AI Frontiers

Subtitle: Most AI biorisk studies look at how AI models might help novices complete biological tasks. But experts with AI assistance could be far more dangerous. Sumnima Singh — November 12, 2026 Things were not going well for me in the lab. I had just started my PhD, studying how our immune system evolved to protect us against infections. To move this project forward, I needed to detect certain a...

Subtitle: Nationalizing AI would do more harm than good. Narrower government powers, like taxation and the right to pause AI, can address issues from inequality to catastrophic risk. Yonathan Arbel, Professor of Law at the University of Alabama, Simon Goldstein, Professor at the University of Hong Kong, and Peter N. Salib, Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center — November 6, 2026...

Subtitle: AI will create a trillion-dollar resilience industry. The Federal Government can seed its champions today. Lachlan Carroll, Luke Drago, Member of Technical Staff at Thinking Machines, and Finn Metz, Co-Founder of Seldon Lab — October 19, 2026 After this spring's arrival of new AI models with enhanced cyber capabilities, monthly disclosures of serious cyber vulnerabilities at major tech c...

Subtitle: AI is poised to accelerate the industrialization of space. The nation that leads in AI might secure control of the space frontier before rivals realize it's too late to catch up. Daniel King, Research Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and Laura Hiscott, Staff Writer for AI Frontiers — October 8, 2026 The opening moves to industrialize space will look like a string of ordin...

Subtitle: In an excerpt from his new book, Garrison Lovely argues that stopping the AGI race is entirely possible, but business interests stand in the way. Garrison Lovely, Freelance Journalist — October 1, 2026 The noisy discourse surrounding artificial intelligence is hard to parse. Where else can you find Elon Musk siding with the Service Employees International Union against Nancy Pelosi and f...

Subtitle: Deterrence can be the starting point for US-China cooperation. Jim Shinn, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia — September 24, 2026 In their 1961 book Strategy and Arms Control, Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin took the idea of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and turned it from a Dr. Strangelove joke into a serious national security proposal. In doing so, they helped make...

Subtitle: Consciousness, sentience, and agency are three ways that something could matter morally. In AI, unlike in animals, they may not come as a package. Jeff Sebo, Professor at New York University — September 17, 2026 As AI systems become more advanced and widespread, people will naturally wonder whether they deserve moral consideration. This is a thorny question, and it involves uncertainty a...

Subtitle: Public-key encryption keeps your messaging and web browsing private, but it depends on shaky math assumptions. AI-powered math might break it. Govind Pimpale, Research Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation — September 9, 2026 Over the past few months, AI models have started resolving major mathematical problems, including ones that have withstood decades of human effort. Claud...

Subtitle: Utilitarians at AI companies imagine a cosmos filled with blissful AIs. They might risk human extinction to achieve it. Dan Hendrycks, Director of the Center for AI Safety — September 9, 2026 For millennia, philosophers have argued over the principles that should guide moral decision-making. Within countries and across the world today, humans continue to hold a huge variety of moral worl...

Subtitle: Several US states have moved to ban AI legal status and reject the possibility of AI consciousness. We should keep our options open instead. Heather Alexander, Cofounder of the Lab for the Future of Citizenship and Lucius Caviola, Professor at the University of Cambridge — September 1, 2026 Should AI systems be able to get married in Wisconsin? With humans increasingly forming relationsh...

Subtitle: Society is not prepared for a flood of agents. We need new protocols and standards, such as Agent ID, to make agents accountable to our legal and financial systems. Gillian Hadfield, Professor of AI Alignment at Johns Hopkins University, Dan Hendrycks, Director of the Center for AI Safety, and Leo Wu, Program Manager at the Center for AI Safety — August 27, 2026 Last month, Cloudflare re...

Subtitle: For years, the federal government has required insurers to price hypothetical terrorist attacks. It should run the same exercise for the most severe AI risks. Daniel Carpenter, Professor of Government at Harvard University, Feodora Douplitzky-Lunati, and Arjun Purohit — August 24, 2026 In April, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and then–Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gathered lea...

