Google released Gemini 4 Carbon and is limiting first access to a subset of cyber defenders, according to a Google DeepMind blog post. Google said it is taking part in the U.S. government's voluntary process for testing models before release. It will widen access in stages to other trusted partners through its Fairwind Program before offering Carbon to developers, businesses and consumers. The company reported leading scores of 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro, which measures finding real software flaws, and 54.8% on ExploitGym, which measures turning flaws into working attacks. Carbon also tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a composite of model tests, ahead of Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, per The Verge. High-severity misalignmentAlignmentThe problem of making an AI system reliably pursue the goals its developers and users intend, and the research field devoted to it. Misalignment covers everything from a chatbot flattering users to a capable system deceiving or resisting its operators. alerts dropped by almost 80% when Google's internal teams used Carbon in live coding work, Google DeepMind's Koray Kavukcuoglu wrote.
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U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, an executive at the Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, was passing information to Chinese intelligence, The New York Times reported. Surveillance showed she had developed a close relationship with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, who was identified as the U.S. citizen in her communications through the unmasking process. Trump was briefed roughly a year ago and chose not to act, wary of disrupting Nvidia's chip sales. Jensen Huang has not been given a defensive briefing, and Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said his "interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected." The Commerce Department's investigation of Megaspeed, open since late 2024, was transferred to the Justice Department this year.
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Attackers have made millions of attempts on PHP vulnerabilities discovered by AI but landed few successful breaches, per Axios, citing security researchers. The bugs are proving unusually difficult to turn into working exploits, and defensive work at many companies also appears to have helped. Silicon Valley engineers are working through a pile of software flaws surfaced by AI to patch them before hackers do, The New York Times reported. Samantha Lewis, head of threat intelligence at Armadin, warned against reading the lull as safety: "It could be three hours from now that the next one of these launches." Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha said an "era of cyber tsunami" is under way.
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Scale AI released DualChem, a 600-question chemistry test and the first benchmark from its partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology's recently renamed Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence (CAISSI), per FedScoop. Experts wrote the questions, which Ph.D.-level evaluators reviewed, in fields such as molecular design and synthesis, where the same knowledge can serve legitimate or harmful ends. Across roughly 30 frontier models that Scale tested, accuracy averaged about 50%, with top models near 67%. Even when models identified a query as potentially dual-use, they still answered it in most cases, the company said. "At a high level, it's really giving the government another tool on how to assess AI risk," said Max Fenkell, Scale's global head of policy and government relations.
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Technology companies expect Democrats to investigate their ties to the Trump administration and push AI safety legislation if the party takes control of Congress, per The Hill, citing political strategists and congressional investigations lawyers. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who could become its chair under a Democratic majority, has expanded his inquiry into surveillance pricing, in which companies use AI and personal data to set individual prices. Brandon Rios, co-lead of the congressional investigations team at law firm DLA Piper, said concern over AI and data centers is building in both parties. Democrats are better placed to pass AI safety legislation because they are "not beholden to the president," said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.). However, Trump could veto any such bill.
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Santiago Schnell resigned as provost and is leaving Dartmouth after a faculty-led review found his use of AI fell short of the college's code of ethical conduct, The New York Times reported. The committee, convened by President Sian Leah Beilock and led by former provost David Kotz, found Schnell had used AI to "meaningfully alter his writing" and had "failed to disclose his use of A.I.," violating at least one publication's requirement. It reviewed three published pieces, including an Aug. 9 Washington Post column it called a "clear violation" of that paper's policy, and said Schnell's cooperation was "insufficient" because he did not provide logs from personal chatbot accounts. Beilock named history professor Matthew Delmont interim provost through June 2028.
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