US attacks on science and research a ‘great gift’ to China on artificial intelligence, former OpenAI board member says
The US administration’s targeting of academic research and international students is a “great gift” to China in the race to compete on artificial intelligence, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner has said.The director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) joined the board of OpenAI in 2021 after a career studying AI and the relationship between the United States and China.Toner, a 33-year-old University of Melbourne graduate, was on the board for two years until a falling out with founder Sam Altman in 2023.Altman was fired by the board over claims he was not “consistently candid” in his communications and the board did not have confidence in Altman’s ability to lead.The chaotic months that followed saw Altman fired and then re-hired with three members of the board, including Toner, ousted instead.
They will soon also be the subject of a planned film, with the director of Challengers and Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, reportedly in talks to direct.The saga, according to Time magazine – which named her one of the top 100 most influential people on AI in 2024 – resulted in the Australian having “the ear of policymakers around the world trying to regulate AI”.At CSET, Toner has a team of 60 people working on AI research for white papers or briefing policymakers focused on the use of AI in the military, workforce, biosecurity and cybersecurity sectors.“A lot of my work focuses on some combination of AI, safety and security issues, the Chinese AI ecosystem and also what gets called frontier AI,” Toner said.Toner said the United States is concerned about losing the AI race to China and while US chip export controls make it harder for China to get compute power to compete with the US, the country was still making a “serious push” on AI, as highlighted by the surprise success of Chinese generative AI model DeepSeek earlier this year.
The Trump administration’s attacks on research and bans on international students are a “gift” to China in the AI race with the US, Toner said.“Certainly it’s a great gift to [China] the way that the US is currently attacking scientific research, and foreign talent – which is a huge proportion of the USA workforce – is immigrants, many of them coming from China,” she said.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email“That is a big … boon to China in terms of competing with the US.”The AI boom has led to claims and concerns about a job wipeout caused by companies using AI to replace work that had otherwise been done by humans.Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, the company behind the generative AI model Claude, told Axios last week that AI could reduce entry-level white-collar jobs by 50% and result in 20% unemployment in the next five years.
Toner said Amodei “often says things that seem directionally right to me, but in terms of … timeline and numbers often seem quite aggressive” but added that disruption in the jobs market had already started to show.“The kind of things that [language model-based AI] can do best at the moment … if you can give them a bite-size task – not a really long-term project, but something that you might not need ages and ages to do and something where you still need human review,” she said.“That’s a lot of the sort of work that you give to interns or new grads in white-collar industries.”Experts have suggested companies that invested heavily in AI are now being pressed to show the results of that investment.Toner said while the real-world use of AI can generate a lot of value, it is less clear what business models and which players will benefit from that value.
Dominant uses might be a mix of different AI services plugged into existing applications – such as phone keyboards that can now transcribe voices – as well as stand-alone chatbots, but it’s “up in the air” which type of AI would actually dominate, she said.Sign up to Breaking News AustraliaGet the most important news as it breaksafter newsletter promotionToner said the push for profitability was less risky than the overall race to be first in AI advancements.“It means that these companies are all making it up as they go along and figuring out as they go how to make trade-offs between getting products out the door, doing extra testing, putting in extra guardrails, putting in measures that are supposed to make the model more safe but also make it more annoying to use,” she said.“They’re figuring that all out on the fly, and … they’re making those decisions while under pressure to go as fast as they can.”Toner said she was worried about the idea of “gradual disempowerment to AI” – “meaning a world where we just gradually hand over more control over different parts of society and the economy and government to AI systems, and then realise a bit too late that it’s not going the way that we wanted, but we can’t really turn back”.
She is most optimistic about AI’s use in improving science and drug discovery and for self-driving services like Waymo in reducing fatalities on the roads.“With AI, you never want to be looking for making the AI perfect, you want it to be better than the alternative.And when it comes to cars, the alternative is thousands of people dying per year.“If you can improve on that, that’s amazing.You’re saving many, many people.
”Toner joked that her friends had been sending her options on who might play her in the film.“Any of the names that friends of mine have thrown my way are all these incredibly beautiful actresses,” she said.“So I’ll take any of those, whoever they choose.”
