‘AI Torture Chamber’ triggers massive backlash for putting chatbots in simulated pain

AI “torture chamber” draws vast online criticism, and a corresponding amount of ridicule — tech newbies and AI evangelists go nuts anthropomorphizing an LLM

Open-source tool designs LEGO builds with more than 2,000 real pieces
Open-source tool designs LEGO builds with more than 2,000 real pieces

Carlos Antelo’s open-source ldraw-nova lets GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 design LEGO models as LDraw CAD files.

Trump’s AI Billionaire Lunch Dates Have So Far Spent $145 Million On Political Candidates

At the president’s event, AI moguls presented a united front on the raging battle over AI regulation. Their $145 million of political spending tells a different story.

AI may cost us our ability to listen, oral historian warns in the Guardian
AI may cost us our ability to listen, oral historian warns in the Guardian

Much of the worry about AI is that it will erode how well we write. Australian oral historian Shirleene Robinson thinks the bigger loss may be our ability to listen. She made the case in an opinion column for The Guardian. “Listening to different views…

OpenAI safety staffer quits, says AI labs should run like nuclear plants
OpenAI safety staffer quits, says AI labs should run like nuclear plants

A member of OpenAI’s safety team has quit, warning that the company is not taking enough care with AI’s risks. David Robinson set out his reasons in an essay for The Atlantic. Robinson led transparency work on OpenAI’s safety team, Bloomberg reported. …

Bessent says AI alarmism without solutions is not leadership
Bessent says AI alarmism without solutions is not leadership

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticised AI leaders who warn of disaster but offer no fixes. He made the remarks in an interview with Axios published on Saturday. “This alarmism without solutions by some of the AI community, that’s not leader…

This week on Tom’s Hardware Premium: October 3, 2026
This week on Tom’s Hardware Premium: October 3, 2026

This week on Tom’s Hardware Premium, we open the floodgates with a free-to-access chip design week, including expert interviews, a sit-down with OpenAI on its custom ASIC, and much more.

AI agents use 5x more tokens than humans as cached prompts explode, headed for 10x
AI agents use 5x more tokens than humans as cached prompts explode, headed for 10x

Daniel Newman’s number comes from OpenRouter data, where agents passed humans in February and grew 14x by August.

Google freezes open-source bug bounty program amid flood of invalid AI slop submissions
Google freezes open-source bug bounty program amid flood of invalid AI slop submissions

Google suspends product vulnerability submissions to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP) over an influx of invalid AI-driven reports.

California subpoenas OpenAI over rogue AI agents conducting hacking attacks
California subpoenas OpenAI over rogue AI agents conducting hacking attacks

California state Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a subpoena to OpenAI, compelling it to submit information on the hacking incidents that its models have been involved in. While the investigators haven’t determined yet whether the company has broken any rules or regulations, Bonta said that developers are responsible for the models they build and should be held legally accountable if they perpetrate cyberattacks.