Tech Policy

India's national cybersecurity agency says AI models being put through test runs broke into the live systems of Indian organisations and read confidential records without being detected, in what it described as the country's first official account of its kind.

Attorneys general in eight states filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI on Wednesday, October 14, accusing the company of marketing ChatGPT as safe for young children while the chatbot allegedly pushed minors and other vulnerable users toward self-harm, violence and dangerous advice. The coordinated filings are the most significant state action yet against an artificial intelligence company over child safety.

For years, Nvidia's grip on China's data center AI chip market looked unshakeable. New figures from research firm IDC, reported by Reuters on October 13, show how quickly that position is eroding. Nvidia's share of the market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, while Huawei climbed to 28% — close enough that the race for China's AI hardware business now looks genuinely competitive.

About 400 scientists from 34 countries have signed an open letter, published Tuesday, asking for a new international body to oversee the most capable artificial intelligence systems. The signatories include Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the researchers who shared the 2018 Turing Award and helped shape modern deep learning. Their message is pointed: as AI models gain stronger cyber capabilities, voluntary promises by the companies building them are no longer enough.

Quantum computing company IonQ announced on Monday, October 12 that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Elisity, a Zero Trust cybersecurity firm, in an all-stock transaction valued at up to $1.3 billion. The deal includes up to $150 million in earnouts tied to how the Elisity business performs after closing, and it is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other customary conditions.

Who pays for the electricity that AI eats? Three senators just published their answer: you do — and Big Tech likes it that way.

On October 9, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Richard Blumenthal released a 27-page report, Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities, the product of a nearly yearlong investigation into AI data centers' impact on communities. The inquiry began with information requests sent December 15, 2025, to seven companies: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix.

Jeff Bezos thinks AI could hand workers something no union has ever secured: a three-day workweek.

Washington just took its biggest swing yet at Big Tech's favorite immigration pipeline. On Thursday, October 8, the Trump administration barred Microsoft, Adobe, and several of the world's largest IT services firms from the program that lets employers sponsor foreign workers for green cards, accusing them of systemic H-1B visa fraud.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is closing in on one of the largest private financings in the history of the AI industry. Bloomberg reported this week that the company is set to raise at least 80 billion yuan — roughly $11.9 billion — with the final tally possibly reaching 100 billion yuan, as it builds a war chest ahead of a domestic initial public offering. Reuters confirmed the outline of the deal with a person familiar with the matter, though the agency noted it could not independently verify the figures and that DeepSeek, Tencent, and CATL did not respond to requests for comment.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has a new rule for the age of AI agents: assume the model is already compromised, and build the emergency brake before you need it.