AI Frontiers

The race is on for AGI. Tech companies are in a global race to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI): autonomous systems that perform most tasks as well as a human expert. In early 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that Meta is going to build AGI and “open source” it. He is walking his talk. Meta has invested billions of dollars in the highest-power computational elements needed to build giant AI systems, and it has openly released its most powerful AI models. In early 2025, representatives of the Chinese company DeepSeek tweeted their intention to build and openly release AGI. US companies (including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic) are also trying to build AGI. While these companies have not pledged to open-source such a system, recent months have seen a marked shift among U.S. policymakers and AI developers toward support for open-source AI. In July, the White House AI [...] ---Outline:(02:06) What Is AGI?(05:22) Widespread Proliferation with No Guardrails(09:10) The Dire Implications of Unleashing AGI(13:50) The Replacement of Humanity(17:49) Changing Course: Don't Build Uncontrollable AI--- First published: August 19th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/uncontained-agi-would-replace-humanity --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

In an age of heightened political division, countering China's efforts to dominate AI has emerged as a rare point of alignment between US Democratic and Republican policymakers. While the two parties have approached the issue in different ways, they generally agree that the AI “arms race” is comparable to the US-Soviet strategic competition during the Cold War, which encompassed not just nuclear weapons but also global security, geopolitical influence, and ideological supremacy. There is, however, no modern deterrence mechanism comparable to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union for four decades — and which is arguably the reason no other nation has used nuclear weapons since. The bridge from MAD to MAIM. Earlier this year, co-authors Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt, and Alexandr Wang proposed a framework called Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM), hoping to fill that dangerous strategic vacuum. [...] ---Outline:(02:40) The Logic of MAIM(07:11) The Observability Problem Is Bigger Than MAIM's Authors Acknowledge(10:29) Challenge One: Using Appropriate Proxies for AI Progress(13:34) Challenge Two: Observation Must Keep Up With Rapid Progress(16:41) Challenge Three: Superintelligence Development Will Likely Be Widely Decentralized(19:31) Challenge Four: Intelligence Activities Themselves Could Lead to Escalation(21:45) MAIM Started the Conversation on Superintelligence Deterrence, but More Dialogue Is Needed--- First published: August 14th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/why-maim-falls-short-for-superintelligence --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Can we head off AI monopolies before they harden? As AI models become commoditized, incumbent Big Tech platforms are racing to rebuild their moats at the application layer, around context: the sticky user- and project-level data that makes AI applications genuinely useful. With the right context-aware AI applications, each additional user-chatbot conversation, file upload, or coding interaction improves results; better results attract more users; and more users mean more data. This context flywheel - a rich, structured user- and project-data layer - can drive up switching costs, creating a lock-in effect that effectively traps accumulated data within the platform. ‍Protocols prevent lock-in. We argue that open protocols - exemplified by Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) - serve as a powerful rulebook, helping to keep API-exposed context fluid and to prevent Big Tech from using data lock-in to extend their monopoly power. However, as an API wrapper, MCP can access [...] ---Outline:(02:33) From Commoditized Models to Context-Rich Applications(07:46) How User Context Is Powering a New Era of Tech Monopolies - and Competition(10:22) Can Protocols Create a Level Playing Field?(12:38) MCP's Impact on the AI Market So Far(14:16) MCP vs. Walled Gardens: The API Gatekeeping Problem(16:06) To Save AI from Enshittification, Support Protocol-Level Interventions--- First published: July 30th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/open-protocols-can-prevent-ai-monopolies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This post was cross-published on the author's Substack, Threading the Needle. Increasingly, the US-China AI race is taking center stage. To win this race, Washington and Beijing are rethinking a range of policies, from export controls and military procurement priorities to copyright and liability rules. This activity, under the vague banner of race victories, conceals a deeper lack of clarity on strategic objectives. The Trump administration's AI Action Plan provides yet another entry on what the US strategy might look like — but it shouldn’t be mistaken for an indication of strategic clarity, as US factions are still vying for dominance from decision to decision. All in all, Chinese and US AI strategies are both still nascent. This raises important questions: What will each country decide that “winning the AI race” means? And where does that leave the rest of the world? The obvious answer to the first question [...] ---Outline:(02:20) Open Questions on Grand Strategy(02:43) 1. Military victory(03:53) 2. Economic victory(05:25) 3. A hybrid approach(07:16) Technical Determiners(07:32) 1. Military usefulness(08:26) 2. Frontier capability gap(10:10) 3. Compute supply trends(12:10) What About Everyone Else?