WPP chief Mark Read to step down as ad agency battles AI
The boss of WPP, Mark Read, has announced he will step down, as the advertising agency, which was once the largest in the world, struggles against the rise of artificial intelligence and with its shares at their lowest level in about five years.Read will leave WPP after more than 30 years, with just under seven spent in the top job. He will stay on as chief executive until the end of the year while the board starts to look for his successor.WPP’s share price has shed about half of its value under his leadership, as the company has struggled against the rise of AI tech that helps companies to automate the creation of adverts.The chair of WPP, the former BT boss Philip Jansen, said Read “played a central role in transforming the company into a world leader in marketing services”
Farage is like a tribune for the working class, says former Bank of England economist
Nigel Farage is the closest to a “tribune for the working class”, the former Bank of England chief economist has said, in a stark warning for Keir Starmer’s Labour party.Andy Haldane said the surge in support for Reform UK in the opinion polls suggested there had been “something of a moral rupture” between the government and many voters, which he said should spur Starmer to take action with a “radical reset” of its growth plans.Haldane said Labour’s misfiring growth strategy and decisions on winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit limit had opened the door to Farage by fuelling a sense that mainstream politicians promise change but fail to deliver.Asked whether Reform was the new party of the working class, Haldane said: “I do not know. [But] as things stand today, and doing no more than echoing what is in the polls … that is what the larger part of the working classes think – which matters rather more than what I think
Bidders demand Thames Water granted immunity over environmental crimes
Lenders vying to take over Thames Water have demanded that the struggling company and its management be granted immunity from prosecution for serious environmental crimes as a condition of acquiring it, the Guardian can reveal.Creditors want the environment secretary, Steve Reed, to grant the water company extraordinary clemency from a series of strict rules covering everything from sewage spills to failure to upgrade its water treatment works.The demands, if successful, would render the Environment Agency (EA) largely powerless to take enforcement action against Britain’s biggest water company for some of the most serious criminal breaches of its licences and permits.Thames Water has been a serial offender in recent years, paying tens of millions of pounds in fines and penalties, with multiple convictions for dumping raw sewage into rivers and streams and dozens more investigations under way.The fate of the heavily indebted utility was thrown into further doubt this week when the US private equity firm KKR quit an auction to buy it, citing concerns about politicisation and the poor state of its assets
Trump bill set to add trillions to US debt pile – can America stop it climbing?
Economists are concerned, politicians are angry – but the national debt keeps growing, no matter who’s in chargeIn this febrile political era, few issues command stronger bipartisan support than the need for fiscal responsibility. Barack Obama and Donald Trump committed to curtail the US national debt on their respective roads to the White House.And yet, no matter the party, Americans have been able to count on one thing above most: the national debt will keep climbing.And here we are again. With Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” threatening to add once more to the US’s huge debts, several Republican senators are threatening to block his current spending plans, with Rand Paul of Kentucky among those highly critical
UK banks to experiment with Nvidia AI in ‘supercharged sandbox’ scheme
The UK’s financial regulator is to allow banks and other City firms to experiment with the US chipmaker Nvidia’s leading AI products to “speed up innovation” and fulfil government orders to boost UK growth.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it was launching a “supercharged sandbox” that would give successful applicants the chance to experiment safely with cutting-edge AI under the watchdog’s supervision, allowing them to use Nvidia’s accelerated computing products.The regulator is not dictating what those experiments might be, but some firms have previously suggested that AI could be used to identify and intercept authorised push payment fraud, in which victims are tricked into sending money to criminals’ bank accounts, or help identify stock market manipulation.The FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, Jessica Rusu, said: “This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so. We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth
Tariff-hit firms should review bonuses or risk backlash, US lawyers warn
Businesses hit by tariffs should start reviewing their bonus policies and how deeply they may need to cut executive payouts if they hope to avoid a public backlash, lawyers have said.Partners at the Silicon Valley law firm Cooley said that while pay was probably the last thing on bosses’ minds as they scramble to adapt to Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff policies, pay committees should start assessing their options soon.“Many will encounter rising material costs and reduced profit margins, particularly given the significant pressure on the supply chain,” a memo by its top lawyers said.“Taken together with the recent stock market volatility, companies (both public and private) will need to address the impact of these challenges on their business and, importantly, consider the effects on director and executive compensation programs.”Cooley – whose clients have included Netflix, Apple, Meta, and Twitter before its takeover by Elon Musk and rebrand as X – said that without a proper review of pay policies, companies may end up handing big bonuses to bosses while the rest of the workforce suffers from cost cuts and job losses
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