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Issue 257 · September 16, 2026 · 5 min read

AI's own makers ask to slow down while the money says speed up

The heads of the two biggest AI labs asked for outside oversight and a slower pace, and the president dismissed the safety worries as a hoax. At the same time, the companies that build AI kept spending at record levels.

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Inside this issue

The Big Story

AI's own builders ask to slow down; Trump calls the worries a hoax. What happened and why it matters to your business, in plain English.

The Research

3 new research findings, translated into plain terms:

  • One weak link can crash a whole team of AI agents
  • Teaching AI to say 'I'm not sure' cut wrong answers from 13% to 9%
  • A book-length AI task now runs on a single laptop

The Money

What Oracle (ORCL), Alphabet (GOOGL), and SK Hynix did with their money this week, plus the five-day move in the AI stocks.

The Discourse

What Dario Amodei, head of Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and longtime AI critic, Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor who studies AI at work, and Matt Shumer, an AI startup founder said on X this week, and where the consensus is forming.

The Rules

3 government moves on AI worth knowing: federal, state, and global.

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