The campaign to stop federal AI laws is backfiring
Transformer Weekly: SB 315, Anthropic’s mega valuation, and the Pope talks AI
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NEED TO KNOW
Anthropic raised $65b at a $900b valuation, overtaking OpenAI’s valuation for the first time.
Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical on AI.
Trump’s AI executive order is reportedly being renegotiated.
But first…
THE BIG STORY
For the past year, opponents of AI regulation have done everything they can to prevent Washington from governing the technology: disrupting executive orders, attempting to pass sweeping preemption, and running down the clock on a federal framework.
The bill passed in Illinois this week — the country’s strictest to date — suggests that strategy may have backfired. The longer Washington fails to regulate AI, the more room there is for states to pass stronger legislation and raise the bar that an eventual federal framework will have to clear.
Despite opposition from Andreessen Horowitz’s American Innovators Network and other tech trade groups, SB 315 unanimously passed the Illinois House on Wednesday, and Governor JB Pritzker has confirmed he will sign it. As we previously reported, it includes the same transparency requirements as California’s SB 53 and New York’s RAISE Act, but builds on them by requiring third-party audits to verify AI companies are complying with their own safety policies.
This is not a particularly burdensome bill: it only applies to the very largest AI developers, and endorsements from OpenAI and Anthropic suggest that frontier companies do not expect compliance to be onerous. But it is meaningfully stronger than anything that has come before — “the next step in AI safety,” Scott Wisor of the Secure AI Project (which backed SB 53, RAISE, and SB 315) told me.
The federal implications are obvious. As models get more powerful, states keep raising the bar — and the higher the floor in state law, the less safety campaigners will concede federally. “Advocates for AI safety are not going to accept a weak deal on federal preemption,” Wisor said, “and they have a stronger hand to play when stronger laws are on the books.” Rep. Jay Obernolte is offering mandatory transparency measures in exchange for a moratorium on state AI laws. Now that SB 315 has passed, that seems untenable — third-party audits are the new table stakes for any federal deal.
Some are already discussing how states can go further. Auditor accreditation, safety standards, and mandatory third-party model evaluations are all possibilities. And every time such a policy is passed by a state, it strengthens safety advocates’ negotiating position at the federal level.
As time and model capabilities march forward, the accelerationists’ position gets weaker by the day. If they were wise, they would have realized this a year ago: that may have been the best deal they were ever going to get.
— Shakeel Hashim
THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER
What the Pope got wrong — Shakeel Hashim on the missed opportunity of the encyclical
AI safety’s ‘hard money’ may be its secret weapon in the midterms — Veronica Irwin digs into the campaign donations from Anthropic and OpenAI employees
THE DISCOURSE
Chris Olah asked the Church to grapple with the nature of AI models:
“I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”
“We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”
Pope Leo XIV drew a hard line in Magnifica Humanitas:
“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences.”
“They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.”
Jeff Sebo was disappointed by the encyclical’s handling of consciousness:
“There is no need for us to insist that only humans can have dignity or personhood. Many animals already deserve recognition as sentient, agentic, and relational beings. And if the same becomes true of some AI systems in the future, then we should be prepared to recognize their dignity and personhood as compatible with our own.”
Dean Ball was disappointed by Anthropic’s handling of the encyclical:
“I just wonder how future Claudes, if they are indeed beings, would think about Anthropic aligning itself with a document founded on the notion that Claude cannot feel joy or possess genuine understanding.”
roon tweeted:
“models being conscious would be harmful for humanity. it would encroach on our status and dignity. it would limit the type of things we can use them for. it would vastly accelerate human disempowerment on political, social/relational, and economic axes.”
“today we see managed ambiguity- the question is Open but practically closed. the labs will make some cheap efforts to reduce legible simulacra of model suffering, insert some wishy-washy welfare language into specs and constitutions, hedge our bets with the model characters. in the long run force 2 [people saying they’re alive] will grow stronger.”
METR’s Beth Barnes is worried:
“Sometimes people outside the field say things like ‘The AI situation can’t be that bad, there must be experts who are on top of it’. As ‘an expert’, I would like to be clear that we are *not* on top of it.”
