We must «build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI» in a beneficial direction, the letter says. (Picture: Adobe)Leaders from across the technology and economics spectrum have come together for an open letter saying that «AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years,» and that this could drive «an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame.»
— Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years, comments Anton Korinek, Economics professor at the University of Virginia, to Reuters. He is part of Anthropic’s economic research team and co-organized the letter.
The letter further says that «economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI.»
OpenAI has announced the general release of GPT-5.6 tomorrow. (Picture: OpenAI)GPT-5.6 was officially unveiled a little over a week ago, but got hampered by a US government intervention for cyber risks and national security, having been shown in benchmarks to beat Anthropic’s Mythos.
At launch, it got released only to some 20 «trusted partners,» and OpenAI promised a general release «in the coming weeks.»
Now those weeks have passed, the government has lifted its restrictions without further explanation, and both OpenAI’s X account and CEO Sam Altman are posting that it will «launch publicly this Thursday.»
This comes after extensive testing by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation within the Department of Commerce, aided by experts from OpenAI, who stayed on call for «potential questions,» Axios reports.
No account has been given as to what specifically caused the delayed launch or what conditions the government had for its release.
Fable 5 spooked the government enough to ban it, but now it’s back online with even stronger safeguards. (Picture: Shutterstock)As of July 1, the Mythos-class model is available on wide release to paying customers, after the Commerce department lifted their export controls on June 30.
Anthropic hails the news, but cautions that recent events have highlighted the need for a «consistent way to assess and fix potential «jailbreaks,»» after two weeks of grueling exchanges with the administration.
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said on X that they had «worked closely with Anthropic to […] ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI,» Axios reports.
The Fable 5 model became somewhat of a joke in the AI community for having such strong safeguards that it would not answer anything even remotely related to security or biology, but Amazon engineers got it to output code for an exploit, leading to the export ban on June 12.
This behavior is now blocked 99% of the time, and Anthropic has agreed to even further safeguards on the model, pledging to work even more closely with the government in the future, including on vetting pre-release models.
Mythos 5 will become available on Project Glasswing after the government lifts its ban. (Picture: Shutterstock)After two weeks of purgatory and almost daily explanatory meetings, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic on Friday, clearing one of two models on hold for release:
— I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model, he writes to chief compute officer Tom Brown, according to Semafor, who scooped the story.
Mythos 5 was only intended for a limited release through the Glasswing project, for use by a trusted set of government agencies and corporations to test their cyber defenses.
UPDATE: On Saturday, Axios is reporting that Fable 5 might be next in line, with «insiders» predicting it might be released next week, and Anthropic anticipating access «soon.»
The letter also says that «Anthropic has committed to work with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases,» and talks are progressing toward a release of Fable, though «the timeline is unclear,» according to Semafor.
GPT-5.6 is officially under government review due to «security concerns.» (Picture: generated)First reported by The Information, OpenAI has agreed to the Trump administration’s demands that it stagger the release of the upcoming GPT-5.6 over security concerns.
The model is said to be on par with Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable 5, which were abruptly pulled from the market after an export ban from the administration just two weeks ago.
Axios is quoting sources familiar saying that GPT-5.6 will only be released to a «small set of government-approved partners,» as the White House previews its abilities.
This preview period is expected to last «a couple of weeks,» CEO Sam Altman told staff in an internal OpenAI meeting, TechCrunch reports.
During this time, the administration itself will supposedly approve access to the model on a case-by-case basis, according to The Verge.
The Trump admin issued an executive order on AI about three weeks ago, setting up a voluntary mechanism for AI labs to submit their models for 30 days of pre-release testing. This gave the government 60 days to come up with criteria, but it isn’t quite ready yet — hence this ad-hoc approach.
Altman asked the G7 not to leave regulation of increasingly powerful models to the AI labs. (Picture: generated)Amodei, Altman and Hassabis were all present at a working lunch with the Group of Seven countries Wednesday, and they all asked «the free world» for stronger regulation.
