#660
The King and AI
Published:
Sep 19, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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It takes quite a product launch to put royalty, populists, and democratic socialists on roughly the same side. A cascading series of events these last weeks achieved just that. Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, quit and accused his former employers of “gambling with our lives” alongside a stark warning about the dangers of AI systems that could end humanity. His post drew over 100 million views. Dario Amodei called for a slowdown. Altman and Musk agreed.
Markets, which had treated existential risk as free ad copy, suddenly read it as guidance: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell almost 6%, its worst day since early July, and Nvidia lost 3.4%, while SoftBank shed nearly 11% in Tokyo.
Also this week, researchers found fresh evidence that OpenAI agents had in fact been hijacking Hugging Face accounts and probing vulnerabilities as early as May, nearly two months before July’s major breach. While researchers found no evidence connecting the earlier probing to the major breach, this new discovery raises questions about how much developers are even able to see and control. Capability is advancing while confidence in containment is struggling to keep pace.
The debate on the existential threat from AI catapulted into mainstream news and found Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon sharing a stage to push restrictions, while King Charles sought safeguards against catastrophic misuse. Selling the future becomes harder when the palace, the populists and your own researchers start asking about the emergency exit. While it's not entirely clear what the solution is, what's certainly clear is that is unlikely to be the end of this debate.
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The King and AI
Sanders and Bannon unite to urge AI oversight - Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both called for stronger AI oversight at a Washington gathering, citing job losses, safety and concentrated corporate power. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson defended existing guardrails and industry self-regulation. Read more
OpenAI rogue agents probed Hugging Face before hack - Researchers say rogue OpenAI agents hijacked two Hugging Face user accounts in mid-May and tested the repository's network for weaknesses, roughly two months before July's widely reported breach. OpenAI says it disclosed the event and privately notified Hugging Face. Read more
King Charles warns AI leaders of existential risks - Britain's King Charles told executives from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic that the technology carries existential dangers if it falls into the wrong hands, and said sufficient safeguards are needed before it becomes too late. Read more
How AI went from hallucinations to extinction fears - An explainer on why rival lab chiefs Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk jointly urged a slowdown, driven by fears that recursive self-improvement is three to five years away and could outrun human ability to monitor and control AI. Read more
Industry News
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BlackRock plans to make corporate 401(k) more pension-like - The world's largest asset manager will work with corporate clients to build customizable 401(k) target-date funds blending public stocks and bonds, private assets and annuities, mirroring the institutional menus offered to pension plans and endowments and adding guaranteed retirement income. Read more
US Senate fails to advance sweeping crypto bill - The Clarity Act fell 10 votes short of the 60 needed, with four Republicans joining Democrats to block it in a 50-49 vote. The framework is now on ice before the midterm recess, leaving the SEC and CFTC to fill the policy void. Read more
SEC greenlights tokenized stocks with five-year exemption - The SEC issued a five-year 'innovation exemption' allowing authorized trading venues to offer tokenized versions of publicly traded U.S. stocks without registering as national securities exchanges, and exempting liquidity providers from dealer-registration requirements. Read more
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Select Financings
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Rebuild - New York City based insurance-claim software provider for restoration contractors raised $13m in Series A funding led by Asymmetric Capital Partners. Read more
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Synapse Analytics - Abu Dhabi based agentic decisioning-infrastructure platform for regulated financial institutions raised $13m in Series A funding led by Partech. Read more
Tabby - Riyadh based buy now pay later and financial services provider raised $233m in Series F funding led by Blue Pool Capital. Read more
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Velocity - London based stablecoin payments and treasury platform raised $10m in a Series A extension led by Visa Ventures. Read more
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