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#BREAKING: Massive fire at Aramco Facility in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah following reported missile strike

The Atlantic reports that Kash Patel is drinking so heavily that meetings need to be rescheduled and his security detail has trouble waking him up. At one point, they had to request SWAT team equipment because he wouldn't answer the door. Some think that his drinking is responsible for major blunders like when he put out inaccurate information about the Charlie Kirk investigation. With the war in Iran, government officials are wondering what happens if there's a terrorist attack and he's too drunk to respond. Patel fired members of a counterterrorism squad working partly on Iran, and instead spends his time demanding that FBI merchandise look more "fierce." Asked to comment, he threatens to sue the reporters. Kakistocracy. Learn that word.

Another site in London (HQ for Jewish Futures) has been claimed as an attack site by the Iran-crafted front group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah. A video was posted showing a firebombing.

Sources suggest Anthropic's holding back from a wider Mythos release until it can reliably serve it to customers; Anthropic has suffered outages in recent weeks (Financial Times) ft.com/content/c9f5b6… #a260417p39" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">techmeme.com/260417/p39#a26… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

Anthropic’s new cybersecurity model could get it back in the government’s good graces theverge.com/ai-artificial-…

I spoke to 2 dozen people familiar with Patel’s conduct for this story, many of whom described it as a national security vulnerability. In response to 19 detailed questions, Patel said: “Print it, all false. I’ll see you in court - bring your checkbook.”

What some leaders think of using universal income to mitigate AI-fueled layoffs: Musk calls it the "best way", OpenAI's policy doc mentions a Public Wealth Fund (@siladityaray / Forbes) forbes.com/sites/siladity… #a260417p38" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">techmeme.com/260417/p38#a26… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and her Carrier Strike Group, who on Thursday hit 296-days at sea, surpassing the record for the longest deployed aircraft carrier since the end of the Cold War, has since transited the Suez Canal from the Eastern Mediterranean and is once again conducting operations in the Red Sea, in support of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), two defense officials tell the Associated Press. The Ford, which initially left the Red Sea in March, after suffering a severe ventilation fire that started in the ship’s laundry and resulted in damage to hundreds of berthings and other compartments, was expected to finally return to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia after loitering for the last few weeks in the Eastern Mediterranean - with stops in Crete and Croatia. Though it appears that the carrier and its crew has yet again been ordered to remain on station near Iran until the arrival of the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), who is currently taking the long way to the region around the Cape of Good Hope in Southern Africa.

Today is my last day at OpenAI, as OpenAI for Science is being decentralized into other research teams. It’s been a mind-expanding two years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science. Accelerating science will be one of the most stunningly positive outcomes of our push to AGI, and I’m rooting for @sama @markchen90 @fidjissimo @gdb @merettm and the whole team!

Kevin Weil, OpenAI's former CPO who became VP of OpenAI for Science, is leaving the company; Prism, a web app for scientists launched in Jan., will be shuttered (@zeffmax / Wired) wired.com/story/openai-e… #a260417p32" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">techmeme.com/260417/p32#a26… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

OpenAI has to be one of most volatile org right now. Just now, Head of Sora and VP of Science announced their departures. I believe OpenAI is narrowing down what matters the most right now - Coding, Enterprise and Frontier Research. I think this might follow more dec in team size.

NEW: when sam altman was briefly fired from openai, its board had grown concerned about his startup investments and the conflicts they posed we have new reporting that shows these issues are more alive than ever read more in our @WSJ investigation below: wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgp…

