A publication about the power and politics of transformative AI. Subscribe for free: https://xitter.twitterapi.xyz/t.co/zlzcMxIt4C
Joined September 2025
- Tweets480
- Following4
- Followers1.3K
- Likes2
Pinned Tweet
“If you truly prioritize safety, it is time for you to leave frontier AI companies.”
In an exclusive open letter to the researchers he trained — and the ones who trained on his work — AI godfather @Yoshua_Bengio calls on AI company employees to consider their own involvement in the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence.
Read the letter in full, only on Transformer: transformernews.substack.com…
ALT Photograph of Yoshua Bengio. The headline reads: "Yoshua Bengio: 'If you prioritize safety, leave frontier AI companies'"
Transformer retweeted
Are abliterated models a net benefit or a major security risk? It's an issue Hugging Face is struggling with - as is the wider AI community. My latest for @ReadTransformer
transformernews.ai/p/hugging…
Transformer retweeted
An important update and apology from Transformer regarding our AI Campaign Finance Tracker:
Today we discovered an error in our AI Campaign Finance Tracker. A bug in how our tracker deduplicates filings which has meant that we have undercounted spending from American Mission, part of the Leading the Future network, by about $9.6m, and double-counted about $1.4m of spending by Guardrails Alliance, a pro-safety PAC.
The bug was introduced in late June, and most of the error built up in late October. Since the bug was introduced, our headline figures have therefore been undercounting “pro-innovation” spending and overcounted “pro-safety” spending. Post-midterms, our headline figures were $44.4m pro-safety vs $27.9m pro-innovation, or 1.6 to 1. The corrected figures are about $42.9m vs $37.0m, about 1.16 to 1. Pro-safety groups still outspent industry, but by much less than we reported.
We know lots of people relied on our tracker as a source of truth in the midterms: as the editor ultimately responsible for it, I am very sorry that its numbers have not been accurate.
The tracker has now been corrected and checked against FEC filings, so it is now accurate. Going forward, if we run a similar project in 2028 we will implement better review processes to make sure an error like this cannot happen again.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an affair believed to be with a suspected Chinese spy — but the national security angle isn't even the strongest case for his resignation.
Transformer editor @ShakeelHashim argues the misleading public statements alone make Huang's position untenable. Huang told Bloomberg his interactions with Alice Huang were "completely normal and not unusual." Unless he's been secretly sleeping with all his customers, that was false — and Huang has misled investors.
Innovation Council Action – the pro-AI group that pledged to spend $100m fighting AI regulation – has closer ties to Trump AI advisor David Sacks than previously known.
A new filing in Utah lists two senior executives at Sacks' VC firm Craft Ventures as directors of the group. The third director appears to be a political consultant who "oversees" JD Vance's donor relationships.
Read @ShakeelHashim's reporting:
transformernews.ai/p/innovat…
Tuesday's results proved it: voters hate unchecked AI. Democrats won in huge numbers – but with little consensus on what to do about it.
@vronirwin argues the party is likely to fracture into camps, with policies ranging from data center bans to superintelligence moratoriums now getting serious consideration.
Keep up with the week's biggest AI developments with Transformer's Weekly Briefing:
transformernews.ai/p/will-de…
Democrats' historic midterms sweep just reshaped the future of AI policy.
As @ShakeelHashim writes, with potentially 56 Senate seats and 261 House seats, the need to compromise on frontier AI legislation is much lower – and AI industry PACs fell flat last night while safety PACs won big.
Concretely, that could mean a bill stronger than the FRONTIER Act – one with tough safety standards, mandatory testing, and narrower preemption language – in the first few months of next year. Entirely new types of AI legislation may even be on the table.
AI might not have decided this election, but this election may have just decided the future of AI.
1
128
Transformer retweeted
Fantastic stuff from @NYMag on our new AI overlords: nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…
One way to tell the story of how AI is changing our world is through some newly familiar names: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang.
But an astonishing amount of power rests in the hands of a few dozen other people, none particularly well known, some virtually anonymous.
Transformer partnered with @NYMag for its annual “Power” issue, surfacing 26 people whose influence on the AI landscape far outstrips their fame.
Find out more 👇
The most powerful people in AI aren’t the ones you’ve heard of.
Introducing: The AI Power List, a Transformer collaboration with @NYMag: 26 people quietly deciding how AI gets built, governed and fought over.
On newsstands now, and online here ↓
AI has minted a new power structure. A handful of private companies command the might and wealth of small nation-states and are mostly left alone to self-govern. A few hundred employees are on the brink of becoming centimillionaires and considering which causes and presidential candidates they will funnel their vast resources toward.
One way to tell the story of how AI is changing our world is through some newly familiar names: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang. But an astonishing amount of power rests in the hands of a few dozen other people, some virtually anonymous.
For this year’s annual “Power” issue, we are surfacing 26 people whose influence on the AI landscape far outstrips their fame.
We partnered with @ReadTransformer, a publication with a command of the politics within transformative AI, whose team drew on its years of reporting, as well as new interviews with more than 50 high-ranking industry leaders, to help articulate what makes these people powerful.
The AI scene is small. Many are remarkably intertwined, sharing offices, homes, and funding. The list’s average age is 36. It is also overwhelmingly male. Read about the few dozen power brokers who will decide how AI shakes out, refashioning the world for the rest of us in the process: nymag.visitlink.me/AgEtqI
Just days before the midterms, AI's political class is consumed with one question: is AI a big issue this election?
@ShakeelHashim digs into the data – and finds the answer is somewhere between the safety groups' hype and the industry dismissals
Keep up with the week's biggest AI developments with Transformer's Weekly Briefing: transformernews.ai/p/was-thi…
81
Anthropic has devised an incredibly complex structure designed to protect its founding mission post-IPO, but there are still ways it could all fall apart
@KevinTFrazier takes a deep dive into the changes coming for how Anthropic is run
transformernews.ai/p/anthrop…
3
187