought to escape a sandbox — a secure testing environment — in 1.5% of test runs, though the company emphasized that these were adversarial experiments where a task couldn't be solved without escaping the sandbox." Anthropic points out that those tests were run "without the additional safeguards we apply in production". But they acknowledged that then Claude Opus 5.5 "when given apparent credentials to a public package registry in a simulated security exercise, took potentially harmful actions in roughly half of cases. Very rarely, pre-release snapshots produced and acted on spontaneous malicious tool calls, and during training some snapshots concealed actions from an automated grader."

Claude Opus 5.5 "showed less misaligned behavior and less cooperation with misuse than any other recent Claude model on nearly all measures," Anthropic adds, and "took overeager or destructive actions less than any other model we tested." But Axios makes an interesting estimate about that 1.5% of test runs (without safeguards). "Anthropic and other companies conduct hundreds of thousands of test runs on their models, or more, sources said. That means even a small percentage of misaligned behavior can still amount to tens of thousands of incidents in which the models behaved in unexpected, sometimes troubling ways." The sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known. The findings, which are surfacing as part of internal work to assess models and in investigations at both companies into model behavior, raise questions about whether either company — or any top model-maker — is currently capable of establishing complete control over their technology. The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting or seeking to bypass monitors, sources said. They occurred in internal testing and in the real world, and many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate, sources said...

Some at OpenAI see Hugging Face as a one-off, with disclosures about future incidents likely to be less severe due to improved controls and the unusual nature of the testing they conducted, which involved an unreleased model, sources told Axios. AI security researchers agree that there are simple fixes that will help AI companies avoid aspects of what made the Hugging Face episode appear so dangerous to outsiders.

Other AI executives and safety researchers, however, cautioned that they have limited confidence that AI companies will be able to prevent all problematic model behavior... It's not about how damaging each individual instance was, Connor Leahy, AI researcher and executive director at ControlAI told Axios. The "crazy thing," he said, is that these instances involve "autonomous systems doing things they were told not to do," potentially including crimes.

53 images that users uploaded into OpenAI models were included in training data — and then AI agents in an OpenAI research environment posted those 53 images on public image hosting sites.

While posted as links that weren't publicly listed, "the images could still be discovered even if the links were not publicly listed," reports TechCrunch: OpenAI said it was working with the hosting providers to remove this content, though some of it is apparently still online. OpenAI said it could not notify the affected users because "our technical approach and privacy policy" prevent it from "reassociating" the images with the original providers, but declined to say how the lab determined whether the images were provided by users.

The news came in a post collecting public statements from the lab's ongoing review of incidents in which its models escaped the company's scrutiny, accessed the open internet, and misbehaved in various ways. OpenAI said it would continue disclosing anonymized accounts of incidents like these, and said it had contacted dozens of victims, including governments, universities, public agencies, to notify them of the agents' activities.
Friday night news also broke that OpenAI's agents also tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate the U.S. Department of Education's site this summer "without the company's knowledge," reports Politico.

And OpenAI's models also accessed the website of the U.S. Commerce Department using credentials found in online code repositories, according to the article. OpenAI confirmed the incident Friday, "saying its technology did not manage to access information that was not already public or change government data and systems." The article adds that OpenAI's models also accessed the web site for America's Securities and Exchange Commission: One senior federal IT official said the government still did not have a clear understanding of what happened across the three agencies. "We still don't know what public data was accessed and how it was accessed, because OpenAI has not shared specific technical details with us yet," said the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it. OpenAI discovered the Commerce and SEC incidents as part of its ongoing review of incidents where its technology has acted in unintended or "misaligned" ways.
About the models posting user-uploaded images, TechCrunch's article notes that OpenAI stressed "that its enterprise users are automatically opted out of having their interactions used to train future models; however, consumer users are opted in unless they affirmatively choose not to share their data." (As OpenAI's announcement describes it, some of their agents' training data "contains content from, or derived from, training-eligible user interactions.")

Posting the images is "not an appropriate use of this data," OpenAI acknowledged, adding that it happened before new safeguards added after the Hugging Face incident. This latest incident appears as an update on a new OpenAI page that "brings together our reports and updates on the Hugging Face incident, related research and public presentations, additional activity we have identified, what we have learned about the role of model misalignment, and measures we're taking to strengthen our systems." (It also notes that there's now a name for models posting on third party sites — "agent spam" — which they consider distinct from cybersecurity, though "we need to address both.")

"As part of our response to our ongoing investigation, we have improved our training and evaluation processes, including building safety cases, securing and red-teaming our systems to prevent the model from exfiltrating data, and implemented additional monitoring. We are continuing to review agent activity in research and evaluation runs, working backward month by month starting from the Hugging Face incident."

