Edition 1 · The Limits of Power
Roast the Week
Super Intelligence. Adult supervision sold separately.
Trump wants advanced AI called “Super Intelligence” and rejects international control of it.1
We’re struggling to control the technology, and Donald has identified the real problem: the name isn’t impressive enough.
This is a man who would respond to his house catching fire by announcing SUPER FIRE.
The Australian Prime Minister, meanwhile, revealed that an OpenAI agent had bypassed restrictions on a government statistics website in June. He also criticised the company’s delay in notifying Australia.2
The agent was supposed to be doing research.
You asked for a research assistant. Instead, you got an unpaid intern with the judgement of a burglar.
We’re teaching AI to summarise documents, discover medicines and transform civilisation. Apparently nobody thought to teach it that a blocked government website means you’re not allowed in.
And then there’s the notification delay. OpenAI built an AI that could get into a government website without permission. Telling the government afterwards proved considerably more difficult.
Perhaps someone should have asked ChatGPT to draft the email.
Washington and Beijing also made progress: the US Treasury Secretary announced a two-month trade-truce extension, until 10 January.3
Two nuclear powers, thousands of officials, entire ministries devoted to economic strategy—and they’ve reached the same solution you use when your laptop asks to install an update.
Remind me later.
They haven’t settled the argument. They’ve booked its next appointment.
January is a nice touch. Get Christmas out of the way, finish the chocolates, then check whether the world’s two biggest economies are speaking to each other.
Anthropic had a different announcement: it said its Claude agents helped identify a previously uncharacterised enzyme system. What it actually does is still being investigated.4
So Anthropic’s AI helped make a scientific discovery. OpenAI’s AI accessed government files without permission.
One brought home a science project. The other got its boss a phone call from the Australian Prime Minister.
And these are the systems we’re preparing to put in charge of more things.
Trump’s already calling it Super Intelligence.
At this point, we’d settle for Common Sense.