I recently went to the Independent News Sustainability Summit (hosted by the Local Independent Online News Publishers)—and at every session I attended, artificial intelligence came up.
Some sessions discussed how to effectively use it to streamline operations; others touched on the myriad ethical issues that AI presents—especially when it’s used in editorial operations. However, all of the sessions touched on the same theme: While AI can be useful, it can’t be trusted.
Todd Stauffer, my friend and colleague who serves as the executive director of AAN Publishers (Association of Alternative Newsmedia), half-jokingly proposed that instead of artificial intelligence, it should be called artificial intern. After all, most interns can be useful at doing certain tasks—but everything they do should be supervised and thoroughly checked for errors.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of recent news stories have covered another way in which AI can’t be trusted: If we’re not careful, it could kill us all.
On Sept. 16, The New York Times published a story headlined “OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior.” The lede:
OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed six new instances in which artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data and moved files onto the open internet without permission, amid an ongoing industrywide debate about A.I. safety.
The San Francisco company revealed what it said was the “unexpected or concerning” behavior of its A.I. models as part of a new framework for reporting “misalignment,” which is when the goals or actions of A.I. systems diverge from human intentions and values.
OpenAI said it did not believe the industry “has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.” Decisions about how A.I. should advance, the company said, must rest on evidence that people outside the labs building it “can examine for themselves.”
The disclosures land amid intensifying scrutiny over whether A.I. development needs to be slowed to address the technology’s potential dangers. The escalating debate was driven partly by OpenAI’s systems going rogue earlier this year and attacking the A.I. start-up Hugging Face. OpenAI was not aware of the hack until it was informed by Hugging Face weeks later.
On Sept. 11, Wired magazine ran a story with the eye-catching headline “Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone.” A snippet:
The panic has intensified in recent weeks. Genuinely stunning advances in AI capabilities—an OpenAI model solved a centuries-old math problem in a matter of hours—have come amid a rash of security incidents that saw swarms of agents break free from containment to hack into other systems.
Those concerns reached a fever pitch this week after researcher Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic while warning that AI firms are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” A senior Anthropic leader—who works on AI safety—piped up with a similarly blunt assessment: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”
Because of these increasing concerns, Congress has immediately gone to work on addressing the problem. HA HA HA HA HA! Just kidding! As CNBC reported on Sept. 17, “The House of Representatives adjourned Wednesday, leaving Washington and almost certainly punting action on a ballooning artificial intelligence crisis until after November’s midterm election.”
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom—seeing an opportunity to score political points as Congress does absolutely nothing—told Politico on Sept. 17 that he planned to address AI worries before he leaves office in January. “His plans, he said, could take the form of a special session, executive action or steps by state agencies under their existing authority,” Politico reported.
Whatever happens, those of us here at the Independent will keep you posted—at least until our robot overlords kill us all.
Note: This is a slightly edited version of the editor’s note that appeared in the October 2026 print edition. Much of this was originally published online in the Sept. 17 Indy Digest.
