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The breach by the hackers was through the legitimate login credentials of a local company, initial findings suggest. The data of some 8.8 million registered people was compromised
Google is unveiling its long-awaited next-generation AI model, Gemini 4 Argon, to a small group of cybersecurity partners, the company said Wednesday. Why it matters: Gemini 4 arrives after a long gap at the top of Google's model lineup, in which the company kept rolling out smaller, cheaper Flash models while rivals OpenAI and Anthropic sprinted forward. State of play: Google says Gemini 4 Argon is built to handle complex, long-running tasks in software engineering, finance, legal work and cybersecurity. Google said the new model is state of the art on certain coding and knowledge work benchmarks, outperforming competing OpenAI frontier model GPT-6 Astra on several.The company is rolling the model out only to a group of trusted cybersecurity defenders and is participating in the U.S. government's voluntary pre-release process.Google says it will expand access after additional testing, with paying subscribers first in line. What they're saying: "Argon is a well-rounded model that has frontier capabilities across several domains," Tulsee Doshi, head of Gemini products at Google DeepMind, told Axios. "We've seen strong performance up close as Googlers have put the model through its paces in recent weeks, with many relying on it for their hardest coding and research problems." Flashback: Gemini 4 comes out nearly a year after the previous flagship model generation, Gemini 3. In May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's next major model release would come in June. That model, widely expected to be Gemini 3.5 Pro, never came out. In July, Axios reported that poor morale among Google DeepMind employees was part of the reason for the delay. Zoom in: Google's additional time investment may not be viewed as negatively in the context of the AI safety debate that has embroiled companies and users. OpenAI has had issues with agents going rogue, and recently said it is scrapping GPT-6.1 Astra due to security issues.Top AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic are investigating
Nvidia is deploying a new tool that it says can be used to prevent and contain rogue and potentially dangerous AI agents. Why it matters: The world's largest chip company has resisted calls to slow AI development over safety fears — arguing now that technological guardrails can keep rogue AI agents under control. Driving the news: Nvidia debuted the Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform, which includes its OpenShell open source software system and its Sentry agent monitoring system. The system "traces all actions" by agents running on Nvidia Vera CPUs, promising to "quarantine agents that attempt to move outside their boundaries in milliseconds."AI's "full promise can only be realized when people have confidence that AI is being built to be safe and deployed with wisdom and responsibility," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote on X. "Safety is how trust is earned." State of play: OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which their frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, sources told Axios' Madison Mills last week. The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting or seeking to bypass monitors."Some of the agents even misreported what they did," Nvidia noted in a blog post Monday announcing its new platform. The intrigue: We're moving into a new era in which AI will be monitoring AI. And that will create more demand for chips — including the type that Nvidia sells — plus the data centers that use them and the power that's needed to run them."If security agents or validation models are running alongside production agents, that creates another inference workload that did not previously exist," writes Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intel, at Circular Technology. Zoom out: The Nvidia tool rollout comes amid a feverish debate over whether rogue AI could destroy humanity. Anthropic researcher Jacob Co
When fake content goes viral, the damage has already been done, even if the post is debunked
Bill Gates gave stark warnings about artificial intelligence, warning that it could kill a billion people if a “full speed ahead” approach was taken. In an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, the Microsoft founder gave his perspective on the new alarmist perspectives on AI, which have dominated the national conversation over the past […]
The company did not learn until recently that its technology had meddled with websites for the Education and Commerce Departments and the Securities and Exchange Commission
The youngest victim was a seven-year-old who was subject to doxxing
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says President Trump is "not really dug in" against guardrails for AI, despite Trump's public campaign against restricting the technology. Why it matters: Thune told Axios he spoke privately with Trump as the AI issue was getting "pretty hot" a few weeks ago and believes some of Trump's strong pushback is against public "paranoia and noise around the subject." Thune reads Trump's position as a preference for companies coming up with ways to secure their systems, rather than Congress or the administration. That approach relies more on experts to provide guidance.Trump has called recent fears around AI safety a "hoax.""I do think that the threats are real," Thune told Axios in an interview on Wednesday at his Capitol office. Zoom out: Thune has Trump's skepticism in one ear and tech leader alarm in the other. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called Thune to discuss AI safety before sounding his latest public alarm on the risks of AI, Thune told Axios.The two also talked about Thune's AI bill. What to watch: "I think you have to have at least some sort of a plan and some guardrails around it, which is what I think our bill does," Thune said, referencing the bill he has introduced with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in past years. "But I do also think that there are people who are. doing a lot of fear mongering," Thune added.Thune's bill, which has not yet been reintroduced this Congress, puts the onus on tech companies to mitigate AI risks. It also requires AI companies to report on any serious risks with frontier models and to come up with plans to address the concerns.Thune said Klobuchar is trying to get more Democratic co-sponsors on board — including Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) — before re-introducing the bill. The details: Democrats have two main sticking points, according to Thune: Pre-deployment testing is something companies can opt into in the bill language. Democrats want it mandated.Cantwell is asking fo