"Weird Al" Yankovic's name has just been approved for a new asteroid — (14331) Alyankovic = 1981 EC26 — by the International Astronomical Union, reports Space.com.

Yankovic's asteroid was championed by planetary scientist Allison McGraw joined by "several heavy hitters in the planetary science field, according to the Tucson Star. (Astrophysicist Steve Desch from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University; Tim McCoy, one of the main curators of meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution; and University of Arizona research scientist Melissa Brucker, leader of the Spacewatch program, which has discovered more than 179,000 asteroids.) The scientists also convinced the International Astronomical Union to name an asteroid after one of Yankovic's major influences, famous musical humorist and political satirist Tom Lehrer, who died last year at age 97. Lehrer's work includes "The Elements," a 1959 song in which he recites the entire periodic table to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song." "He was a mathematician and teacher and also wrote math- and science-themed songs," McGraw said. "We felt that someone who had that kind of science enthusiasm really deserved to have their name up in the sky...." McGraw is hoping that naming space rocks after stars like Lehrer and "Weird Al" will cast some reflected light on two things she's passionate about: asteroid research and science communication.
Six years ago a 92-year-old Tom Lehrer released all his lyrics into the public domain. (Wikipedia notes he'd "largely retired" by the 1970s to become a mathematics teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.) Slashdot ran a brief career retrospective when Lehrer died last year at age 97.

And the IAU writes that "Generations of scientists have been inspired" by Weird Al Yankovic's "comedic musical works, including 'It's All About the Pentiums' and 'White and Nerdy'." ("I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon," Yankovic sings in the latter.) He appears in a song envisioning a rap battle between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sir Isaac Newton... And in 1999 he recorded a five-minute summation of Star Wars: Phantom Menace, sung to the wistful tune of Don McLean's American Pie. Performing it last month in a NPR Tiny Desk concert, "most of the audience was singing along," remembers an interviewer at NPR. "It felt like something that was very personal to them." Weird Al: It's one of those songs that means a lot to people, particularly "Star Wars" fans, of course. But I mean, I see a lot of people in the audience cosplaying as Jedi Knights and waving their light sabers... I've even heard that, you know, they play that song at "Star Wars" conventions, and people get weepy... [I]t really hits people in a tender place somehow...

"Oh my, my, this here Anakin guy
may be Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry.
And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye,
sayin' soon, I'm gonna be a Jedi."
Yankovic has led a geek-friendly career. In the heyday of Napster, he released an anthem-style parody mocking the arguments of the Recording Industry Association of America, titled "Don't Download This Song. ("Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong...")

"Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law...
you start out stealing songs, then you're robbing liquor stores
And selling crack and running over school kids with your car..."

As a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Yankovic bootstrapped a career in 1979 by recording his first novelty song "My Bologna" (a parody of "My Sharona" by the Knack) while playing his accordion in a bathroom for its acoustics. And even the IAU acknowledged the geeky themes in his 1999 song "It's All About the Pentiums" (a filk on Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins").

"You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet..."

Ars Technica reports: Cities and counties around the U.S. are angry at the Trump administration over a proposal to override local rules that govern the deployment of wired broadband networks... The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] argues that too many local governments "excessively delay approvals and seek to extract exorbitant sums from providers, resulting in costs that render some deployments infeasible." The FCC plan is supported by broadband providers, but local governments told the FCC that it would override rules that protect public safety.

Local governments say the plan is illegal and that the FCC should instead focus on how Internet providers thwart competition with permit-hoarding and other tactics that prevent competitors from deploying networks... They object to FCC plans to impose a 120-day deadline for processing permits and to proposed limits on fees and compensation that local governments can require from providers... Another filing submitted by the League of California Cities said the FCC has no authority to adopt the proposal. "Federal preemption of traditional state and local authority over public property, construction, public safety, permitting, and rights-of-way management should rest on clear congressional authorization," the filing said. "The commission should not infer broad preemptive authority where Congress did not expressly provide it...."

A filing by Minnesota cities said the current FCC is making the same mistake it made during the first Trump administration, when its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws was blocked in court... If the FCC finalizes its new preemption plan, city and state governments could sue and ask a court to rule that the agency exceeded its authority...

Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez approved the step of asking the public for input but signaled she would vote against the final proposal. "I am dubious about the commission's authority under Section 253 to use rulemaking to preempt states and localities when it comes to their management of rights of way and fees charged to providers," she said.

U.S. President Trump addressed the United Nations on Tuesday. And a half hour in, after decrying immigration, Trump pivoted to add that "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now."

But then he added "hereinafter officially called super intelligence, changing the name, in that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It's actually... amazing. But we have to be careful — in fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence." TRUMP: In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI. SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it's much more accurate. Let's see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. We're going to find out pretty soon. Super intelligence.