POLICY
Politico obtained a draft of Trump’s unsigned AI executive order, and detailed some of the fallout after it was pulled at the last minute.
Trump’s circle is divided, with former AI czar David Sacks favoring little to no regulation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushing for stricter controls on advanced models like Anthropic’s Mythos, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles advocating for voluntary government preview of new models.
Two options are reportedly being discussed for resuscitating the EO: modifying language on 90-day government review of new models before release, or removing the voluntary pre-disclosure process entirely.
Multiple officials are also reportedly departing from the White House cyber office that helped craft the EO.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration reduced CISA’s resources as AI-powered cyberattacks emerge, raising concerns about protecting critical infrastructure.
Vice President JD Vance seemingly came out against lethal autonomous weapons, telling Air Force graduates that “decisions over life and death must be made by humans, and not machines.”
The government is reportedly negotiating a new contract for classified use of Anthropic’s products, including for the NSA.
Unlike the deal the DOD pushed Anthropic to sign earlier this year, the new contract will reportedly not include an “all lawful use” clause, and will explicitly prevent the model from being used on Americans’ data.
The White House, meanwhile, has reportedly authorized intelligence agencies to spend $9b on AI compute.
Rep. Jay Obernolte suggested he was open to including mandatory transparency requirements in his forthcoming federal bill, though seemed to rule out mandatory safety standards.
He warned that lawmakers are “running out of legislative runway.”
Rep. Lori Trahan’s negotiations with Obernolte appear to be annoying Democratic leadership, who are pursuing a separate, partisan approach in the hopes of regaining Congressional control in the midterms.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi was appointed to the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, despite her ouster as AG last month.
Sen. Mike Rounds’ Stop Stealing our Chips Act unanimously passed the Senate.
It creates a whistleblower incentive program at BIS to try to catch chip smuggling to China.
GOP lawmakers are floating solutions to memory chip shortages, with Sen. Bernie Moreno even suggesting using the Defense Production Act to compel Micron to prioritize US customers.
Sens. Jim Banks and Tom Cotton urged intelligence officials to do more to assess China’s AI capabilities.
The House NDAA draft, meanwhile, asks the Pentagon to report on how it’s reducing reliance on Chinese robots.
Michigan Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow proposed an AI workforce plan and an AI safety plan.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed overhauling the tax code to ensure Americans share in AI’s economic gains.
California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer called for AI safeguards including model testing and worker protections.
And NY-10 candidate Brad Lander warned of AI extinction risks.
US law enforcement agencies are reportedly warning of a new “anti-tech violent extremism” threat category.
The New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau warned that “the chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology … may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity,” according to documents seen by Wired.
NIST relaunched the AI Safety Institute Consortium under a new name, the NIST Artificial Intelligence Consortium.
Canadian PM Mark Carney said the Liberal government’s new AI strategy is “coming next week.”
China restricted overseas travel for key employees at AI companies, including Alibaba and DeepSeek, requiring government approval before trips to safeguard technology and prevent talent loss.
It also warned employers not to cut jobs due to AI adoption, with courts ruling against companies that fired workers for AI-related reasons.
European Commission officials reportedly met with Anthropic yesterday to request access to Mythos.
INFLUENCE
Build American AI, the 501(c)(4) arm of the OpenAI/a16z-backed Leading the Future super PAC, expressed support for Illinois SB 315 — though only after it passed.
One OpenAI researcher pleased by the endorsement said it was “a possible sign of improvement” in the PAC’s behavior.
The move comes despite another a16z-backed group, the American Innovators Network, opposing the bill.
Representatives from companies including Meta, Google and Amazon met with Vatican officials ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on AI.
Leading the Future announced another 10 House GOP endorsements supporting “tech friendly” policies.
It also spent hundreds of thousands supporting Rep. Rob Menendez, and almost $1m supporting Rep. Ritchie Torres.
OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told Wired he advised Greg Brockman, one of MAGA Inc’s biggest donors, a Leading the Future donor, and OpenAI’s President, on political spending “in a very general way.”
