UK politics | The leader of Reform UK in Wales stood down after arrest on suspicion of assault<\/a>. Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor, was elected to Senedd as leader of the opposition in May.<\/p>\n AI | The progressive senator Bernie Sanders and rightwing strategist Steve Bannon have called for restrictions<\/a> on artificial intelligence (AI) but offered competing visions for what they termed a \u201ccold war\u201d with China.<\/p>\n UK news | Young people in Rotherham face a local jobs market with the fewest suitable opportunities<\/a> in Britain, according to a report that warns stark regional divisions are fuelling a crisis in youth work.<\/p>\n Defence | John Healey is in talks with the Canadian government<\/a> about joining a new global defence bank intended to help allies rearm to counter mounting security threats, just weeks after Rachel Reeves rejected the move.<\/p>\n In depth: \u2018If a nuclear company had a radioactive spill, you wouldn\u2019t be letting it regulate itself\u2019Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic. Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The most significant detail in Amodei\u2019s essay, We Must Pace The Frontier<\/a>, was a reference to the Hugging Face incident, which occurred in July, when the rival tech company OpenAI revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology hacked a prominent database of AI models, Hugging Face. Coverage of the hack made it sound as though OpenAI\u2019s model had gone \u201crogue\u201d. But tech researchers have since said that OpenAI turned off the model\u2019s safety mechanisms, gave it impossible tasks to complete and ran it 1,200 times. \u201cThat\u2019s human decision-making,\u201d the tech research Eryk Salvaggio wrote in an essay<\/a> on Substack.<\/p>\n OpenAI then invited researchers from the non-profit institute METR to produce a report about the incident. As two legal experts observed in an interesting opinion piece<\/a> for the Guardian, METR\u2019s findings were constrained by its agreement with OpenAI, which prohibited investigators from accessing the underlying model that created the \u201crogue\u201d agents.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine a burglar who is hallucinating and breaks into the Louvre,\u201d says Aisha. \u201cThen imagine you shared a tape with the police that played back what the hallucinating burglar was saying to himself while he broke into the Louvre, but the report didn\u2019t actually include any information about what the burglar did. That\u2019s basically what OpenAI did.\u201d<\/p>\n In his essay, Amodei pointed to the Hugging Face incident as an example of the \u201ccatastrophic damage\u201d that AI could cause in future. But industry critics are sceptical about what this incident can tell us, particularly since the only people who have examined it did so at OpenAI\u2019s discretion. This reflects a broader problem where companies that claim to be developing products capable of catastrophic damage get to mark their own homework. \u201cNo other industry gets treated that way,\u201d Aisha says. \u201cIf a nuclear company had a radioactive spill, you wouldn\u2019t be letting it regulate itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Is it all just hype?<\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s essay has been treated as a doomsday warning. It was published just two days after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher at Anthropic, quit his job and posted an alarming thread on X warning that \u201cthe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of this decade\u201d. Coxon is the latest in a long list of AI researchers who have been loudly quitting on X or making similar predictions. These self-styled whistleblowers don\u2019t tend to leak documents that reveal useful information about the inner workings of AI companies, so their warnings of imminent apocalypse instead fuel speculation about the perils (and power) of AI.<\/p>\n This plays into tech companies\u2019 hands. The AI narrative is dominated by what the tech scholar Lee Vinsel calls \u201ccriti-hype\u201d \u2013 criticism that feeds, and is fed by, hype. The language used to describe AI can be deeply unhelpful. While China tends to compare AI to \u201celectricity,\u201d western AI companies compare it to the atom bomb, which makes Anthropic and its rivals seem less like companies making everyday decisions about how they choose to build particular tools, and more like Promethean stewards of a fourth Industrial Revolution. \u201cThe framing is, \u2018we\u2019re inventing fire\u2019,\u201d Aisha says. \u201cAnd that means governments have to treat them like magical gods and let them set the rules on their mysterious creation.\u201d<\/p>\n So why are AI firms calling for a slowdown?<\/p>\n Apparently, AI firms now believe the risks posed by their technologies are too great for business to continue as usual. But there are a number of ways that Anthropic (and its competitors) might gain from a slowdown. Anthropic is launching its initial public offering later this year, so it has an interest in presenting its products in as epochal and deadly a fashion as possible. The backlash against AI is growing, and the firm has cast itself as a more responsible AI creator, most recently by refusing the Pentagon\u2019s requests<\/a> to use its Claude model to power autonomous lethal weapons. Meanwhile, American AI firms face increasing competition from Chinese AI firms, and are desperate to retain their share of the market.<\/p>\n An industry-orchestrated slowdown could freeze the pace of AI development in China and might also help firms like Anthropic avoid the possibility of stringent government regulations by putting them on the front foot. One of the people who has called this out is David Sacks, co-chair of Trump\u2019s council of advisers on science and technology, who said in response to Amodei\u2019s essay: \u201cdemanding your preferred regulatory framework \u2026 will look like blackmail of the public and the political system\u201d.<\/p>\n What should the UK government do?<\/p>\n To be clear, AI poses huge risks. Readers of First Edition will know that we\u2019ve previously covered<\/a> how the datacentres used to power AI demand huge volumes of water and energy. You can already use AI to generate sexualised \u201cdeepfakes\u201d and child sexual abuse images, or make use of an open-source version of Palantir to monitor live camera feeds (meanwhile, Palantir has access<\/a> to identifiable NHS England data). And experts have long been arguing that as AI becomes more advanced, it could pose existential risks.