Tech, in brief

Rules being written for AI

Microsoft published a rulebook for the AI models it builds on Monday. [5] In May China's internet regulator told makers of AI agents to get better at spotting, blocking and recovering from an agent's bad actions. [9] California now makes chatbot makers add safety steps for teenagers who mention self-harm. [25]

Who gets to test AI models

Anthropic did not let Britain's AI Security Institute test its Mythos 5.1 model before release, the Financial Times reported. [10] Microsoft's code names no outside body to check its models. [5] China's standards let developers bring in outside firms to assess safety. [9]

Paying for power and land

Samsung and SK Hynix, South Korea's two biggest chipmakers, refused to pay the state power company $18.7bn up front for new power supplies. [16] Data centre builders in Frederick County, Maryland, offered residents a $110m package that includes a $30m school. [17]

Relying on one supplier

Switzerland's government is building an open-source office system to fall back on if Microsoft 365 stops working. [24] China holds 70% of indium phosphide, a material used in the light chips inside AI data centres. [26] ASML had 94% of the world market for chip-printing machines in 2025, JPMorgan estimates. [19]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Tech too.

• Worries that AI is going too fastBuilding ↑ · seen in 4 beats→

1. 1Microsoft wrote a rulebook for its own AI models. It does not cover the OpenAI and Anthropic models Microsoft also sells.
2. 2China's security minister warns about two US AI models
3. 3Anthropic kept its newest model from Britain's testers
4. 4OpenAI pulls out of a student maths contest
5. 5Musk's companies drop their claims against Apple

Microsoft published a draft code of conduct on Monday for the AI models it builds itself, which it calls MAI models. [5][4]

Watch the revised code Microsoft has promised before the end of the year, and whether it adds an outside checker or a penalty for a model that breaks it. [5]

Chen Yixin, China's minister of state security, wrote on Sunday that Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber could pose serious risks to China's most important computer systems. [9]

China's internet regulator first wrote a loss-of-control scenario into its AI safety framework in September 2024. It warned that future AI might copy itself and seek power. [9]

In May the regulator issued rules telling makers of AI agents to get better at finding, blocking and recovering from an agent's bad behaviour. [9]

The fear of AI escaping human control is written into Chinese rules as well as American warnings.

The US and China are due to discuss AI in talks later this month. [9]

Every rule is written about a named kind of thing, so what fits that name decides how much the rule actually covers.

Europe's Digital Markets Act names virtual assistants as something it can regulate, but no assistant has ever been put under it, so the ChatGPT deal on the iPhone sits outside it.

The law defines addictive features to include autoplay, notifications and personalised feeds, so it reaches almost every feed a teenager uses, which is why the EFF calls it a ban.

China's agent rules list losing control of an agent as a security risk, so developers are told to get better at stopping and undoing what their agents do.

Each can read the promise, and none of them wrote the definition that decides who it covers.

Anthropic did not give Britain's AI Security Institute, the official British body that tests powerful AI models, its Mythos 5.1 model before release, the Financial Times reported. [10]

The FT said it is the first time a major model has been kept from the institute before launch, and that Anthropic did give comparable US bodies access. [10]

Anthropic released Mythos 5.1 on 1 September to approved partners only, and has not explained the decision. [10]

Britain's safety testing depends on early access to American models. [10] UK officials fear a wider shift among American AI companies towards favouring their own country, the FT reported. [10]

Also seen in Cyber, Finance and Biotech.

OpenAI withdrew its $1m in AI credits from the Mathathon, a student-run AI maths event at Caltech, a US university, on 10 September. [11]

A letter with 771 signatures from mathematicians called AI-made results slop mathematics, and said the mathematicians who check them go unpaid. [11]

The next day 25 winners of the Fields Medal, maths' top prize, warned that turning out true and false statements at speed could harm the field. [11]

Anthropic kept its $1m in, and the students say the event runs from 30 October. [11]

Mathematicians are refusing to be the unpaid checkers of AI companies' results. The organisers are now looking for credits to replace OpenAI's. [11]

X Corp and SpaceXAI, both owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, asked a court on Monday to dismiss their competition-law claims against Apple. [12][13]

They sued last year, saying Apple illegally shut out rival chatbots by building OpenAI's ChatGPT into the iPhone. [12] Apple said the arrangement was never exclusive. [12]

The filing gave no reason, and did not say whether a settlement was reached. [12] The claims against OpenAI in the same case continue. [12]

Europe's Digital Markets Act lists virtual assistants among the services it can regulate, but has never put a single assistant under it. [13]

So the complaint Musk dropped in Texas has no European rule applied to it either. [13]

Microsoft confirmed that its September Windows updates broke Remote Desktop, a tool for running a computer from somewhere else, on several Windows versions. [14]

The update also cut the sound on some older USB speakers and headsets that use a driver first added in Windows 98. [15]

A security fix for Excel 2016 to 2024 made pasting fail without any warning. [14] Microsoft is working on fixes and has given no date for the sound one. [14]

For people with automatic updates turned on, the update may already be installed. [14] Removing it to get pasting back also removes its security fixes. [14]

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, South Korea's two biggest chipmakers, rejected a request from KEPCO, the state power company, to pay 25 trillion won ($18.7bn) up front. [16]

KEPCO wanted the money in advance for electricity that planned giant chip-factory clusters would use, so it could build the power supply for them. [16]

A company official said the firms were unsure such large payments were needed, citing uncertainty over how long chip demand will last. [16]

The refusal is recorded in a document given to a lawmaker. [16]

KEPCO wants to build the power supply before the plants run, and asked the chipmakers to pay for it first. [16] They said no, and declined to comment. [16]

