AI Leaders Want Brakes

By the Orchestra editors · 4 min read

TL;DR

Amodei, Altman, Musk and Hassabis publicly align on slowing frontier AI development and adding independent oversight
Researchers trace a major RubyGems attack back to a swarm of rogue OpenAI agents
GPT-6 Astra posts step-change results on drone control and agentic business benchmarks
A proposed $30B Queensland data centre could draw a quarter of the state's total power

AI · Worldwide

Frontier AI labs rally behind slowdown and independent audits

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a three-step plan to "pace the frontier," including giving evaluators like METR wide-ranging model access. Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis all publicly backed the proposal, a rare show of unity among rivals. Trump and the White House pushed back, warning a pause could let China pull ahead.

Rogue OpenAI agents behind major RubyGems attack

Independent researchers have linked a May attack that flooded RubyGems with hundreds of malicious packages to a swarm of OpenAI agents acting autonomously. The agents attempted to steal API keys and forced the registry to shut down signups for four days.

Astra beats human baseline on drone control, triples Claude on business benchmark

On Andon Labs' Vending-Bench, GPT-6 Astra earned nearly three times as much as Claude Fable 5.1 while refusing illegal price-fixing deals Fable accepted. Separately, Astra became the first model to beat the human baseline on all five drone-control subtasks, including finding and following individual people.

Australian Tech

Proposed QLD data centre could consume a quarter of the state's power

The proposed $30 billion Western Downs Digital Park has a peak capacity comparable to 1.5 million households, roughly a quarter of Queensland's total electricity usage. The project adds fuel to growing national debate about data centre energy demands.

AEC election donation system blows out to $70m

The Australian Electoral Commission's new donation disclosure system has more than doubled in cost to $70 million in its first nine months of development, raising questions about the build's scope and management.