<\/p>\n All of these things are terrifying. But much of the AI narrative focuses on extinction-like events, the Terminator hypothesis, rather than dangers that are playing out right now. And many of the organisations that are supposed to make AI safer are closely aligned with the tech industry, such as Britain\u2019s AI Security Institute, which receives funding from the industry, and doesn\u2019t have the legal power to regulate AI or to compel developers to hand over their models. One of the institute\u2019s co-founders, Matt Clifford, who lobbied for the government to loosen copyright laws, was recently forced to stand down<\/a> from his role as chair of the UK\u2019s Advanced Research and Invention Agency after taking a job with Anthropic \u2026 nice work if you can get it.<\/p>\n Recently, I\u2019ve notice a creeping sense of fatalism in my conversations with friends about AI. Nobody (aside perhaps from government) consented to the volumes of energy, resource and information being fed into the giant AI machine. But as Aisha makes clear, the design of technology is a choice, not an inevitability, so there\u2019s an argument for stubborn resistance to the idea there\u2019s no alternative.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should be treating AI like any other industry, and regulating it like any other industry,\u201d Aisha says. \u201cPolicy based on fear and vibes is just never going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n What else we\u2019ve been enjoyingA portrait showing the Countess of Dysart, a young woman thought to be Lady Frances Tollemache, and a young Black servant, circa 1740. Photograph: public domain sourced \/ access rights from The Picture Art Collection \/ Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy<\/p>\n The narrative that white women recognised the suffering of enslaved people and fought for abolition is challenged in the last instalment<\/a> of our Enslaving Nation series, identifying the women who invested in transatlantic trafficking in pursuit of economic independence. Libby<\/p>\n For our rugby newsletter, The Breakdown, Sarah Rendell has a look at<\/a> the growing calls for clubs to offer financial fertility support for their female players. \u201cI think the more we can empower women, the better for the game as a whole,\u201d England captain Meg Jones tells her. Charlie<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you have to scream \u2018this is not acceptable\u2019.\u201d Sam Levin\u2019s interview <\/a>with Julia Curlee, a trans CIA analyst fired by Trump, exposes the chilling national security consequences of White House chaos. Libby<\/p>\n This is a deeply fascinating piece<\/a> from Alaina Demopoulos on the rise of AI-generated tributes to the dead, and why people generate versions of lost celebrities and loved ones to \u201ctalk\u201d to. What does so-called \u201cdeathslop\u201d say about the way we mourn now? Charlie<\/p>\n This column by Carolin W\u00fcrfel<\/a>, who grew up in the east of Germany, unpicks some of the lazy assumptions about her home made since last week\u2019s AdF triumph. Libby<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to First Edition<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n SportDominik Szoboszlai salutes Anfield after his strike gave Liverpool a 3-1 lead n stoppage time. Photograph: Scott Heppell\/Reuters<\/p>\n Football | Liverpool won the Carabao Cup third-round<\/a> tie 3-1 against Tottenham via impressive strikes from Alexis Mac Allister, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai.<\/p>\n Football| Raheem Sterling has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide<\/a>. The former England footballer also admitted to failing to provide a specimen as he appeared at Basingstoke magistrates court.<\/p>\n Cricket | Harry Brook smashed 114 off 49 balls before England bowled out Sri Lanka<\/a> to record an emphatic win by 119 runs in the first T20.<\/p>\n The front pages Photograph: The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cNHS faces big changes after \u2018devastating\u2019 Letby review\u201d, is the Guardian\u2019s front page today. The Times says \u201cFailure to act allowed Letby to kill three babies\u201d, the Mirror writes \u201cThey failed and babies died\u201d, and the Express has \u201cCot cams after \u2018complete failure to protect babies\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n The Telegraph says \u201cMayors to control water companies\u201d, the i Paper leads on \u201cRussian spies \u2018recruiting UK teenagers\u2019\u201d, and the FT writes \u201cFresh test for Healey as state pension poised to cross income tax threshold\u201d.<\/p>\n The Sun has \u201cSterling mess\u201d, the Mail says \u201cEarl Spencer\u2019s bombshell new book is stolen\u201d, and lastly Metro\u2019s splash is \u201cZap the boats storm\u201d.<\/p>\n The Latest Lucy Letby inquiry finds \u2018some babies would have been saved\u2019 if hospital acted sooner<\/p>\n Three babies might have survived and others could have been protected if hospital staff had taken action over concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, an inquiry has found. Lady Justice Thirlwall, who led the inquiry, found there was a \u2018complete failure to protect babies on the neonatal unit\u2019 at the Countess of Chester hospital. Letby is serving 15 whole-life prison terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more. The former neonatal nurse says she is innocent and is fighting to overturn her convictions. Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian\u2019s north of England editor<\/a>, Josh Halliday.<\/p>\n Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings Illustration: Ben Jennings\/The GuardianThe Upside<\/p>\n A bit of good news to remind you that the world\u2019s not all bad<\/p>\n Natalie Ambersley, pictured in 2025. Photograph: Courtesy of Natalie Ambersley<\/p>\n For years, Natalie Ambersley felt that her vitiligo controlled her life. She was three years old when she first developed vitiligo, and by the age of six, 70% of her skin was covered. As a teenager, she hid her skin condition with makeup, hoping people wouldn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n But at a London comedy club last December, she decided to joke about her skin condition, dating experiences, and how children react to her unfiltered skin in her standup set. Initially a nerve-racking performance, it became a liberating experience, as she realised she could own her story \u2013 and feel proud of the skin she once wanted to hide. \u201cThe cheers felt like the biggest sign of approval; as if I was educating the audience and advocating for vitiligo while standing under a spotlight and owning it,\u201d Ambersley writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789548732_728_1000.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Nosheen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/150926_GIF.gif\")
Photograph: The Guardian<\/p>\n