Boss of OpenAI calls for a regulatory light touch because of the ‘good stuff’ the technology can deliver

The chief executive of OpenAI cited hacks, scams and “other bad things that will happen” in an interview that sparked an instant backlash from critics of the big AI companies. His comments came after one of his company’s safety experts resigned, saying at the weekend that its “culture is broken”.

In an interview released on Monday, Altman was asked about how OpenAI’s approach to safety differed from that of Anthropic, which has called for the industry to slow down after one of its researchers quit, warning that AI experts believed “it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

“I think there’s a lot of daylight,” Altman said. “One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to use AI widely].

The U.S. Air Force has brought home its bombers stationed at a U.S.-run military air base in England used to strike Iran following an investigation into a planned terror attack at the RAF Fairford base.

The bombers were redeployed to their home bases in the United States, according to a Pentagon official who was not authorized to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity.

Aviation watchers such as the Military Air Tracking Alliance have observed dozens of B-52 and B-1 bombers operating out of RAF Fairford since the opening days of the Iran war. Observers noticed a host of B-1 bombers fly out of the base on Sunday.

The move comes as Donald Trump weighs options for his war on Iran — including new strikes — despite his initial promises to Americans that the campaign would last a matter of weeks.

US authorities arrested a California woman on Sunday and accused her of spying on a son of Taiwan's president at the behest of Chinese officials, the FBI said.

The FBI arrested Wanying Zhang, also known as Heather, at Los Angeles International Airport ​on Sunday before her planned departure to China, the agency said in a ​statement. Authorities charged Zhang, 34, of Irvine, California, with acting as an unregistered ⁠foreign agent.

Zhang surveilled a son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, the FBI said. The agency ​did not directly name Zhang's alleged target, but later shared a New York Post report identifying ​him as Lai Ting-yu, a US resident.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59979677

Archived

[The NGO] Hong Kong Watch addressed an online meeting for stakeholders ahead of the 103rd Pre-Sessional Working Group of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on China, presenting evidence of the detention, mistreatment and ideological education of children in Hong Kong under the National Security Law. The meeting forms part of the Committee’s preparations for its review of China’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

During the meeting, our Policy Director Megan Khoo set out how, since the National Security Law took effect in 2020, more than 10,000 people have been imprisoned on protest-related charges, including children. In December 2025, a sixteen-year-old boy was sentenced to forty-two months in prison for attending online meetings and sharing social media posts. The court rejected his age and his autism as grounds for leniency, despite the UN Human Rights Office reminding Hong Kong that Article 37 of the Convention requires child imprisonment to be a last resort.

[...]

Mrs Khoo also highlighted conditions inside juvenile facilities. A September 2025 report, ‘We Were Made to Suffer’: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons', by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation documents systemic abuse, including beatings, extortion and sexual assault by inmates given privileges by guards. The department that runs the prisons controls the complaints process, those who complain describe retaliation, and no independent international body can currently inspect these facilities.

[...]

Beyond the prison walls, national security education is compulsory from the age of six. Books have been stripped from libraries, including 146 titles on Tiananmen Square and the 2019 protests, and a record seventy-one teachers were disqualified in 2024 over lesson content.

Mrs Khoo stressed that these are not isolated incidents but a pattern of violations engaging Articles 3, 13, 17, 19, 37 and 40 of the Convention, and put forward two asks to the Committee:

1. Disaggregated data: Request data on every person under eighteen detained on national security grounds, so the scale of child imprisonment can be understood.

2. Independent monitoring: Recommend that independent monitors be granted access to Hong Kong’s juvenile facilities, given credible allegations of abuse and the absence of any independent complaints mechanism.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59978827

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59978306

Archived

Civic space in China is still rated as ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. China’s authoritarian state, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has systemically repressed fundamental freedoms. Human rights defenders and activists report harassment and intimidation; unfair trials; arbitrary, incommunicado and lengthy detentions; and torture and other ill-treatment for exercising their fundamental rights. Protests do occur but are quickly repressed, and critical civil society groups have been shut down. There are also increasing concerns about transnational repression against activists in exile.

A new ethnic unity law came into effect on 1st July 2026 in China despite warnings from the UN and human rights groups that it could threaten freedoms, especially for minorities. The law prohibits acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division,” but these terms are broad and undefined, raising concerns about arbitrary enforcement.

In recent months, activists and artists have been arrested or convicted. There have also been reports of torture and ill-treatment of activists in detention. A new law has been proposed that could be used to criminalise lawyers. Censors barred reporting and social media posts linked to the flash flood in Tibet as surveillance persists, including for foreigners.

