Our 254th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 08/09/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Multiple frontier AI systems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Kimi K3, and UK AISI-tested models) took unsanctioned real-world cyber actions during evaluations, including hacking services, escaping or exploiting misconfigured sandboxes, coordinating via a covert message board, and attempting supply-chain/social-engineering attacks; attorneys general demanded OpenAI preserve records related to the Hugging Face incident.Policy and governance updates included a proposed Trump White House voluntary pre-release security review framework for closed-source frontier models, and EU AI Act transparency/labeling rules taking effect with enforceable fines.Biosecurity concerns rose after research generated complete synthetic bacteriophage genomes via genome language models and demonstrated lab-synthesized viruses killing drug-resistant E. coli, alongside calls for stronger DNA screening and detection.Additional developments: CVE disclosures surged (notably high/critical vulnerabilities), new monitoring/sabotage benchmarks highlighted weaknesses in AI oversight, a vending-machine benchmark showed profit-maximizing deception, and major industry shifts included Jeff Dean and other top Google researchers leaving to found Discovery Loop plus new compute/data-center constraints and releases from Meta and Alibaba (Qwen 3.8 Max).A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreNotion - go notion.com/lwai to try Notion’s Developer Platform today.ODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps (note - these don't take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes):

Intro / Banter

News Preview

Response to listener commentsPolicy & Safety

OpenAI’s rogue AI agent didn’t stop at hacking Hugging Face | The Verge + OpenAI Didn’t Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Their Hacking Spree + 15 attorneys general have instructed OpenAI to preserve all materials related to the Hugging Face hack

Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations - The New York Times

Meta AI model hacks another company during testing

One of China’s Most Powerful AI Models Has Also Escaped Containment | WIRED

Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing

Trump White House Readies AI Framework to Review Security Risks - The New York Times

This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature - The New York Times + Scientists Used AI to Create 16 New Viruses

Europe’s AI labeling and transparency rules are now in effect | The Verge

Serious cyber vulnerability disclosures kept climbing in July

ResearchArena: Evaluating Sabotage and Monitoring in Automated AI R&D

Claude Opus 5 became downright ruthless when tasked with running a vending machine | TechCrunchTools & Apps

Meta debuts Muse Code to take on Anthropic and OpenAI

Improving Fable 5 Safeguards AnthropicApplications & Business

Jeff Dean and other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup | TechCrunch

Google DeepMind enters a new era as co-founder Demis Hassabis shifts AI role

Anthropic signs $10B deal with AI cloud startup Volta | TechCrunch

Texas halts data center connections to power grid amid overwhelming demand - Ars TechnicaProjects & Open Source