Hayden Field

Anthropic’s quest to study the negative effects of AI is under pressure Anthropic’s societal impact team is empowered to publish unflattering and even politically fraught research on AI. Is it just for show?

Great chatting with @reckless.bsky.social on The Verge's Decoder podcast about my latest profile of Anthropic's societal impacts team—a 9-person team with the sole job of reckoning with AI's effect on humans and the world at large. Episode out today on all platforms. www.theverge.com/podcast/8380...

Verge headline: It's their job to keep AI from destroying everything Illustration: A triangle grid overlaid on top of a globe, with a brain, robot hand, and a laptop open

What happens when just a handful of employees at one of the world’s leading AI companies are given the blanket task of figuring out how the ultra-disruptive technology is going to impact society?

Read more from @haydenfield.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

The nine people trying to stop AI from ruining the world Spoiler: the nine-person team works for Anthropic.

NEW: An inside look at the nine-person team at Anthropic responsible for figuring out how the company's powerful technology is going to impact society — and exposing "inconvenient truths" along the way.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

‘Holy shit’: Gemini 3 is winning the AI race — for now Google’s newest release is topping leaderboards and wowing rivals, but users aren’t dropping other models just yet.

When an AI model release immediately spawns memes and treatises declaring the rest of the industry cooked, you know you’ve got something worth dissecting.
www.theverge.com/report/82755...

glitch in the matrix: walking past this bar while walking from the OpenAI Codex briefing to the Codex happy hour

Trump defends Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing The de facto Saudi ruler was branded a pariah in 2018 after the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Now, U.S.-Saudi relations are approaching a high point.

You can oversee the bloody dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist with a bone saw, and the president of the United States will smile, shake your hand and threaten to pull the license of a news outlet whose reporter asks you a question about it.
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...

Terrible day to be literate

OpenAI is finally letting employees donate their equity to charity And the company’s price per share has gone up significantly.

scoop: OpenAI is allowing employees to donate equity to charity for the first time in years, after months of internal pressure, according to a memo viewed by The Verge. And price-per-share is up significantly since last month. A lot of money is on the line. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

In a longer post on X, Sam Altman addressed widespread concerns over OpenAI's ~$1.4 trillion in infra commitments. He says the company is most confident about revenue growth from its enterprise offerings, consumer devices (like the Jony Ive collab) & robotics. x.com/sama/status/...

OpenAI has an AGI problem — and Microsoft just made it worse The competition is heating up.

Microsoft today announced it's entering the superintelligence race to keep humans “at the top of the food chain.” Predicted this in our piece on the new MSFT-OAI contract here: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia....

Chaos and lies: Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI, according to new testimony OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever was deposed by Elon Musk’s lawyers.

Chaos and lies: Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI, according to new testimony

Big day for running into my favorite reporter friends! Had a great time on the AI reporting panel with Forbes' Rashi Shrivastava & TechCrunch's Rebecca Bellan, moderated by Tech:NYC's Julie Samuels at Haymaker's Media Summit yesterday, ahead of Alex Heath's Sources launch event.

The AI industry is running on FOMO At least according to Big Tech’s latest earnings calls.

The AI industry is running on FOMO

don't call don't text, i'm rereading the lawyer-to-lawyer drama in the ilya deposition

OpenAI has an AGI problem — and Microsoft just made it worse The competition is heating up.

OpenAI has an AGI problem — and Microsoft just made it worse

AGI clause changes:

—Once OpenAI declares AGI, that "will now be verified by an independent expert panel."
—MSFT's IP rights "now include models post-AGI, with appropriate safety guardrails."
—MSFT can now “independently pursue AGI alone or in partnership with third parties."

Had a great time on the @alltechishuman.bsky.social monthly livestream about responsible AI!

We chatted through some societal implications of hyper-realistic AI video, data-driven personalization & recent big announcements from leading labs. shorturl.at/OKLTj

Thanks!

The AI sexting era has arrived What could go wrong?

The AI sexting era has arrived

These nonprofits lobbied to regulate OpenAI — then the subpoenas came OpenAI’s legal battle with Elon Musk has caught company critics in the crossfire.

"OpenAI has subpoenaed a wide range of nonprofits that have been critical of the company’s controversial for-profit restructuring. ... But in practice, recipients and legal experts say, they seem more like a campaign of intimidation with very real costs." www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

HAHA believe me I feel the same

OpenAI’s AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, is here ChatGPT is the “beating heart of Atlas,” according to employees on the livestream.

OpenAI’s next move in its battle against Google is an AI-powered web browser. The tool, dubbed ChatGPT Atlas, is out today.

The company announced it in a livestream after teasing it earlier Tuesday via a mysterious video of browser tabs on a white screen.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

The Friend AI pendant’s creator promoted a ‘Friend protest’ in NYC People tore apart a cut-out of the device while chanting “get real friends.”

There was a Friend protest (of sorts) yesterday in NYC.

Avi Schiffmann, founder of the company behind the AI pendant, posted photos from it, including an image of a protest flyer that read, “Let’s hash this out once and for-all, before we go bankrupt.” www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

These nonprofits lobbied to regulate OpenAI — then the subpoenas came OpenAI’s legal battle with Elon Musk has caught company critics in the crossfire.

Inside how OpenAI’s legal battle with Elon Musk has caught company critics in the crossfire, according to sources, legal experts, and the nonprofits themselves.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

i wrote 3500 words today

Had a blast as a guest on Vox's Today Explained podcast yesterday (which I found out, from college friends texting me, that you can also hear on NPR in your car)!

Thanks for having me on to chat about AI-generated video. www.vox.com/today-explai...

OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama It felt “more different to images than people expected.”

In response to a question about why OpenAI changed its policy on copyright for the Sora app, CEO Sam Altman said that it came from speaking with stakeholders and suggested he hadn’t expected the outcry.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

someone is posting scam openAI event flyers around SF

lol