The Omniscient Bulletin · September 16, 2026
Zuckerberg answered the slowdown call by saying every lab already has the incentive to train safely, and that Meta delayed Muse for months without asking anyone else to
Tuesday was the day the slowdown argument met its counter-offers. Mark Zuckerberg wrote the longest of them, rejecting coordination on the grounds that alignment is itself a competitive advantage, and disclosing that Meta had delayed shipping Muse for several months on its own. OpenAI went further and said the coordination is already happening, and that it started before the essay: a spokesperson confirmed talks with Anthropic and Google running since Demis Hassabis proposed a US led standards body in July. The company's policy chief said the antitrust waiver Amodei had asked Washington to consider is not needed. Google, meanwhile, shipped its most advanced live dialogue models and told readers of the model card that their frontier safety conclusion rests on an evaluation of a different model. The rest of the day was harder and less rhetorical. Amazon told customers it cannot restore access to data hosted exclusively in Bahrain, and cannot recover data in one United Arab Emirates zone. New York urged towns to ask data center developers for a set sum per megawatt. And Semafor reported that the Commerce Department had quietly ordered a prediction market to unpublish the curve it ran for the price of AI compute, which Commerce says it never did.
Frontier
Zuckerberg answered the slowdown call by saying every lab already has the incentive to train safely, and that Meta delayed Muse for months without asking anyone else to
Mark Zuckerberg answered the pacing proposal on Tuesday night. "Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely," he wrote, and a lab that does not focus on alignment "will fall behind." Meta "delayed shipping Muse for several months to focus on safety and security," he said, and "didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would." He called independent evaluators best practice, and said Meta has committed "the significant majority of compute" to serving people rather than racing toward recursive self-improvement.
Policy
OpenAI confirmed it has been in talks with Anthropic and Google about working together on safety, dating back to a July proposal by Demis Hassabis
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday that the company "has been engaging with other artificial intelligence companies, including Anthropic and Google, about how they can work together to address safety concerns." The discussions have been ongoing since Demis Hassabis's July proposal for a US led standards body modeled on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Amodei had asked Washington to consider waiving antitrust rules so rivals could coordinate; Lehane told reporters at a Washington briefing the same day, Bloomberg reported, that he sees no need for one.
Frontier
Google shipped two new live dialogue models and rested their frontier safety conclusion on an evaluation of an earlier model
Google released Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking on Tuesday, and published a model card the same day. It reports no fresh frontier safety evaluation of either. "We evaluated Gemini 3.7 Flash as outlined in our latest Frontier Safety Framework, and we found that it did not reach any Tracked or Critical Capability Levels," it reads. Because the new models show no "meaningful new capabilities or material increases in performance compared to Gemini 3.7 Flash," Google says they are "not likely to reach any T/CCLs."
Google DeepMind, Gemini 3.8 Audio model card →
Compute
New York urged local governments to ask data center developers for at least one million dollars per megawatt of utility demand
A document released on Tuesday by Governor Kathy Hochul urges towns to ask the developer of any new data center for at least $1 million for every megawatt of utility demand it would draw. The guidance comes months after the state imposed the country's first moratorium on large new data centers. Empire State Development president Hope Knight said that because data centers "are not major local job generators," their economic development profile differs from traditional manufacturing. Amazon, Meta and Google did not respond to Reuters; Microsoft declined to comment.
Compute
Amazon said it cannot restore access to data hosted exclusively in Bahrain, and cannot recover data in one of its UAE zones
Amazon Web Services said on Tuesday it cannot restore access to cloud facilities in Bahrain and parts of the United Arab Emirates, more than six months after drone strikes wrecked them at the start of the Iran war. Damage at the Bahrain sites exceeded what its services are designed to withstand, AWS wrote on its health dashboard: "we are unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in this region." It also cannot recover data in one of its UAE availability zones, and is working on two others. AWS said it will say more on Bahrain in early 2027.
Policy
Semafor reported that the Commerce Department ordered Kalshi to take down its AI compute futures product; Commerce says the story is false
Semafor reported on Tuesday that the US Commerce Department ordered Kalshi last month to unpublish its "AI-compute future curve," which aggregates markets betting on the cost to rent Nvidia chips. Officials cited national security, the report said, and Kalshi complied without announcing it, though many underlying markets still trade. Commerce also pushed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to freeze approval of new compute contracts for 60 days. A spokesperson said Commerce "has never once asked Kalshi to take down this market or any other markets."
Policy
US regulators gave Tesla until September 30 to explain how it self-certified a robotaxi that has no steering wheel
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Tesla until September 30 on Tuesday to account for how it self-certified the autonomous Cybercab robotaxi. The agency wants to know whether temporarily installed human driver controls were part of Tesla's basis for certifying compliance, whether a person can drive the cars, and what limits apply. Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin on September 3. The vehicle has no steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator pedal or mirrors. Those are federal requirements Tesla and Waymo have backed Trump administration plans to drop.