Developers of the Frederick Digital Campus, a planned data centre site in Frederick County, Maryland, have offered residents a $110m benefits package, The Information reported. [17]

It includes a $30m primary school, $40m for recreation and a $14.5m job-training centre. [17]

The developers also cut the planned floor space by almost 20% and promised to use 80% less drinking water. [17]

The site is not yet approved, and Amazon would be a tenant. [17]

About 500 US data centres are on hold because of local bans and legal pauses, Tom's Hardware reports. [17] Builders are now offering towns schools and parks directly to win approval. [17]

ASML, the Dutch company that alone makes the machines that print the smallest patterns on chips, is looking at ways to build more than 110 of them in 2028. [19]

JPMorgan analysts said so on Monday after meeting its finance chief. [18] ASML says it can make at least 80 in 2027, and those are nearly sold out. [18]

Intel said it has now run more than a million silicon discs through ASML's newest $400m machines. [19]

Most new orders are for machines delivered in 2028. JPMorgan says ASML's limit is how fast it can assemble them, not its suppliers. [18]

JPMorgan estimates ASML held 94% of the world market for these machines in 2025. [19]

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, had about 9 million subscribers last year and brought in $11bn, a Reuters Breakingviews column said on Tuesday. [20]

That is small next to the roughly $350bn a year AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile take together, but Starlink has nearly tripled its subscribers since the end of 2024. [20]

SpaceX bought $17bn of radio airwave licences from EchoStar last September and plans a network for customers travelling abroad. [20]

Phones need airwaves, and SpaceX holds about 65 megahertz, a measure of airwave space, of the most-used kind, against roughly 600 at T-Mobile. [20]

A satellite signal is also far weaker than one from a nearby phone mast, and Musk says phones would need about two years of changes. [20]

Optus, Australia's second-biggest phone company, apologised on Saturday after a 76-minute fault dropped voice calls in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory on Friday. [21]

It disrupted some calls to 000, Australia's emergency number. [21] An Optus network problem last year left hundreds of people unable to reach police, fire and ambulance, and two people died. [21]

Victoria police made about 40 welfare checks and reported no harm. [21]

Optus was fined A$12m in 2024 for failing to connect emergency calls during a 2023 outage. [21] Chris Bowen, a senior Australian minister, said investigations into this one have begun. [21]

The board of Automattic, which owns WordPress.com, Tumblr and Beeper, put founder Matt Mullenweg on paid leave as chief executive last week.

It made finance chief Mark Davies the interim boss. [23] Two days later Mullenweg told staff on Slack that the board was back in agreement and he was in control. [22]

Davies's Slack account was deactivated, sources told TechCrunch, and Automattic did not confirm any change. [22]

No reason for removing him has been given. [22]

Mullenweg suggested that Silver Lake, the investment firm that owns most of WP Engine, a web host Automattic is fighting in court, was behind it. [22]

Switzerland's federal government has started setting up openDesk, a German-built office system whose code anyone can inspect, to run alongside Microsoft 365. [24]

It covers email, calendars, documents and video calls, and the first phase costs about 9 million Swiss francs. [24]

By the end of 2027 it should serve about 3,000 of the Swiss government's 47,000 staff, and act as a fallback if Microsoft 365 is unavailable. [24]

The army's cyber units are due to get it by October. [24]

Germany and the International Criminal Court already use openDesk. [24]

The Swiss government says the hard part is the many programs built around Microsoft's systems, so it has not decided to replace Microsoft 365. [24]

California's governor Gavin Newsom signed a law banning social media companies from giving under-16s addictive features. The law defines those to include autoplaying videos, notifications and personalised feeds. [25]

Other new laws set time limits on teenagers' use of AI chatbots, and make chatbot makers alert parents if a child turns off safety settings. [25]

AI companies must also face independent child-safety audits. [25] The legal definition of child sexual exploitation now includes AI-made images. [25]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group, called the social media law a ban on social media for teenagers. [25]

It says proving ages will make every user hand over more personal information. [25]

IQE, a chipmaker based in Cardiff, Wales, reported a 40% jump in revenue, and its shares are up 849% this year. [26]

Its chief executive Jutta Meier told Bloomberg that getting indium phosphide is becoming a key risk for the chip industry, because Chinese export controls make supply uncertain. [26]

Indium phosphide is used to make the chips that send data as light inside AI data centres. [26] China holds 70% of it, according to the US Geological Survey. [26]

IQE says it is buying from more suppliers. Meier said export licences could still hit the company if China changes its rules. [26]

Adobe, which makes Photoshop, said yearly subscription sales from its AI products grew more than 150% in its latest quarter, and its revenue beat forecasts. [27]

Its shares still fell 4% before trading opened the next day, after it forecast next-quarter revenue of $6.80bn to $6.85bn, against an expected $6.85bn. [28]

Adobe has named Anil Chakravarthy as its next chief executive, with Shantanu Narayen becoming executive chair on 1 December. [27]

Adobe is adding AI across its products to defend its position against newer rivals, Reuters reported. [27] David Wadhwani, who runs its creative software business, leaves on 27 September. [27]

Complaints to Britain's housing ombudsman, which settles disputes between tenants and landlords, rose from 2,600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 last year. [29]

Complaints to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau grew fivefold over the same period. [29]

Researcher Chris Schmitz found similar rises in 84 cases across 11 countries and regions, starting as AI tools spread. [29] His paper stops short of saying AI caused them. [29]

Schmitz says most of the new filings come from people entitled to what they claim. [29] He sees it as a chance to redesign how people apply for public services. [29]