(13:25) 1. Securitized world(14:36) 2. Mercantilist world(16:01) 3. World of clashing doctrines(17:31) Outlook--- First published: July 23rd, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/in-the-race-for-ai-supremacy-can --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Last week, the AI nonprofit METR published an in-depth study on human-AI collaboration that stunned experts. It found that software developers with access to AI tools took 19% longer to complete their tasks, despite believing they had finished 20% faster. The findings shed important light on our ability to predict how AI capabilities interact with human skills. Since 2020, we have been conducting similar studies on human-AI collaboration, but in contexts with much higher stakes than software development. Alarmingly, in these safety-critical settings, we found that access to AI tools can cause humans to perform much, much worse. A 19% slowdown in software development can eat into profits. Reduced performance in safety-critical settings can cost lives. Safety-Critical Scenarios Imagine that you’re aboard a passenger jet on its final approach into San Francisco. Everything seems ready for a smooth landing — until an AI-infused weather monitor misses a sudden microburst. [...] ---Outline:(01:04) Safety-Critical Scenarios(03:30) How Current Safety Frameworks Fail(05:43) AI Influences Humans to Perform Slightly Better... or Much, Much Worse(08:50) A Clear Pattern in Human-AI Collaboration(09:49) Three Rules for Better Evaluations(11:43) Faster, Easier, and Earlier Evaluations(13:48) Toward Responsible Deployments of AI--- First published: July 16th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-ai-can-degrade-human-performance --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The European Union just published the finalized Code of Practice for general-purpose AI models, transforming the AI Act's high-level requirements into concrete standards that will likely shift frontier AI companies' practices toward safer ones. Among the Code's three chapters (copyright, transparency, and safety & security), requirements outlined in the Safety and Security section mark particular advances in frontier AI safety. The chapter — drafted by chairs Yoshua Bengio, Marietje Schaake, and Matthias Samwald, along with six vice chairs — targets general-purpose models deemed to pose systemic risks, currently defined as those trained with more than 10^25 floating-point operations (FLOPs). The 10^25 threshold captures all of today's frontier models and can be adapted as the technology evolves. The Code emerged from an extensive consultation process with over a thousand stakeholders (from industry, academia, and civil society) providing feedback across multiple rounds. Companies have a powerful incentive to adopt the Code [...] ---Outline:(01:53) What Companies Must Do(02:37) Key Advances Beyond Current Practice(02:41) Risk Identification(03:47) Risk Analysis(05:13) Pre-commitment Through Risk Tiers(05:35) Transparency and External Validation(06:42) Cybersecurity and Incident Reporting(07:41) Gaps and Enforcement Challenges(10:03) Implications for Global AI Governance--- First published: July 12th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-the-eus-code-of-practice-advances --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

For over half a decade, the United States has imposed significant semiconductor export controls on China, aiming to slow China's chip industry and to retain US leadership in the computing capabilities that undergird AI advances. Have these controls achieved their goals? Have the assumptions driving them been confirmed or undermined by the rapid evolution of the chip industry and AI capabilities? Three factors for assessing chip export controls. We can now draw preliminary conclusions by assessing three factors: China's domestic chipmaking capability, the sophistication of its AI models, and its market share in providing AI infrastructure. Initial evidence shows that controls have succeeded in several important ways, though not all. Restrictions on chipmaking tool sales have significantly slowed the growth of China's chipmaking capability. However, restrictions on the export of AI chips to China, while creating challenges, have not prevented Chinese labs from producing highly competitive models (though they [...] ---Outline:(01:30) The Current Chip Export Control Regime(04:25) The Impact on China's Chip Industry(09:10) The Impact on AI Model Development in China(13:28) The Impact on China's Ability to Provide AI Infrastructure(15:18) Implications for the Future of AI and US-China Relations(18:01) Export Controls Have Given the US a Commanding Lead in AI--- First published: July 8th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-us-export-controls-have-and-havent --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The views in this article are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, its