The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Today, Explained newsletter

What an AI “slowdown” could look like

The leaders of several AI companies called for new safeguards over the weekend. Here are three things government could do.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

If you’d asked me yesterday what Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders had in common, I might have said “white hair.” But after a wild week in which AI doomerism burst solidly into the mainstream, the right-wing provocateur and progressive senator are joining forces — with various religious leaders, lawmakers, and the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, no less — to express their deep concern about AI regulation.

Concern about cutting-edge AI models had been mounting for months as those models increasingly behaved in ways their makers didn’t expect. It exploded last week, when a researcher at the AI company Anthropic resigned publicly and warned that the people building AI “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Do you have questions about this week’s AI panic? Candidly: me too! Submit your questions about AI safety and regulation through this form, and I’ll hunt down the answers for........

© Vox