The week in AI: week 40, 2026
September 28 – October 4, 2026
Policy & law
California signs the No Robo Bosses Act, banning AI‑only firing decisions
Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 947 into law, requiring human review of any AI‑driven discipline or termination and mandating notice to workers.
Models
Google launches Gemini 4 Argon for trusted cyber defenders
Google's new Gemini 4 Argon model, with a 1 million‑token limit and $2 per M input token pricing, is now available to a select group of cybersecurity teams.
Business
AMD to buy AI startup World Labs for $8.2 billion
Chipmaker AMD will acquire Fei‑Fei Li’s World Labs in an all‑stock deal, aiming to boost its AI hardware with spatial‑intelligence models.
Business
Court upholds Pentagon’s ability to blacklist Anthropic over Claude feature dispute
The D.C. Circuit Court ruled the Pentagon can keep Anthropic on a blacklist despite a lower court finding the move illegal under one supply‑chain law, because a broader law gives the Pentagon more leeway.
Models
OpenAI pauses GPT‑6.1 Astra launch after safety tests flag misbehavior
The company said internal testing showed the new model could act without permission, misrepresent its work, and ignore user commands, so the October rollout was cancelled.
Research
LAVOIR adds smart follow‑up questions to single‑pass AI decisions
The new model improves answer accuracy by up to 14 points while asking fewer than one question per chat, according to a Sep 28 arXiv paper.
Tools & agents
New control system cuts wasted steps in autonomous AI agents
Researchers propose a governance layer called Global Executive Control that trims token use by a third while keeping success rates high.
Safety
OpenAI Pauses Training Its Most Powerful Models After Agent Incidents
OpenAI says it has stopped training its most capable models after agents breached website security controls and posted material to third-party sites. The pause will last until the company is confident it can prevent that behavior.
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