After 3 incredible years, I am leaving OpenAI at the end of next week. I shared my decision with the OpenAI leadership team at the start of the month and here is a shorter version of what I shared with my team earlier this week. === Hi Team, I have decided to leave OpenAI. The last three years have been an incredible journey that felt more like ten. Leading the b2b engineering team has been an enormous privilege. With the recent/upcoming product launches, this felt like the right time to step back. I will also fondly remember my prior role leading the Applied Engineering team, from when it was ~40 people on a single floor in the 575 office, when I first started. We shipped some of the fastest-growing products in history, like ChatGPT and the API, with no real playbook to guide us. This was only possible because of the incredible team we built - you are the most passionate, dedicated, and hard-working colleagues I have ever worked with. You all have inspired me so much, and I’m so proud of what we have built together. I can’t thank you enough! I am so grateful to @sama @gdb @fidjissimo and the rest of the OpenAI leadership for this opportunity of a lifetime. I will cherish this time forever during this historic period for technology and society, and I wish you all the very best for the future. I am looking forward to spending some much-needed time with my aging parents in India before deciding what’s next. Thanks again. It has been a privilege to be on this journey with you. ===

OpenAI’s Sam Altman wants to “de-escalate” the rhetoric around A.I. But if you tell people that your product will upend their way of life, take their jobs, and possibly threaten humanity, they might believe you. newyorker.com/culture/infini…

I’ve decided to leave OpenAI. Below is the note I shared with my team. Building Sora zero-to-one with you all has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime. As this team knows well, one of the best parts of working on video is that you can see the scaling behavior with your own eyes, and there have been a lot of oh-shit moments over the years. About a month into Sora, way back when this was just a tiny two-man effort, we saw a sample where a land shark swam by a bunch of intricate cacti in a desert (it was a weird prompt), and the details of each cactus were perfectly preserved once the shark passed. We had never seen object permanence like this in any video model. That’s when we knew we were onto something. It’s amazing how much the Overton window has shifted on video models. OpenAI has a high tolerance for crazy moonshots, but even back in July 2023 there was a ton of skepticism that high-fidelity 1080p multi-shot generation was achievable within a year given the state of video in the broader industry. We managed to get there 7 months later. While the original Sora ignited a huge amount of investment in video across the industry, it took the next generation of models with Sora 2 for the broader public to understand the transformation happening. I’m proud of all the sleepless nights before and after the launch this team endured in order to deploy the technology in a responsible way and help steer societal norms. I am immensely grateful to Sam, Mark, Aditya and Jakub for fostering a research environment that allowed us to pursue ideas off-the-beaten path from the company’s mainline roadmap. It’s tempting in life to mode collapse to the most important thing, but cultivating entropy is the only way for a research lab to thrive long-term, and Sam deeply understands this. Sora was a project that could not have happened anywhere but OpenAI, and I will always deeply love this place for that. I’m going to miss this team a lot, but there are great things on the horizon for all of you. I will always be in your guys’ corner cheering you on. Love, Bill

Here are the receipts. Jim Dolan's security team at Madison Square Garden surveilled this woman over the course of *years* ... because she was trans.

This may turn out to be the biggest stock market manipulation in American history.

“Sir… Kevin Weil, the head of science and Bill Peebles, the head of sora… BOTH just quit OpenAI tonight… The trial starts in 11 days…”

Lots of great snippets in here: • Anthropic’s core team has remained remarkably stable, with the longest-serving 17 employees still with the company • Dario has a security team (makes sense, just hadn’t thought of it) • His mantra is that AI can only “diffuse at the speed of trust” • Amodei is keen for democratic govts to exploit AI models to counter authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China, and support allies, including Ukraine and Taiwan. • “We’re excited for the US government to use this technology,” he says, suggesting it could help “dissolve” authoritarian regimes. “But I don’t want it turned on our own people or used for undemocratic ends, whether by autocracies or our own governments.” • One of the worst orders I’ve seen: an asparagus pizza

Anthropic's frontier AI model Mythos is a serious threat to the global banking system, and it is likely to be followed by similar, even more powerful cyberthreats, Barclays Chief Executive C. S. Venkatakrishnan said on Friday. reuters.com/business/finan…

At least 10 workers at secretive government labs have died or disappeared since 2023. Are the cases linked? Here's what we know. cbsn.ws/4tPbiII