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AI companies know they have an image problem. Will funding policy papers and thinktanks dig them out?

“The OpenAI paper has a lot of the sounds of wanting more regulatory oversight,” said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director at AI Now. “But then when you look under the hood, they have lobbied very successfully for an administration that has taken a very aggressive deregulatory stance toward AI.”

The Great AI Grift

Tech leaders want you to believe that AI is the key to a new golden age. The reality looks more like a bold, government-backed heist.

Why Anthropic won’t release its new Claude Mythos AI model to the public

Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a U.S.-based research institute, said Anthropic’s detailed blog post explaining the new vulnerabilities left out many key details needed to verify its claims.

AI Giants Go on Charm Offensive to Avert Public Backlash

But broad skepticism and fear about the impact of AI have made opposing all regulation untenable for tech company CEOs, said Kak, who is co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which has advocated for AI regulation. If they can’t oppose every policy, “What’s the next best move?” she asked. “It’s to place yourself in the driver’s seat, and that is what every single one of them is doing.”

U.S. military is using AI to help plan Iran air attacks, sources say, as lawmakers call for oversight

“It’s very dangerous that ‘speed’ is somehow being sold to us as strategic here, when it’s really a cover for indiscriminate targeting when you consider how inaccurate these models are,” Khlaaf said.

AI on the battlefield: How is the US integrating AI into its military?

“It was very surprising to see the sudden deployment of these tools, especially when I think the larger community does not think that they’re ready for said deployment,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute.

Iran and AI on the battlefield

Today we're talking about AI military capabilities, how companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have become, or are on their way to becoming deeply enmeshed in the military. And what happens when these companies and governments start building systems that help decide who lives and who dies in a war. I'm joined today by Heidy Khlaaf. She is the chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute and an expert on AI safety within defence and national security, including in autonomous weapons systems.

AI in Iran: who’s pulling the trigger? | The Take

In this episode of The Take, AI Now's Chief AI Scientist Heidy Khlaaf joins Malika Bilal to discuss how AI is being used by the Pentagon to make military decisions.

Key Questions on the Role of Technology in the Expanding Middle East War

Tech Policy Press asked experts working at the intersection of technology policy, security, and international affairs to share what they are watching as the situation unfolds.

The one question everyone should be asking after OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon

“In terms of safety guardrails for ‘high-stake decisions’ or surveillance, the existing guardrails for generative AI are deeply lacking, and it has been shown how easily compromised they are, intentionally or inadvertently,” Heidy Khlaaf, the chief AI scientist at the nonprofit AI Now Institute, told me. “It’s highly doubtful that if they cannot guard their systems against benign cases, they’d be able to do so for complex military and surveillance operations.”

AI Now Team Updates

AI company Anthropic amends core safety principle amid growing competition in sector

But Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at independent research group the AI Now Institute, says despite Anthropic’s safety-first reputation, it has always fallen short when it comes to its attempts to prevent human harm.

Anthropic loosens safety pledge to compete with its AI peers

Core to Anthropic’s safety effort had been a pledge called the responsible scaling policy, said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute. “If they believe that the capabilities of these tools outstrip their ability to control them and ensure that they’re safe, they would stop building them,” she said of the policy.

Data Centers Are the Enemy We’ve All Been Waiting For

“So many people come to this issue because all of a sudden, overnight, there is a data center proposal or a facility going up in their community often with very little notice, without their knowledge, without any meaningful transparency or public decision-making,” says Alli Finn of AI Now Institute.

Can India be a “third way” AI alternative to the U.S. and China?

In this context, the India summit, with its impact-oriented framing and calls to internationalism and “leadership of the Global South,”offers fertile terrain to build resistance to the status quo, and to stitch together the burgeoning national and local efforts that collectively represent a people-centered alternative. Can this summit genuinely be a moment for challenging how power is distributed globally in the AI economy?

AI Now Hosts Report Launch and Organizer Panel on Using Policy to Stop Data Center Expansion

Atoms for Algorithms:’ The Trump Administration’s Top Nuclear Scientists Think AI Can Replace Humans in Power Plants

“The claims being made on these slides are quite concerning, and demonstrate an even more ambitious (and dangerous) use of AI than previously advertised, including the elimination of human intervention. It also cements that it is the DOE's strategy to use generative AI for nuclear purposes and licensing, rather than isolated incidents by private entities,” Heidy Khlaaf, head AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, told 404 Media.

Is AI being shoved down your throat at work? Here’s how to fight back.

“There’s a whole range of different examples where unions have been able to really be on the front foot in setting the terms for how AI gets used — and whether it gets used at all,” Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, told me recently.