May 13, 2025 News
xAI Fails to Deliver Promised AI Safety Framework by Self-Imposed Deadline
Elon Musk's AI company xAI has missed its May 10 deadline to publish a finalized AI safety framework, which was promised in February at the AI Seoul Summit. The company's initial draft framework was criticized for only applying to future models and lacking specifics on risk mitigation, while watchdog organizations have ranked xAI poorly for its weak risk management practices compared to industry peers.
Skynet Chance (+0.06%): xAI's failure to prioritize safety protocols despite public commitments suggests industry leaders may be advancing AI capabilities without adequate risk management frameworks in place. This negligence in implementing safety measures increases the potential for uncontrolled AI development across the industry.
Skynet Date (-2 days): The deprioritization of safety frameworks at major AI labs like xAI, coupled with rushed safety testing industry-wide, suggests acceleration toward potential control risks as companies prioritize capability development over safety considerations.
AGI Progress (+0.01%): While the article primarily focuses on safety concerns rather than technical advances, it implies ongoing aggressive development at xAI and across the industry with less emphasis on safety, suggesting technical progress continues despite regulatory shortcomings.
AGI Date (-1 days): The article indicates industry-wide acceleration in AI development with reduced safety oversight, suggesting companies are prioritizing capability advancement and faster deployment over thorough safety considerations, potentially accelerating the timeline to AGI.
Harvey Legal AI Expands Beyond OpenAI to Incorporate Anthropic and Google Models
Legal AI tool Harvey announced it will now utilize foundation models from Anthropic and Google alongside OpenAI's models. Despite being backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, Harvey's internal benchmarks revealed different models excel at specific legal tasks, prompting the $3 billion valuation startup to adopt a multi-model approach for its services.
Skynet Chance (-0.05%): The shift toward using multiple AI models rather than a single provider indicates a move toward comparative selection based on specialized performance rather than pure capability scaling, which slightly reduces control risks by preventing single-model dominance.
Skynet Date (+1 days): Harvey's approach of selecting specialized models for specific tasks rather than pursuing increasingly powerful general models suggests a more measured, task-oriented development path that could modestly decelerate the timeline toward potential uncontrolled AI scenarios.
AGI Progress (+0.04%): The discovery that different foundation models excel at specific reasoning tasks demonstrates meaningful progress in AI capabilities relevant to AGI, as these models are showing domain-specific reasoning abilities that collectively cover more comprehensive intelligence domains.
AGI Date (-1 days): The competitive dynamic between major AI providers and transparent benchmarking could slightly accelerate AGI development as it creates market pressure for improvements in reasoning capabilities across specialized domains, a key component of general intelligence.
AWS Announces $5+ Billion Strategic Partnership with Saudi-backed Humain to Build AI Zone
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has formed a strategic partnership with Humain, a Saudi Arabia-backed AI company launched by Mohammed bin Salman, to invest over $5 billion in building an "AI Zone" in Saudi Arabia. The partnership includes dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and programs for Saudi-based AI startups, joining other tech giants like Nvidia and AMD who have also partnered with Humain under recent U.S. initiatives permitting such deals.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): This partnership consolidates significant AI development resources and funding in a region with potentially different regulatory and ethical frameworks, increasing the chance of competitive AI development with fewer oversight mechanisms. The scale of investment suggests serious capability building that could outpace safety considerations.
Skynet Date (-1 days): The massive investment and infrastructure commitment will likely accelerate AI development timelines by creating another well-funded global AI hub with significant compute resources. This partnership represents another major player entering the high-stakes AI development race, potentially shortening timelines for advanced capabilities.
AGI Progress (+0.05%): The partnership provides substantial new funding, infrastructure, and technical resources dedicated to AI development in a new geographic center. While not representing a specific technical breakthrough, the scale of investment and involvement of major tech companies suggests significant capability development efforts.
AGI Date (-3 days): This $5+ billion investment creates another major AI development hub with significant compute resources and technical talent, likely accelerating the global race for advanced AI capabilities. The involvement of multiple tech giants (AWS, Nvidia, AMD) in this new initiative suggests coordinated acceleration of AI infrastructure and capabilities.
Microsoft's WizardLM Research Team Joins Tencent's Hunyuan AI Division
A Beijing-based Microsoft AI research group called WizardLM has left Microsoft to join Tencent's Hunyuan AI development organization. The team has already released a Hunyuan-branded model claimed to outperform Google's open models, continuing their work after a controversial incident where Microsoft pulled their previously released WizardLM-2 models from the web due to missing toxicity testing.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): The concentration of advanced AI talent at Tencent, a company potentially less constrained by Western AI safety standards, moderately increases the chance of AI control risks as development may prioritize capabilities over safety guardrails.
Skynet Date (-1 days): Tencent's significant AI infrastructure investment ($12.49 billion in capital expenditures) and acquisition of experienced AI researchers could slightly accelerate the timeline toward advanced AI systems by intensifying the competitive landscape.
AGI Progress (+0.08%): The continued development of increasingly powerful models (with claims of outperforming Google's Gemma 3) and Tencent's substantial financial commitment to AI infrastructure represent meaningful progress toward more capable AI systems approaching AGI.
AGI Date (-3 days): Tencent's massive investment in AI infrastructure ($12.49 billion in capital expenditures), combined with acquiring experienced AI researchers previously working on models competitive with GPT-4, likely accelerates the race toward AGI by strengthening a major player's capabilities.
Trump Administration Rescinds Biden's AI Chip Export Controls
The US Department of Commerce has officially rescinded the Biden Administration's Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule that would have implemented tiered export controls on AI chips to various countries. The Trump Administration plans to replace it with a different approach focused on direct country negotiations rather than blanket restrictions, while maintaining vigilance against adversaries accessing US AI technology.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): The relaxation of export controls potentially increases proliferation of advanced AI chips globally, which could enable more entities to develop sophisticated AI systems with less oversight, increasing the possibility of unaligned or dangerous AI development.
Skynet Date (-1 days): By potentially accelerating global access to advanced AI hardware, the policy change may slightly speed up capabilities development worldwide, bringing forward the timeline for potential control risks associated with advanced AI systems.
AGI Progress (+0.03%): Reduced export controls could facilitate wider distribution of high-performance AI chips, potentially accelerating global AI research and development through increased hardware access, though the precise replacement policies remain undefined.
AGI Date (-2 days): The removal of tiered restrictions likely accelerates the timeline to AGI by enabling more international actors to access cutting-edge AI hardware, potentially speeding up compute-intensive AGI-relevant research outside traditional power centers.