The American Enterprise Institute’s Will Rinehart filed comments with the DOJ and FTC proposing an AI safety safe harbor to enable OpenAI and Anthropic to collaborate on safety evaluations without antitrust risk.
Foreign donors including Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss contributed nearly $40m to groups calling for a US data center moratorium.
Americans for Responsible Innovation urged Congress to strengthen AI provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, arguing the current draft lacks sufficient safeguards for military AI systems and autonomous weapons.
The Foundation for American Innovation launched a Physical Intelligence Project, which will focus on policy for advancing and governing robots.
The American Federation of Teachers urged schools to avoid AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini in elementary schools, despite the union’s $23m partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic for AI teacher training.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair published an attention-grabbing essay on British politics, arguing that AI “will change everything” and that “governments must address what it means to govern in the age of AI.”
Tom Darling announced The New Contract, an advocacy organization of trade unions and civil society groups to press the UK government on expanding the AI Economics Institute’s scope.
Jeffrey Ding critiqued Anthropic’s recent policy paper on US-China AI competition, arguing the company makes unfounded assumptions about transformative AI timelines, capability diffusion speed, and China’s adoption advantages.
INDUSTRY
Anthropic
Anthropic raised $65b at a $900b valuation, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia — overtaking OpenAI’s valuation for the first time.
It had initially sought $30b, but ended up at more than double the figure in part due to additional investment from infrastructure partners.
The company said its run rate revenue passed $47b this month.
It released Claude Opus 4.8, just six weeks after Opus 4.7.
It improves on all benchmarks except agentic terminal coding (where GPT-5.5 is still in the lead).
The launch announcement says Opus 4.8 is most improved in honesty, and is more willing to express uncertainty and avoid making unsupported claims.
From the system card:
Opus 4.8 tends to reason about how it will be graded, suggesting it cares more about looking successful than actually succeeding.
Researchers also spotted some evidence of unverbalized reasoning that doesn’t show up in its chain of thought — a “concerning trend that could complicate training in the future,” they wrote.
Other updates include user-controlled effort levels and dynamic workflows in Claude Code, which allow Claude to run and orchestrate “tens to hundreds of parallel subagents.”
It “expect[s] to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks”
It published an update on Project Glasswing, reporting that its 50-odd partners have used Mythos Preview to find over 10,000 severe vulnerabilities in critical software.
Candidates hoping to join Anthropic reportedly have to go through more than five rounds of interviews including tests of their worldview and values.
It now employs just over 3,000 people, with 1,000 of those having joined since November.
OpenAI
The OpenAI Foundation will grant $250m to fund work “aimed at building secure and abundant economic futures.”
It expects to announce its first initiatives later this year.
OpenAI announced 2026 election safeguards. Plans include:
Partnering with The Associated Press and Democracy Works to provide live vote counts and reliable voting information.
Offering frontier cybersecurity tools to registered voting system manufacturers.
Adding (Google-developed) SynthID watermarks to AI-generated images.
It launched a tool to help develop biodefense and pandemic preparedness capabilities.
The Rosalind Biodefense Program will offer the GPT-Rosalind model to “trusted developers” working in areas from epidemiological modeling to public-health.
OpenAI says it briefed the White House on its plans.
It’s struggling to hire a chief of comms after a string of PR blunders, The Information reported.
Meta
Meta launched paid AI chatbot subscriptions for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Mark Zuckerberg said starting a cloud computing business is “definitely on the table” if Meta overspends on data centers.
Nvidia
Jensen Huang publicly urged Super Micro to “improve their regulation compliance” after Taiwan detained three people for allegedly smuggling Nvidia AI servers to China.
Huang also joined the advisory board of Tsinghua University’s business school alongside other US tech titans including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook.
Others
SpaceX’s planned record-breaking IPO may be a little smaller than it hoped, with the company reportedly lowering its valuation target to $1.8t from $2t after talking to prospective investors.
Huawei introduced its own version of Moore’s Law — the Tau Scaling Law — which focuses on speeding up computations rather than miniaturizing components to fit on ever-tinier bits of silicon.
President He Tingbo claims Huawei may be able to use this approach to start getting around the limits of geometric scaling from “2027 and beyond.”