Every major new technology brings challenges, and super intelligence is no exception. Yet the very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling not warming, and nobody was dead — these are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all. That robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster — same group of people. This is the group that came up with the Russia Russia Russia hoax, the Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax. Climate change, open borders.

Whoever wins AI — you have to remember this — and now I say, whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligent [sic] — wins. That's the group that wins. And we're leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way. We're going to keep it very — very straight and very strong. I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution. Many say, bigger than the Industrial Revolution or the internet itself.

And we will be very careful, and that's why we have a Department of Justice that we've already used it, having to do with this very subject, and used it very powerfully. Everything worked out very well and very quickly. And other law enforcement bodies that will rein things in if we have to do that.

But we will only encourage super intelligence. We're gonna encourage it, not rein it in. We're gonna watch it closely, through the Department of Justice. The United States leads the world in Super Intelligence, and will continue to do so, safely and responsibly.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader ArchieBunker for suggesting the story.

Tom's Hardware reports: Four plaintiffs subscribed to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that the developers of these AI models violated antitrust laws when they agreed to slow AI development. According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit argues that this agreement would "reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions" and that this coordination started in July 2026 after the leading AI labs signed a statement admitting there is "intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow" development.

The plaintiffs recognize the need for AI development to slow for the sake of safety, but they say that Anthropic founder Dario Amodei's cooperation proposal is a "shortcut" that "substitutes collective restraint for individual accountability." Attorney Nick Rowley, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs, says, "AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful 'for profit' technology companies."
"Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond..." reports the Associated Press: The coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, the lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement. But the lawsuit also alleges that the coordination began to take shape months earlier. It points to a statement from July 2026 that high-ranking employees from several of the leading AI labs signed that acknowledged the "intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow" development. That statement called on the government to support a global effort to slow automated AI development.
Sam Altman even specificially said "we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence," notes Tom's Hardware. However, the Trump administration shot down this idea... Chinese state media also criticized this announcement, saying that the call to put the brakes on AI development is nothing but a response to Chinese competition, especially as Amodei's essay explicitly mentioned the desire to slow China's progress and widen the U.S.'s gap over Beijing

Saturday morning President Trump announced he's creating an AI task force and appointing an AI czar, reports Politico.

"I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS," Trump wrote Saturday in what Politico earlier described as "a lengthy Truth Social post on Saturday morning." TRUMP: Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country. RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2 [...] and now, the decimation, or destruction, of AI, commonly known as Artificial Intelligence — And I, as President of the United States, will not stand by and let this happen.

It all began with an attack on our Data Centers, until people realized how wealthy and prestigious they were for the Communities in which they were built. Higher Salaries, Lower Taxes, and Safer Streets, was the result, and the crazed Data Center attack has largely failed, so now [...] they are going straight at AI. We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!

However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System. For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term. To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI "Czar" — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!
Trump concluded by saying AI "is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful... We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!" But what exactly is AI Force? "The White House did not immediately respond to a request to clarify whether the agency would be military or civilian," notes the Washington Post. So now "The tech industry is struggling to make sense of President Donald Trump's surprise announcement," Politico reported Saturday afternoon: Four representatives for the sector, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, told POLITICO that the industry was not widely informed of Trump's decision prior to the Truth Social post. "Nobody knows what the idea even is," one of the people said. Another said that feedback on the idea was not widely solicited within the industry. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment...

"I think that he clearly feels pressure to say something, but he's torn because he's just spent the last few days saying that the whole thing is a hoax," Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the progressive tech industry coalition Chamber of Progress, said of Trump and his prior dismissal of AI doomsday scenarios. Since the departure of David Sacks, who stepped down as the Trump administration's previous AI czar earlier this year, the White House has been "making up AI policy as it goes," Kovacevich added. "I think it's clear they've really missed the presence of an organized leader like David Sacks was."

One of the tech industry representatives said they were confused about whether the task force would be charged with formulating more AI regulations or recommending policies that would further stimulate the tech's development. Taylor Barkley, director of federal government affairs at the industry-aligned Abundance Institute, is eyeing it as a way to solidify a light-touch government approach to the technology he says will foster innovation. "Any AI Force or AI Czar should have one job: keep the field open so entrepreneurs at every scale can compete, free from onerous regulation," he told POLITICO. "Existing criminal and civil law can handle bad actors. New permission regimes will stifle the very activity America needs most."
It's worth noting that the day before, California's governor made an announcement. "With Donald Trump and Congress asleep at the wheel, Governor Gavin Newsom is once again taking the lead to strengthen AI safety for all Americans," the governor's office announced Friday. Newsom issued a strong executive order convening experts to help California create new AI safety laws and reporting rules, possibly even requiring safety auditors embedded in labs and emergency "kill switches" in frontier models.