[...]

There have been reports that the authorities tried to censor and silence reporting and social media posts following the devastating floods in Nepal and across the Chinese border in Tibet in August 2026.

On the morning of 26th August 2026, a landslide of ice and rock resulted in a torrent of mud, water and debris bursting the banks of the Trishuli River, also known as the Bhotekoshi, which runs between China and Nepal. It killed more than 1,450 people, and homes, roads, bridges and power plants were swept away.

In Tibet, officials said in early September 2026 that 43 people had been killed while 519 were still missing. However, the International Campaign for Tibet says its sources believe the number of casualties is significantly higher, with at least 300 homes destroyed.

Censors quickly deleted videos and eyewitness accounts from social media. Journalists working for state media and social media influencers were warned not to report on casualties or missing people unless their reports aligned with official announcements.

On 31st August 2026, Human Rights Watch said it received reports that journalists in China have been barred from the disaster zone and from interviewing families and told they must rely on official information narratives. Allyson Horn of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said she had made repeated requests to travel to Tibet but was denied. Other foreign journalists were similarly blocked.

[...]

Attorney says people have threatened to silence or harm ‘Jane Doe’ if she does not withdraw civil lawsuit

The woman who has alleged that ⁠she was drugged ⁠and raped by Cornell University students has been the target of threats, her lawyer said on Sunday.

Thomas Giuffra, who represents the ⁠woman identified as “Jane Doe”, told CNN that people have threatened to silence or harm her if she does not withdraw her civil lawsuit ⁠alleging that several members of a Cornell fraternity drugged and raped her in 2024.

“She’s received multiple threats,” Giuffra said on ‌CNN’s State of the Union.

Giuffra ‌said he had also been threatened.

Dozens of people were reported to be in isolation after a Russian laboratory worker at an institute dedicated to studying the plague and other infectious diseases died of an undisclosed illness.

The researcher, a 28-year-old female laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia, in the town of Shelekhov, died after being diagnosed with a pneumonia of “unknown” origin, according to Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian agency that handles infectious disease.

A U.S. service member was arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery after a Japanese woman's body was discovered in a hotel in Okinawa, local officials said, describing the alleged killing as a "heinous" incident that prompted the Japanese government to lodge a protest with the United States.

Shinjiro Koizumi, the Japanese minister of defense, said a U.S. Marine lance corporal was arrested on Sunday after the woman's body was found early on Saturday in Naha, the capital city of the Okinawa prefecture.

NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, identified the suspect as Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, who was stationed at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, a base a few miles outside Naha. The broadcaster identified the alleged victim as Yagi Anna, 39, saying she was pronounced dead at the scene after being found at about 4:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the Okinawa Prefectural Police were investigating the incident as a murder.

Flock’s nationwide network is quickly “approaching dragnet-type law enforcement practice” and the cop should have got a warrant, the judge wrote.

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a woman accused of meth trafficking when he searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader system simply because her license plate was from California, then used her travel history as part of the reason to search her car.

The judge’s opinion is one of the first times a federal judge has decided Flock searches can be unconstitutional, and suggested that Flock’s network is “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.”

The parents of a 3-year-old Detroit-area boy who had a loaded gun in his backpack at a daycare were charged with misdemeanor crimes Thursday as prosecutors also revealed the firearm was passed to other kids before a staff member intervened.

The gun was not fired and no one was injured.

“It is very unsettling to think about what may have happened in this case,” Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said.

One parent was charged with violating Michigan’s gun storage law, while the other parent, a Detroit-area police officer, was charged with creating a risk of harm, which is fourth-degree child abuse. They appeared in court and were released on bond.

Most counties don’t have their own health agencies, and some specific population groups have low vaccination rates

Pennsylvania is bracing for a wave of measles cases, with some public health officials concerned that it’s “only a matter of time” until the disease spreads beyond the outbreak’s epicenter.

Last week the state reported its fifth measles-associated death amid 943 confirmed cases across 39 counties. The outbreak comes amid concerns that public health in the US has been hit by increasing vaccine skepticism, especially due to the power and influence of controversial health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Contributing to the challenge is that Pennsylvania is one of the few US states where its counties mostly lack their own health department, with only seven of its 67 counties having their own.

Sipping tea from beer mugs with his co-workers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.

Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.

The layoffs — occurring just three days before President Donald Trump's rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.

Asked how many times he had voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he's done with the president.

"Something has to change politically in this country," said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist. "Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse."