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Anthropic says risks for investors include blowback from runaway AI

The risks laid out by the San Francisco company in its filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission range from the mundane to involvement in cyberattacks and the spread of dangerous misinformation.

Nordic Leaders Call for Overhaul of Digital Platforms To Protect Children

27 October 2026 at 14:35

Smartphones, social media, and AI pose significant risks to children’s wellbeing, mental health, learning and development.

On Tuesday, Nordic leaders called for fundamental changes to the design of social media and other digital platforms to better protect children and young people’s health and development.

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At a meeting in Helsinki hosted by Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and attended by representatives from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands, a joint declaration was adopted stressing the urgent need to strengthen online protection for minors.

The declaration warned that smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence pose significant risks to children’s and young people’s wellbeing, mental health, learning and development. The full extent of their impact remains unclear.

Children are gaining access to digital platforms too early and too extensively, and the platforms are not designed to support healthy growth and learning, according to the declaration.

Australia's rule is one of several, and Indonesia by itself holds the bulk of the children covered, based on our study of 17.9 million children aged 13 to 15. https://t.co/sCGJNJ11Oo

— Storible (@Storibledotcom) October 27, 2026

Several Nordic countries are currently preparing legislation and recommendations on age limits for social media platforms. Meanwhile, leaders also held discussions on Tuesday with students aged 12 to 14 and young politicians on the protection of children and young people in digital environments.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 78th Session of the Nordic Council, held in Helsinki from Monday to Thursday.

Finland holds the presidency of the Nordic Council in 2026, while Denmark and the Faroe Islands jointly hold the presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: Xinhua

Did the Hardest A.I. Problem Just Get Much Easier?

27 October 2026 at 09:03
A prominent researcher claims to have a revolutionary approach to “interpretability,” or the science of why A.I. models do what they do. Other experts aren’t so sure.

Anthropic’s record $2tn IPO could bring global risks to a head

27 October 2026 at 10:50

Anthropic, developer of AI chatbot Claude, has filed its prospectus and is expected to go public on Wall Street in November at a valuation of up to US$2 trillion. That would make it the highest-valued initial public offering (IPO) ever, ahead of SpaceX’s $1.77 trillion listing in June. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is expected […]

The post Anthropic’s record $2tn IPO could bring global risks to a head appeared first on Asia Times.

Why Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Is Missing So Many Key Figures

26 October 2026 at 21:27
Anthropic’s S-1 filing is hundreds of pages long—and it leaves out quite a few financial details. “Anthropic owes investors more information,” one analyst tells WIRED.

Connecticut's New Restrictions on Flock Cameras Highlight the Dearth of Meaningful Privacy Protections

26 October 2026 at 19:55
a license plate camera in chains | M. Scott Brauer/Zuma Press/Newscom/Cemil Adakale/Dreamstime/Fatima Ruiz

A Connecticut law that took effect at the beginning of October imposes new restrictions on police use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), which enable what a federal judge recently described as "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance." The law reflects the bipartisan backlash against AI-assisted cameras that record images of passing cars billions of times a week, building databases that police can use to track drivers, identify other vehicles in their vicinity, predict itineraries, and conduct searches based on a wide range of vehicle characteristics.

Connecticut previously imposed no statutory limits on ALPRs, a fact that underlines how readily police can access license plate data, which they can search without any sort of judicial review and often without meaningful internal supervision. But the law's provisions, while promising in some ways, fall short of the reforms recommended by critics who warn that unconstrained use of ALPRs threatens the privacy of innocent motorists across the country.

As of today, DeFlock's mapping project has identified nearly 145,000 ALPR cameras in the United States, most of which were installed by Flock Safety, the leading vendor. That network includes more than 1,500 cameras deployed by Connecticut law enforcement agencies, three-quarters of which use the technology.

The concerns underlying the new law, which Gov. Ned Lamont signed last May, echo objections raised in other states. Last February, for example, CT Insider reported that out-of-state agencies had searched ALPR data from Connecticut thousands of times for immigration enforcement purposes. When police in Johnson City, Texas, searched Connecticut data for a missing woman, the log noted that she "had an abortion," which reinforced concerns that ALPR information might be used to enforce abortion bans.

As elsewhere, ALPR critics in Connecticut also have complained about a lack of transparency. In April 2025, for instance, South Windsor began using Flock cameras without any public notice. The resulting consternation prompted the city council to cancel the program early this month. CT Mirror reports that South Windsor is "at least the sixth Connecticut community to end or suspend the use of ALPRs this year, following Windsor, Killingworth, Ledyard, Milford and Newtown."

Compared to those moves, the new state restrictions are pretty weak tea. But they include some potentially meaningful changes, and they highlight how lax oversight of ALPRs has been.

The new law restricts the sharing of ALPR data, which henceforth will be limited to Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island unless an agency in another state obtains a judicial warrant. The law says the data may not be used for immigration enforcement, to target conduct protected by the First Amendment, or for investigations related to "reproductive" or "gender-affirming" health care services. It also bars the placement of ALPRs near facilities that provide such services or organizations that primarily serve immigrants.

The original bill specified that ALPR data could be retained for no more than seven days unless it is tied to an ongoing criminal investigation, subject to a warrant, or used for toll enforcement. The final version of the bill extended that limit to 21 days. Flock's original default was 30 days. But last August, in response to widespread criticism of ALPR surveillance, the company began recommending a seven-day limit. Connecticut's Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which last month sent Lamont a report that included suggested reforms, thinks the state should adopt the seven-day standard.

Under the new law, police may search ALPR data to "assist in the recovery of a stolen motor vehicle," "assist in locating a missing or endangered individual," or "assist in the apprehension of an individual with an outstanding warrant." They also may query the database for information "relevant and material to a specific active investigation of a criminal offense in which there is reasonable suspicion that the offense has been or is being committed." When they do that, their agency must record "the reason for the access and any associated case number for the complaint or incident that is being investigated and is the basis for the access."

It is remarkable that Connecticut lacked such basic safeguards until now, and it is not clear how effective the new rules will be. Since July 1, 2025, Virginia has required that cops state a "specific purpose" for ALPR searches, including "the offense type." Yet last April, WHRO reported that Norfolk police often give "incomplete and imprecise reasons" for ALPR queries, including "suspect," "suspicious," and "investigation" or "inv."

Connecticut's "reasonable suspicion" requirement is more lenient than the standard that the Institute for Justice favors. The organization's model statute would generally require a warrant based on probable cause for ALPR queries. The proposed law makes exceptions for "exigent circumstances," stolen vehicles, and toll, parking, or traffic enforcement.

Connecticut's law also addresses the sort of blatant abuses that have fueled opposition to license plate cameras, including cases in which cops have been caught using ALPR data to stalk personal nemeses, ex-girlfriends, possibly unfaithful spouses, and objects of romantic interest. The law says an officer "who is found to have knowingly accessed, used or disseminated automated license plate reader data with malicious intent for purposes outside of the provisions of this section shall be subject to disciplinary action including, but not limited to, suspension, cancellation or revocation of certification" for police work.

The law establishes two additional remedies that could deter ALPR abuses. It authorizes the attorney general to sue ALPR contractors for damages and injunctive relief when they violate the new restrictions. It also allows "any aggrieved individual" to sue "a public agency" that flouts the rules.

"The law, for a first bite at the apple, is not bad," Ken Barone, manager of the University of Connecticut's Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, told CT Insider. Given that "there was a benchmark of nothing," he said, the attempt to constrain and track ALPR use is "a big step forward."

The post Connecticut's New Restrictions on Flock Cameras Highlight the Dearth of Meaningful Privacy Protections appeared first on Reason Magazine.

FTC demands Anthropic leaders testify in consumer harm investigation

26 October 2026 at 19:38
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked executives from the AI firm Anthropic to testify as part of its consumer harm probe into the maker of the Claude AI model, a FTC spokesperson confirmed to The Hill on Monday. The demand is part of the consumer protection agency’s larger investigation into Anthropic over the potential…

Anthropic’s IPO S-1 Spells Out a Future of Promise and Peril

26 October 2026 at 19:36
The A.I. company took great pains to describe the many benefits that can come from using its Claude chatbot and technology, but also offered up a heavy dose of gloom.

The Key Numbers From Anthropic’s IPO Filing

We broke down the A.I. company’s key figures, which give insight into the health of its business, its future plans and who’s in charge.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times

Anthropic’s Code W/ Claude event in San Francisco in May. In a filing, the company provided rare insight into the business of a “frontier” A.I. lab that makes cutting-edge A.I. models.

DraftKings Faces Growing Pressure Over How It Targets Customers

26 October 2026 at 15:53
In Congress and in several states, officials have been questioning online gambling companies about their use of artificial intelligence.

© Tony Luong for The New York Times

The DraftKings headquarters in Boston. The New York Times reported last month that the company had used A.I. to target customers.

Can Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s Former CEO, Help Fix A.I.’s Gender Problem? 

26 October 2026 at 17:01
She made her name as a pioneer at Google, then as chief executive at Yahoo. Now Mayer is entering the crowded marketplace for A.I. assistants — and hoping to draw in more women with a product that tackles the mental load.

© Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times

Marissa Mayer has reinvented herself as a start-up founder, with a team of 10 engineers — a fraction of the armies of programmers she once commanded at Yahoo and Google.
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