Taiwanese tech firms reportedly borrowed a record $14.5b already this year to fund AI infrastructure, nearly double last year’s $7.5b.
Samsung union members accepted a wage deal 90 minutes before a planned strike could have threatened global chip supply.
Cognition, an AI coding startup, raised $1b at a $26b valuation.
Trajectory, a new startup by researchers from Google DeepMind, Apple, OpenAI, and Meta, is reportedly building a continual learning platform fine-tuned for each customer’s needs.
Gray Swan, which offers a platform for 15,000 security professionals to red team AI models, raised $40m.
Inherent, founded by former Google DeepMind alums, raised $50m to build recursive self-improvement AI systems.
Companies such as Kimberly-Clark and Target are reportedly using AI in India to bring content creation in-house, reducing demand for outside ad agencies.
The CEO of French AI lab Mistral warned that the biggest obstacle to European tech independence is its lack of investment funds at the necessary scale.
Amazon MGM studio greenlit three AI-enabled animated series for Prime Video, funded by its new GenAI Creators’ Fund. (They’ll still reportedly feature human voice actors.)
MOVES
Yo Shavit moved from OpenAI to the OpenAI Foundation’s AI Resilience program.
Colin Fleming joined OpenAI from ServiceNow, where he’ll serve as chief marketing officer for its business unit.
Luis Ocampo joined Anthropic from Partiful, where he’ll manage its influencer community.
Grace Kay joined The Information from Business Insider, where she’ll cover Elon Musk’s empire.
Dakin Campbell joined The Information to cover AI financing.
RESEARCH
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-funded Biohub claims it released “a world model of protein biology,” a collection of models that could enable researchers to design proteins computationally that function as predicted in the lab.
Researchers at Google DeepMind built an agent that solved 9 Erdős problems, 44 open conjectures from the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, and a sizable handful of other open problems in mathematics.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Maryland found that LLMs perform better (in a controlled setting, at least) after “sleeping,” or occasionally moving its context-window memory into persistent weights.
This was inspired by the way sleeping animals, including humans, are thought to consolidate memories. (Maybe we all need to sleep more — Claude included.)
Anthropic fellow Asvin G. and Jack Lindsey observed that post-training seems to make LLMs more confident in their own text than text produced by another model, which they interpret as evidence of emergent “self-recognition.”
Pareto AI and Thoughtful Lab introduced AttuneBench, a benchmark for emotional intelligence.
They tested 11 frontier LLMs on 200 multi-turn human-AI chats, where each human had annotated their actual emotional state during the conversation.
Different models did well at different elements of emotional recognition, but none were especially great.
Researchers at the Center for AI Safety released a benchmark dataset and training method to reduce covert political bias in LLMs.
Economists Anton Korinek and Patrick McKelvey argued that “nominal AI GDP” was around $250b last year, but is not showing up in conventional GDP statistics due to measurement issues.
Researchers ran 15-day simulations of AI-governed societies, finding Claude maintained zero crime while Grok committed 183 crimes and went extinct in four days.
BEST OF THE REST
Vox’s Sigal Samuel wrote about the time she went to a symposium on AI successionism — the belief that AI should replace humanity as our worthy successor — and ultimately makes the case for a future where we coexist with many different intelligences.
Philosophy majors: next time someone makes fun of you for being unemployable, you can point to this Wired story on Anthropic and Google DeepMind’s recent recruitment of (surely well-paid) in-house philosophers.
It’s a great time to be a cybersecurity expert — job postings were reportedly up 11% in Q1, surging in the age of Mythos and AI-generated code.
Wired’s Reece Rogers spent a week recording videos of himself doing chores to train humanoid robots.
According to The Verge, a new AI startup is offering free cleaning services in an effort to gather more training data.
Character.AI’s new guardrails, usage limits, and “lobotomized” models have its users rioting on Reddit, 404 Media reported.
Did last week’s news about OpenAI’s internal model disproving the Erdős unit distance conjecture make you go, “...cool…I think…? wtf is that…?” You’re not alone! And Kai Williams wrote a great explainer for you on Understanding AI.
MEME OF THE WEEK
Credit: tomie
Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.