In “Terminator 2,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-1000 cyborg cites Aug. 29 — seriously, we just checked! — as the day that the artificial intelligence military system Skynet goes rogue. US regulators must have known they were working on a tight deadline.

On Thursday — a.k.a. Aug. 29, a.a.k.a. Skynet Day — the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute announced that leading AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed to allow it to test and evaluate new AI models for safety. The news comes amid a hot fight over AI regulation in Silicon Valley’s home state of California.

RoboCops

Under the agreement, the AI Safety Institute — itself housed within the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — will test major new models from OpenAI and the Amazon-backed Anthropic for both capabilities and risks ahead of release, the NIST said Thursday in a press release. The agency said it will also be working in collaboration with the UK’s AI Safety Institute, which previously tested a major Anthropic model ahead of its release.

The news may come as a bit of a surprise to lawmakers in California, some of whom are locked in a bitter fight with AI developers over a sweeping piece of AI legislation. That bill, dubbed SB 1047, passed nearly unanimously in the state Senate all the way back in May, and was approved by the state Assembly on Wednesday, leaving one more process vote before it arrives on the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom. If passed, it’d establish even more guardrails for the mostly California-based AI industry:

• The bill would require developers of major AI models to submit safety testing plans to the state’s attorney general, who could then sue the companies if said models were to cause harm or pose an imminent threat to public safety.
• Among other guardrails, the bill would also require AI developers to essentially create a “kill switch” to power down their AI systems if they go awry.

The bill has created some strange bedfellows. In support of the bill: Elon Musk, Anthropic, and state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco. In opposition: OpenAI, Google, Meta, Nancy Pelosi, Andreessen Horowitz, and SF Mayor London Breed. 

Join ‘Em: The race to regulate comes as the AI industry continues to heat up. On Thursday, OpenAI boasted that ChatGPT’s weekly active user base doubled in the past year, reaching 200 million. Meanwhile, Meta announced Thursday that its mostly free, mostly open-source Llama AI model has been downloaded around 350 million times in the past year. In perhaps the biggest news of the day, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported that both Apple and Nvidia were in talks to join Microsoft in the next funding round for OpenAI, which would value the firm at $100 billion. Safety regulators seem to be hard at work, but we’re sure the antitrust regulators are now paying attention, too. If a hulking man with a vaguely Austrian accent appears naked in Washington, D.C. via lightning storm and starts searching for Lina Khan, we’ll know something’s up. 

In the latest chapter of “Paradise Lost,” Fitch Ratings downgraded the debt of the Maldives for the second time in just over two months Thursday, compounding pressure on the island nation’s bonds and suggesting the agency thinks it is likely to default.

Loan Shark Crosses the Indian Ocean

An Indian Ocean island nation of just 520,000, the Maldives has borrowed heavily from India, China, and private creditors to finance increasing deficits, even during the coronavirus pandemic when tourism — which accounts for nearly 30% of GDP and over 60% of foreign currency reserves — came to an effective standstill. The Chinese and Indian export-import banks now hold the majority of the country’s $3.4 billion in external debt.

That’s led to a suboptimal situation in which President Mohamed Muizzu, elected last year on a campaign to reduce Indian influence, has now had to negotiate with the country and China for debt relief. To avoid a default, the Maldives will need to address external debt of $557 million in 2025 and $1 billion in 2026. Both are more than the country’s vastly depleted foreign currency reserves, which Fitch noted fell 20% in July to $395 million. That’s the lowest since 2016, and rebounding may prove especially difficult:

• The Maldives’ sukuk, a form of debt under Islamic religious law, that’s due in 2026 fell to a record low of 70.24 cents on the dollar Thursday. At the start of the month, the bond traded at more than 80 cents.
• Even with planned tax hikes and austerity that includes ending indirect subsidies for food, electricity, and fuel, and even after Muizzu said The Export-Import Bank of China gave the “green signal” to defer five years of loan payments, his government may have to do more. Fitch said Thursday that “support from IMF or other multilateral donors would most likely be contingent on debt restructuring.”

Working Pains: The debt crisis has already spilled out into the lives of workers. Last year, the Maldives National Association of Construction Industry said contractors are funding projects on their own and billing the government, only to not be paid. Earlier this year, fishermen protested against the indebted state-owned fish exporter for not paying them.

True to form, Uber is sharing the ride to the future of autonomous cars rather than driving itself there.

On Thursday, Uber announced it’s investing in Wayve, a UK-based startup that’s building self-driving software for cars. The investment marks a continuation in Uber’s new strategy to build out its self-driving future through tactical relationships, rather than making the fiddly technology itself.

Baby Driver

Uber has been keen to ride the autonomous driving wave, but it has a checkered past with the nascent (one could argue prenatal) technology. Uber sold its entire self-driving division in 2020, two years after a self-driving Uber vehicle fatally struck a woman.

More recently, however, Uber has eased itself back into the self-driving game through a growing network of strategic partnerships. It launched a robotaxi service in Las Vegas two years ago, and now it’s looking to expand that program:

• Last week, Uber announced it would partner with GM’s self-driving unit Cruise to bring the cars onto its platform next year.
• It also struck a deal with China-based EV company BYD in July, and BYD announced this week it will be partnering with Huawei to bring self-driving tech to its cars. Uber said when it partnered with BYD that it would “collaborate on future BYD autonomous-capable vehicles to be deployed on the Uber platform.”

Not Just a Carmaker Thing: Wayve is a startup that just focuses on self-driving software rather than an automaker, which suggests Uber is going for a granular approach to its dealmaking. The exact terms of the deal have not been publicly disclosed, but Wayve told TechCrunch in a statement that it “envisions future Wayve-powered self-driving vehicles being made available on Uber’s network.”