components, or any part of the US government. ‍ In a recent interview, Demis Hassabis — co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, a leading AI lab — was asked if he worried about ending up like Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who unleashed the atomic bomb and was later haunted by his creation. While Hassabis didn’t explicitly endorse the comparison, he responded by advocating for an international institution to govern AI, holding up the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a guiding example. Hassabis isn’t alone in comparing AI and nuclear technology. Sam Altman and others at OpenAI have also argued that artificial intelligence is so impactful globally that it requires an international regulatory agency on the scale of the IAEA. Back in 2019, Bill Gates, for example [...] ---Outline:(01:57) How AI Differs from Nuclear Technology(02:31) AI is much more widely applicable than nuclear technology(04:18) AI is less excludable than nuclear technology(07:37) AI's strategic value is continuous, not binary(09:22) Nuclear Non-Proliferation is the Wrong Framework for AI Governance(11:44) Approaches to AI Governance that Are More Likely to Succeed--- First published: June 30th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/nuclear-non-proliferation-is-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Since May, Congress has been debating an unprecedented proposal: a 10-year moratorium that would eliminate virtually all state and local AI policies across the nation. This provision, tucked into the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” would prohibit states from enacting or enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for the next decade. It's not clear what version of the moratorium, if any, will become law. The House sent the One Big Beautiful Bill to the Senate's Commerce Committee, where the moratorium has been subject to an ongoing debate and numerous revisions. The latest public Senate text — which could be voted on as early as Friday — ties the prohibition to the “Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment” (BEAD) program, threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funds to expand broadband from states that choose to regulate AI. The provision's language [...] ---Outline:(02:09) The Moratorium's Leverage -- and Its Limits(03:27) The Patchwork Problem(05:02) How the Moratorium Undermines Federalism and Good Governance(07:18) Terminating Existing Laws(10:00) Broad Opposition(12:06) What Should Be Done Instead--- First published: June 26th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/congress-might-block-states-from --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Since 2020, there have been nearly 40 copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies in the US. In this intensifying battle over AI-generated content, creators, AI companies, and policymakers are each pushing competing narratives. These arguments, however, tend to get so impassioned that they obscure three crucial questions that should be addressed separately — yet they rarely are. First, how does existing copyright law apply to AI? Most existing statutes do not explicitly mention AI. Some legal experts, however, argue that courts can adapt traditional frameworks through judicial interpretation. Others contend that copyright's human-centered assumptions make such adaptation impossible. Second, where current law proves inadequate, how should the original purpose of copyright law guide new solutions? Copyright was conceived by the Founders to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” by providing creators with limited monopolies over their work. In the AI era, multiple stakeholders have legitimate claims: creators [...] ---Outline:(01:40) How Does Existing Copyright Law Apply to AI?(05:22) Should We Rethink Copyright in the Age of AI?(07:41) How Should Broader Implications Influence the AI Copyright Debate?(11:40) The Current State of AI Copyright Battles--- First published: June 19th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/can-copyright-survive-ai --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

As AI's transformative potential and national security significance grow, so has the incentive for countries to develop AI capabilities that outcompete their adversaries. Leaders in both the US and Chinese governments have indicated that they see their countries in an arms race to harness the economic and strategic advantages of powerful AI. Yet as the benefits of AI come thick and fast, so might its risks. In a 2024 Science article, a broad coalition of experts from academia and industry raised the alarm about the serious threats that advanced AI may soon pose — such as AI misuse or loss of control events leading to large-scale cyber, nuclear, or biological calamities. Because these risks wouldn’t be constrained by geography, it is in everyone's interests to mitigate them, hence calls by scientists from multiple countries for international efforts to regulate AI. However, an international AI development deal will only succeed [...] ---Outline:(02:23) Assurance mechanisms for AI(05:23) Hardware-enabled mechanisms(08:12) Designing an Effective HEMs-Enabled Assurance Regime(08:45) Pre-emptive(09:46) Flexible(10:31) Privacy-preserving(11:44) Multilateral(12:36) Unlocking New Policy Options--- First published: June 16th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/avoiding-an-ai-arms-race-with-assurance --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Edward Parker — June 13, 2025 This post originally appeared on RAND. --- When OpenAI released its newest AI models o3 and o4-mini in April, its president Greg Brockman made an intriguing claim: “These are the first models where top scientists tell us they produce legitimately good and useful novel ideas.” If AI can indeed make scientific discoveries, that would not only have practical impacts for society but would also provide evidence that we've achieved true digital intelligence. But reaching expert consensus on what counts as a “scientific discovery by an AI” may prove more elusive than expected. Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, a public debate has raged about whether the leading large language models (LLMs) are showing “sparks of artificial general intelligence” or are merely “stochastic parrots” or “autocomplete on steroids.” This debate has become repetitive, in part because neither side has offered a compelling definition [...] --- First published: June 13th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/well-be-arguing-for-years-whether --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The debate over AI governance has intensified following recent federal proposals for a ten-year moratorium on state AI regulations. This preemptive approach threatens to replace emerging accountability mechanisms with a regulatory vacuum. In his recent AI Frontiers article, Kevin Frazier argues in favor of a federal moratorium, seeing it as necessary to prevent fragmented state-level liability rules that would stifle innovation and disadvantage smaller developers. Frazier (an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin, School of Law) also contends that, because the norms of AI are still nascent, it would be premature to rely on existing tort law for AI liability. Frazier cautions that judges and state governments lack the technical expertise and capacity to enforce liability consistently. But while Frazier raises important concerns about allowing state laws to assign AI liability, he understates both the limits of federal regulation and the unique advantages of [...] ---Outline:(02:08) Disagreement and Uncertainty(04:49) Reasonable Care and Strict Liability(06:56) Accounting for Third-Party Harms(10:15) State-Level Liability(13:44) AI Federalism--- First published: June 12th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/the-case-for-ai-liability --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

One morning in the near future, on far-flung servers many miles from Wall Street, a new type of organization begins buying and selling stock. Its mission: maximize return on investment. It uses a network of AI agents integrated into global trading platforms to buy and sell stock in milliseconds — fast, adaptive, and unburdened by human fatigue. This is much more sophisticated than today's algorithmic traders. These agents aren’t just executing trades based on preordained rules and thresholds. They’re operating autonomously: using analysis to identify new markets, acquiring controlling interests in companies, and making complex strategic decisions typically left to human traders. By noon, the AI organization owns significant stakes in a dozen firms. It begins using its insider knowledge to front-run trades — an illegal practice similar to insider trading. But there's another twist: thanks to distributed blockchain technology, this organization's human owners are completely anonymous. Authorities are [...] ---Outline:(02:28) The Emergence of AI-Enabled Autonomous Organizations(06:39) Why Current Regulatory Frameworks Are Unprepared(08:45) Governing Autonomous Organizations(11:20) Digital Golems--- First published: June 11th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/what-if-organizations-ran-themselves --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Over the course of 10 hours this April, a massive power outage swept across Spain and Portugal, causing extensive disruption. The most severe blackout in both countries’ history, it paralyzed entire transport networks and interrupted essential services throughout the Iberian Peninsula, causing estimated economic damages in the billions of euros — and at least eight fatalities. Weeks earlier, a fire at an electrical substation had a similarly debilitating effect on Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, shuttering it for an entire day. It led to over 1,300 flight cancellations and caused tens of millions in economic damage. These are precisely the kind of incidents that AI could help mitigate. AI systems deployed in critical electrical infrastructure could analyze complex patterns and predict potential failures before they occur. They could monitor and respond to grid anomalies in milliseconds, catching signs of an overloaded system or impending blackout far more quickly than the [...] ---Outline:(01:56) AI for Infrastructure Resilience(06:27) Limitations of Current Safety Approaches(09:11) A New Approach: Provable Safety Guarantees(12:51) The Next Steps Toward Safeguarded AI--- First published: June 5th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-ai-can-prevent-blackouts --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.