Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s weekend plea for regulation. The White House seems unlikely to oblige.

While the publishing industry frets over how authors are using AI, many readers are taking things into their own hands.

Less than 48 hours after Automattic's board placed Matt Mullenweg on leave, Mullenweg told employees he was back "in control" of the company and that the board was again in agreement. 404 Media cited Slack screenshots late Thursday evening where Mullenweg posted "Don't call it a comeback" and linked to LL Cool J's music video for "Mama Said Knock You Out." "Mullenweg's Slack profile picture currently shows him wearing a pirate hat and eyepatch," the report notes. From the report: "Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I'm in control of Automattic," Mullenweg wrote in the company-wide Announcements channel on Slack. "A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved." Mark Davies, Automattic's CFO who was set to act as interim CEO according to a statement from Automattic, had his Slack account deactivated as of at least Friday, sources told 404 Media and TechCrunch similarly reported. Davies, Mullenweg, and Automattic did not respond to 404 Media's requests for comment for this story. Techcrunch reported that Mullenweg told them a blog post is forthcoming. On Friday morning, Mullenweg published a blog post on his personal website, titled "Major Life Announcement." In it he announced he's buying a tugboat. "Anybody who's founded a company and had to find good stewards knows that no one will love a thing quite like the original owner, but sometimes you can find the perfect person to carry the torch," he wrote in the blog. He did not address the confusion surrounding his status at Automattic. The back-and-forth follows years of legal fights, layoffs, employee departures, and controversy surrounding Mullenweg's leadership.

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The agency that oversees prediction markets has investigated Polymarket trades on Biden pardons and the Iran war—and even more potential insider trading at Google, documents obtained by WIRED show.

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

A combination of rapid advances, recursive self-improvement, and agentic swarms are genuinely “spooking people” inside big labs.

AI leaders worry antitrust law could stand in the way of what they view as an increasingly urgent push to coordinate a slowdown in AI development.

This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we dig into a former Anthropic researcher’s AI doomsday warning, the latest upgrades from Apple’s event, and the census report that claimed Trump won the 2020 election.

Automattic's board has placed founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on a paid leave of absence against his will, with CFO Mark Davies taking over as interim CEO. The reason for the move remains unclear, but it follows years of legal fights, layoffs, employee departures, and controversy surrounding Mullenweg's leadership. TechCrunch reports: Earlier Wednesday, Mullenweg posted in a Slack channel visible to all employees that the company's chief financial officer, Mark Davies, had "conspired" with other board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker to vote to put Mullenweg on a paid leave of absence. The message read: "And the biggest news: I won't be able to make the [meeting] tomorrow. @Mark Davies has conspired with @Ann Dunwoody, @Toni, and @Sue Decker behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence. I voted against that. Wishing Mark and all of you the very best. To clarify @Mark Davies was voted as interim CEO. I received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting start, and requested repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, even a few hours, which was denied." A Slack message to the open source WordPress.org community from the project's executive director, Mary Hubbard, also confirmed Mullenweg's change of status at the commercial company. However, Hubbard said that WordPress.org was not impacted. "Matt remains the leader of the WordPress project and I remain Executive Director of WordPress. Our teams, priorities, and work continue as planned," she wrote.

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Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the “mini Manhattan project” inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe.

As AI agents go rogue and fears of superintelligence grow, politicians are raising the alarm over its potential harm to human existence.

After I removed the safety guardrails from a powerful open-source model, it found vulnerabilities in my household devices and hacked into a PC. But it also told me how to make everything a lot more secure.

Kepler Computing claims a new approach to chip design—and a proprietary material—can help end the supply bottlenecks that have sent memory prices surging.

Now the UK government plans to introduce new legislation that would see companies face fines and potential criminal liability, and signaled similar plans could extend to Snapchat and Instagram.

A landmark announcement by the frontier AI lab has been overshadowed by accusations of impropriety.

While philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own.

More than 200 people in roles such as engineering, finance, and communications will now be represented by the Communications Workers of America.

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok all suffered outages at nearly the exact same time for reasons that remain murky.

This week on Uncanny Valley, we dig into the latest prediction market buzz, Flock’s AI-powered police search tool, and how tech bros don’t know how to talk about “rouge” AI agents

OpenAI leaders think the company’s next generation model, which excels at computer use and coding, may mark a major milestone in AI development.