AI Regulation

The AI jobs conversation just got real. Not LinkedIn think-piece real — executive order from the fifth-largest economy on Earth real. On May 21, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping executive order directing state agencies to prepare workers, small businesses, and communities for the economic disruption AI is already delivering. It landed one day after Meta laid off 8,000 employees while announcing $145 billion in AI infrastructure spending. And it dropped hours after President Trump scrapped his own AI executive order because he “didn’t like certain aspects of it.” ...

When a pope speaks, 1.4 billion Catholics listen. When he speaks about artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons, the entire tech industry should be paying attention. On Thursday, Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope — delivered a sweeping condemnation of AI-powered warfare during a historic visit to Rome’s La Sapienza University. His words were sharp: investments in AI and high-tech weaponry are pushing humanity into a “spiral of annihilation.” ...

Remember when the Trump administration called AI a “beautiful baby” that shouldn’t be restrained by “foolish rules”? That was July 2025. Ten months later, the same White House is drawing up plans to vet AI models before they reach the public. The policy whiplash is real. And it has a name: Mythos. One Model Changed the Entire Conversation Anthropic introduced Mythos Preview in April 2026 — then refused to release it publicly. The model demonstrated an unprecedented ability to discover high-severity security vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser, outperforming all but the most elite human hackers. ...

Every major US AI lab is now under government pre-release review. Let that land for a second. Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI just signed agreements to submit their unreleased AI models for security evaluation through NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) — joining OpenAI and Anthropic, who were already on board. All five frontier labs. Government eyes on the code before it hits your screen. Six months ago, the Trump administration was actively dismantling AI safety guardrails. So what changed? ...

Yesterday we wrote about the White House considering pre-release AI oversight. Today, it’s happening. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation — CAISI, sitting under the Department of Commerce — has announced formal agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk’s xAI. The deals give the government access to conduct pre-deployment evaluations of their most powerful AI models. Combined with renegotiated agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic from 2024, every major American AI lab is now operating under some form of government review. ...

The same administration that revoked Biden’s AI executive order on Day One is now considering something arguably more interventionist: mandatory government review of AI models before they hit the public. If that sounds like whiplash, buckle up. What’s on the Table According to the New York Times, Reuters, and Bloomberg, the White House is discussing an executive order that would create a formal review process for new AI models before release. The NSA, Office of the National Cyber Director, and Director of National Intelligence would oversee evaluations — granting the government early access to frontier models without necessarily blocking their deployment. ...

An AI model is now sharing agenda space with active wars at the IMF spring meetings. That sentence alone tells you everything about where we are in April 2026. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos — an AI model the company literally refused to release because of how good it is at hacking — has finance ministers, central bankers, and Fortune 500 CEOs in full crisis mode. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne compared it to the Strait of Hormuz. The ECB president says we have no governance framework to handle it. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent summoned the CEOs of America’s systemically important banks to Washington specifically to discuss it. ...

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the timing. OpenAI is barreling toward what could be the most anticipated tech IPO in a decade — a valuation north of $1 trillion, 900 million weekly users, the kind of numbers that make Wall Street salivate. And right in the middle of that momentum, Florida’s attorney general just dropped a bomb. On April 9th, Florida AG James Uthmeier announced a formal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT, citing concerns about child safety, national security, and the chatbot’s alleged role in a mass shooting at Florida State University. Subpoenas are coming. The stakes couldn’t be higher. ...

A Chatbot With a Prescription Pad Utah just became the first state to let an AI chatbot renew psychiatric medications without a doctor signing off. The company is Legion Health. The product is a chatbot. The price is $19 a month. And starting this month, it can keep you on Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, and 11 other psychiatric drugs — no human physician required. This is not a drill. This is not a research paper. This is live policy in the United States. ...

Stop watching Congress if you want to understand where AI regulation is heading. Watch Sacramento. Governor Gavin Newsom just signed what his office calls a “first-of-its-kind” executive order that tells AI companies something they haven’t heard from American government in a while: prove your technology won’t hurt people, or lose access to the world’s fourth-largest economy. It’s a direct, unmistakable middle finger to the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance on AI. And it might be the most consequential AI policy move of 2026 so far. ...