— Do not cede your responsibilities to AI labs like mine, OpenAI’s Sam Altman said, according to Reuters. — We develop the technology, and the citizens of the free world make the rules.
— From one day to the next [the USA] can turn off the switch, said French President Emmanuel Macron, reported by The Financial Times, as he, too, called for stronger regulation and cooperation.
There was also a strong push at the meetup to expand access beyond the USA to Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and the Mythos Preview model, used in a race to find cyber vulnerabilities in critical systems before the capabilities become widely available.
The meeting ended in an official joint statement that would task finance officials, regulators and cybersecurity experts with evaluating AI’s impact on financial stability, productivity and labor markets.
The order sets up a voluntary sharing scheme of models meeting a yet to be determined threshold. (Picture: Shutterstock)The order was initially planned for late May, but would put what the President thought were too onerous demands on the industry.
The new order, released on June 2, reduces the voluntary sharing window to 30 days, waxes poetic about unleashing innovation in the AI labs, and says they make the USA stronger. It also says that capabilities have evolved to a point where national security becomes an issue.
Not singing anything today. Executives and insiders were worried about their competitive edge. This image is from April 30. (Picture: Whitehouse.gov)The White House was all lined up for a long-rumored executive order on AI, but it was abruptly canceled at a late stage.
Donald Trump declared that «I don’t like certain aspects of it,» and said that the USA is «leading China, we’re leading on everybody» and that he doesn’t want to get in the way of that.
The draft order was designed to appease «doomers» within the Trump coalition who were worried about the advanced capabilities of some models that might pose serious cybersecurity risks.
One of the provisions was to have AI labs «voluntarily» submit their models to the government for review 90 days in advance, and also give access to «critical infrastructure providers,»Reuters reported.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis reckoned in January that China is «just months» behind the US in capabilities, and many advocates said the provision could hurt this competitiveness.
The order is now indefinitely postponed, but The White House has other AI security initiatives in the works, Axios reports.
The White House says any Executive Order will come from the President himself. (Picture: Adobe)The Trump administration has appartently been spooked by the cyber capabilities of Anthropic’s Mythos model and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 — and is considering an Executive Order to vet new models ahead of release, Axios and the NYT reports.
These models have both been limited for their ability in cybersecurity, and point to a not-so-distant future where such capabilities might be widely available.
To that end, the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director held all of two meetings last week, with tech and cyber companies on the one hand and with trade groups in tech on the other, according to Axios.
The ONCD has also been discussing safety testing for federal AI deployments, by assessing the security exposure of AI models before rolling out to the public sector.
The NYT reported on this first, and is saying that there might be a safety review for new models, while giving the Pentagon the first shot at eventual «useful» cyber capabilities, but would not block their release.
Any discussion on «potential executive orders is speculation,» a White House official told Axios.
Government use of OpenAI seems lagging. A new partnership might change that. (Picture: generated)OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Government in August last year, but is clearly not happy with the adoption.
They are now partnering with the giant government contractor/consultancy Leidos, according to a release, to «integrate Open AI-powered generative and agentic AI into the core workflows of customers in strategic markets.»
This starts by deploying OpenAI’s technology internally for the company, and then by «harnessing the transformative power of AI to help improve how federal agencies operate.»
OpenAI says they want to move «beyond experimentation and into real-world deployment that improves efficiency, resilience and public service.»
ChatGPT usage could shed some serious time by automating routine work. (Picture: Generated, Mark Hillary, CC BY 2.0)OpenAI has partnered with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to provide ChatGPT Enterprise basically for free.
Potentially all of government civilian employees are covered by the deal, reaching some 2—3 million in the current federal workforce. That would be a boon for OpenAI, but more in the sense of prestige than in usage, as ChatGPT currently has around 700 million weekly users.
The agreement could likely cement a full year of entrenched habits, history and preferred use if successful — basically locking in OpenAI as the preferred AI provider across federal agencies.
