A Hotline for Machines
Washington and Beijing have agreed their first institutional channel for AI risks. It is a real step, but without a shared definition of an AI incident, nobody yet knows when either side should pick up the phone.
Archive
Rejected by an Algorithm
Records from Medicare's AI prior-authorisation pilot show thousands of denials, an 83-day wait against a 72-hour standard and vendors paid more when they say no. The flaw is not only the software; it is the contract.
Governments Think Their AI Is Transparent. Their Citizens Disagree.
A survey of US state and local government finds officials far more confident about their AI than the residents they serve. Set alongside new Pew and OECD work, it suggests trust in public-sector AI is earned slowly and lost easily.
California v Washington: The States Writing America’s AI Rules
Congress has not passed a federal AI law, and its preemption push has stalled. California is filling the gap with worker protections and auditor rules, while Colorado shows how far federal and industry pressure can roll a state back.
Deployment Before Law: Britain’s AI Governance Gap
Parliament's human rights committee wants a dedicated AI Bill; the government's cyber legislation leaves frontier developers to volunteer; and the Met is fixing facial recognition cameras in the West End. The UK is deploying first and legislating later.
Two Blocs, One Technology
Global AI governance is hardening into rival institutions, a US-led supply-chain bloc and a Chinese-led cooperation body. Many states are joining both, and public opinion abroad is less tilted towards the West than policymakers assume.
The Agentic State and the Price of Sovereignty
The UAE wants half its government services run by AI agents within two years; Canada is backing tens of billions in "sovereign" compute. Both are bets on control. The chips underneath tell a more complicated story.
Guardrails for Hire: When Defence Contracts Rewrite AI Rules
Two US courts have given opposite answers in the dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic. Beneath the litigation lies a larger question: should a vendor's usage policy or a government's contract decide how the military uses AI?