Subtitle: As AI makes legal work significantly cheaper, the burden on courts may increase. Some areas of law could see precedent shift faster as a result. Henry Thompson, Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi — August 17, 2026 History shows that new technologies have often brought about significant changes in the law. The proliferation of rail and heavy machinery during the Indus...

Subtitle: New EU and California laws require AI companies, and eventually camera makers, to sign their media outputs. It's our best chance to tell what's real. Eddan Katz, Head of Policy & Gov Affairs at Encypher — August 13, 2026 Two days before Slovakia's 2023 parliamentary election, a fabricated audio clip spread widely on social media, appearing to catch a leading candidate and a prominent...

Subtitle: If AI reaches the point where it can do the cognitive work humans do, robots will proliferate. Standard data on US industry implies a fully automated economy could double its output roughly every year. Damon Binder, Senior Researcher at Coefficient Giving — August 11, 2026 AI systems now write so fluently that cheating at universities has become ubiquitous and “AI slop” is displacing hum...

Subtitle: Skeptics of an AI slowdown deal with China say we’d need futuristic tech to make it cheat-proof. Instead, the US and China could just give auditors comprehensive access to major AI companies. Felix Choussat, Visiting Policy Researcher at the Center for AI Safety and Adam Khoja, Researcher at the Center for AI Safety — August 5, 2026 On July 28, over a thousand employees of the world's to...

Subtitle: Researchers who find dangerous flaws in frontier models have nowhere safe to report them. AI needs the disclosure system that cybersecurity built decades ago. Rich Barton-Cooper, Research Manager at MATS and Adam Gleave, CEO of FAR.AI — August 3, 2026 Frontier AI developers deploy significant safeguards to prevent their AI models from being misused. However, these safeguards are not robu...

Subtitle: Letting AI developers pick their own safety auditors creates a conflict of interest. Requiring liability insurance instead would put insurers’ own capital behind risk assessments. Gabriel Weil, Professor at the University of Houston Law Center — July 29, 2026 A growing chorus of scholars and policymakers favors letting private organizations—rather than a government regulator—govern front...

Drones are cheap, disposable, and the future of war. Over the past four years, we have seen platforms, missiles, and heavy infantry become increasingly obsolete in the face of $500 drones carrying a pack of explosives—a cost advantage that has let Iranians and Ukrainians alike neuter the conventional capabilities of their great power rivals. Eighty percent of casualties in the bloodiest war since...

Subtitle: Today's drones can already navigate indoors, track down humans, and deliver a lethal payload. Attackers willing to kill indiscriminately don’t need to wait for much else. Felix Choussat — July 20, 2026 Drones are cheap, disposable, and the future of war. Over the past four years, we have seen platforms, missiles, and heavy infantry become increasingly obsolete in the face of $500 drones...

Subtitle: The public deserves a say over the values of government-procured AIs. Kevin Frazier and Andrew Reddie — July 10, 2026 In September 2025, the state of California made an AI assistant, Poppy, generally available to employees, to help them “explore AI's productivity benefits.” The following month, the North Dakota Legislative Council deployed AI to assist with summarizing bills. And, in Mar...

In September 2025, the state of California made an AI assistant, Poppy, generally available to employees, to help them “explore AI's productivity benefits.” The following month, the North Dakota Legislative Council deployed AI to assist with summarizing bills. And, in March 2026, the Los Angeles Superior Court partnered with an AI company to provide support across several key functions, including...

Subtitle: One of the most valuable things governments can build today is the capacity to govern advanced AI competently in the future. Charlie Bullock, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI — July 6, 2026 How should governments regulate the most advanced AI systems? One possible answer is that they should not. Libertarian-minded writers have made the case for a culture of “permi...

How should governments regulate the most advanced AI systems? One possible answer is that they should not. Libertarian-minded writers have made the case for a culture of “permissionless innovation” for AI development, in which the role of government would be limited to enforcing existing laws and facilitating industry self-regulation with “soft law” tools such as voluntary standard-setting. Anothe...

Subtitle: American leaders agree that the AI race will shape the balance of power with China. But they can’t agree on how to ensure the technology advances American values. Bill Drexel, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute — June 30, 2026 When officials in Washington warn about losing the AI race to China, the conversation turns quickly to military and economic advantage—and rightly so. Advanced...