Exclusive from @MaxKendix US artificial intelligence companies are deliberately overstating the risk posed by their technology for their own financial benefits, senior British officials believe Andy Burnham told the UN general assembly that the world must rein in artificial intelligence and that there needs to be a “single set of global principles and standards”. He said while AI offers potentially transformative benefits to the economy, education and healthcare, it also represents a potential “source of disruption to the way we live and work” However privately officials believe that AI companies have a vested interest in exaggerating the power of their technology An official told The Times: “The companies are incentivised to sound the alarm: they sell more by overstating the power of their models, and they can squeeze out competition by being the only ones who can afford to operate in the constraints.” They also said that Britain’s ability to regulate the sector is limited because the biggest AI models are owned by US companies The official said: “The public message for parliament and the public has to be of concern and seeming like we’re acting. But in reality all that we can do is try and persuade the White House to include us in their frameworks.”

BREAKING: Reform UK would win less seats than both Labour and the Conservatives if a general election were to be held today in a dramatic reversal of fortunes for Nigel Farage’s party, a YouGov MRP has found The new large-scale seat by seat MRP by YouGov suggests the UK is currently heading for a hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party with 241 seats The Conservatives would be in second place with 130 seats, better than their result in the 2024 general election, while Reform would be pushed into third place with 123 seats If replicated at the next election the poll suggests that both Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, who deserted the Tories to join Farage, would lose their seats to their old party Even if Reform and the Tories could agree a pact they would still not have enough seats to form a majority coalition government However Labour would also struggle to govern having lost 162 of the 403 seats that it holds at present It would have to rely on both the Liberal Democrats, predicted to win 71 seats, and the Greens, on nine, or one of the nationalist parties in order to command a majority in the Commons It marks a stark reversal of Reform’s fortunes compared to a YouGov MRP a year ago: September 2026 Seats Labour: 241 Conservative: 130 Reform UK: 123 Lib Dem: 71 SNP: 40 Plaid: 15 Green: 9 Other: 3 September 2025 Seats Reform UK: 311 Labour: 144 Lib Dem: 78 Conservative: 45 SNP: 37 Green: 7 Plaid: 6 Others: 3 thetimes.com/article/17f7462…

Big news: Enterprise Nation and @Visa Foundation are launching AI for Every Business. A new three-year programme backed by a $2 million grant, giving more than 157,000 small businesses across the UK and Ireland free, targeted support to adopt AI tools with confidence. ➡️ ow.ly/a1NL50ZQtUW #AIforEveryBusiness

This is what £1.5 million gets you in Wandsworth

Exclusive: John Healey is planning a tax break for small high street businesses in his first Budget. The Chancellor is looking at raising the minimum threshold for business rates for the first time in a decade. It is one part of a plan to lower the cost of doing business in Britain, which will be one of the main themes of the Budget next month. An inflation-level increase to the threshold would see 5,000 pubs pay no business rates at all, and boost coffee shops and small retail firms. Healey could also extend transitional business rates relief, after companies complained of 80%+ increases under the new valuations that took effect in April. Andy Burnham has said he wants the high street to be a “symbol of Britain’s renaissance” and views the decline of towns across the country as a symptom of Whitehall neglect. More here: telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…

Revealed: The government is finalising the appointment of Lord Stockwood, investment minister under Sir Keir Starmer, as chair of the Office for Investment, the revamped Whitehall agency tasked with improving Britain's recent record at attracting inward investment.

🚨NEW: Chancellor John Healey's team claims that he and Andy Burnham didn't realise how bad Britain's fiscal position was before they got inside the Treasury [@FT]

Exclusive: Britain’s biggest banks will this week launch an equity-raise aimed at funding the development of a new domestic payments infrastructure provider which could ultimately evolve into an alternative to the American giants Mastercard and Visa. news.sky.com/story/uk-banks-…

When we put "loss of control" on the agenda at Bletchley in 2023, I worried it sounded like science fiction. This summer shows it no longer is and, like Dario points out, we may be far closer to that moment than anyone realised. AI agents are now being used to build the next version of themselves. As I argue in tomorrow's Sunday Times, recursive self-improvement will supercharge the rate and leave us with less and less certainty about what the models are doing and why. I'm an AI optimist. After all, I'm a senior adviser at Anthropic. We're barely using the capabilities we already have, and none of this need slow adoption. But the decision on how fast frontier research advances is too important to be left to the labs. Governments, starting with the US, have to step up; just as they do for nuclear power or advanced biology. That means independent verification that the research is being done safely, an honest picture of how close the labs are to recursive self-improvement, and proper protection against models being stolen. Voluntary testing before release was right for 2023. It isn't enough now. Dario is right to call today for slowing the pace of frontier development so that safety can keep up, and it is good to see a consensus starting to build on this across the industry. When the labs themselves are asking for speed limits, governments should listen. There's a trade-off with maintaining the advantage over China and it has to be faced honestly. But even as the US and China compete, they urgently need a frank conversation about how to avoid catastrophe.

Really pleased to work with @Square and @edfenergy on this report. 526 small businesses across the UK told us the pressures they're facing, and the specific steps Government can take to help them. Here's the full report: enterprisenation.com/learn-s…

JUST IN: UK’s new “mansion tax” will target homes worth over £2 million, with homeowners given 6 months to appeal.

We’re sharing a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, one of the deepest problems at the frontier of mathematics. The proof was produced by a group of agents, using an OpenAI next-generation model significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra. The problem concerns whether the description of smooth three-dimensional fluid motion modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations can break down. It has remained unresolved for roughly 90 years.

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

GPT-6 Astra is here. We hope it will begin to enable a new generation of entrepreneurship, scientific discovery, and building. We believe it is the best model in the world for computer use, professional work, science, coding, cybersecurity, and more. It took us some extra time to ensure that we could meet the safety and alignment standards required for this capability level, but we think you’ll find it worth the wait. It scores 98% on FrontierMath Tier 4, 99.9% on ARC-AGI 3, and 100% on ExploitBench.

From today, the UK is now a full member of one of the world’s largest free-trade partnerships. This will open the door to new customers, contracts & investment for British businesses. We are backing UK firms to take full advantage. gov.uk/government/news/uk-se… gov.uk/government/news/uk-se…

BREAKING: Meta agrees to pay up to $16.6bn to settle social media addiction trial news.sky.com/story/meta-agre…

RT @b_judah: A key challenge with nationalising Thames Water is this. The haircut you’d have to impose on investors to make it affordable…

Burnham refuses to rule out tax rises in autumn Budget bbc.in/46j84n1

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham has shelved plans to put Thames Water into administration amid concerns about the cost and the legal risk involved, The Times has been told The prime minister repeatedly indicated that he wanted to put the company into a special administration regime (SAR) that would allow essential services to keep running until a buyer was found He was expected to do so in one of his first acts in No 10 However, The Times has been told that officials have raised concerns about the risk to taxpayers and the potential for legal challenges. The officials are also concerned about the “practical barriers” to putting Thames Water into administration in the first place The government is now conducting further work to establish if there is a “viable option” for putting the company into administration, but it is likely to take several months. Ministers have not ruled out doing so but it is looking increasingly challenging The emergency SAR — the first for a water company — would risk leaving the taxpayer with a bill for the £2 billion that Thames Water believes it needs to keep running until the end of next year unless an alternative solution can be found quickly. There are further concerns about how easy it would be to find a buyer for the ailing company after it is taken into administration thetimes.com/article/8e4443b…

🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham has paused plans to nationalise Thames Water due to the cost and legal risk involved [@thetimes]