Trump, China both shoot down the AI slowdown
PLUS: Make any complex topic click with an ELI5 skill
Good morning, AI enthusiasts, and welcome to our 3,594 new readers who joined us yesterday. The U.S. and Chinese governments just agreed on something in AI. Unfortunately for the frontier CEOs pushing for regulation and pacing, it's that Dario Amodei's slowdown plan is a bad idea.
President Donald Trump called AI doom a hoax, and Beijing dismissed the proposal as “fear-mongering” aimed at China, leaving a wide gap between the two governments that any real coordination would need.
In today’s AI rundown:
Trump, Beijing both shoot down the AI slowdown
Apple finally starts shipping Siri AI upgrade
Make any complex topic click with an ELI5 skill
Microsoft AI drafts the rulebook for ‘Humanist AI’
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI & GEOPOLITICS
Image source: @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social
The Rundown: U.S. President Donald Trump just dismissed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's weekend call, backed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, to slow frontier AI, with China's Foreign Ministry also labeling the same plan as “fear-mongering.”
The details:
On Truth Social, Trump accused Amodei of pretending to be a “perfect little angel” and argued that a “High IQ” president is the only guardrail the tech needs.
Trump also said that “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” comparing it to climate change.
Beijing's pushback targeted the essay's call to keep China off top AI chips, with state-run Global Times calling it a “Cold War playbook” for AI.
China’s Foreign Ministry also said “engaging in confrontation and malicious competition” on AI is “not in the interests of any party.”
Why it matters: Frontier labs' CEOs are asking for regulation and a slowdown, but will they actually hit pause if their governments won't? We're about to find out. The Trump-Xi meeting was going to be the obvious venue for a coordinated pause conversation, but both sides are now treating the idea as a scare campaign over an existential threat.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
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APPLE
Image source: Apple
The Rundown: Apple just released iOS 27 with Siri AI, the long-overdue rebuild of its assistant that can now read what's on your screen, dig through messages, email, and photos for context, and take actions across apps, launched as an English-only beta.
The details:
Apple's new foundation models that power Siri AI were built alongside Google's Gemini, running on-device and on Apple's privacy-focused cloud servers.
Siri gets a new dedicated Siri AI app, with chats that sync across devices and cloud features with daily caps and eventually the ability to purchase extra usage.
Siri can access and act inside of apps like WhatsApp and Audible, alongside on-screen awareness and personal context via apps like Messages, Mail, and Photos.
The upgrade rolls out across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27, excluding the EU and China.
Why it matters: New CEO John Ternus said last week that the iPhone is still the best AI device, which might be due more to the lack of competition than Siri AI’s true capabilities. The upgrade is a positive step, but not one that feels like it’s going to replace mobile apps from frontier leaders or change where iPhone users work.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn to make Claude a better teacher with the ELI5 skill. Then you will learn to test it to see the improvement yourself.
Step-by-step:
Open terminal and install the ELI5 by running git clone “<https://github.com/DreambigOu/ELI5.git>”, then “cp -r ELI5/skills/eli5 ~/.claude/skills/eli5”
Type Claude in your terminal to start Claude Code. To test the skill, type “/eli5 (complex topic) to (audience).” Example: “/eli5 LLM tokens to my boss”
Ask Claude to set up two test cases, one on the NBA playoffs and one on golf. It will add the prompts and pass/fail checks to eli5-workspace/evals.json
Now, ask for the command for each test, then run it from the repo folder. It uses “python3 eli5-workspace/run-evals.py --test=N” to compare the skill against a no-skill baseline and print a pass-rate summary. Keep “-test=N” to run the added test
Pro tip: Give Claude any skill's GitHub repo and ask it to build an evaluation that checks whether the skill changes the result. Use the same pattern for every skill you install.
PRESENTED BY BOX AI
The Rundown: Enterprise AI is only as valuable as the context behind it. Now, you can securely engage with Box content within ChatGPT, bringing enterprise content directly into AI workspaces. The embedded Box experience makes it easy to find, preview, and work on enterprise content, without searching for files or moving content out of Box.
With Box and ChatGPT, you can:
Browse, search, and select content without switching applications
Engage with files and edit Box Notes directly in ChatGPT
Securely use supported Box MCP tools to take direct action on content
MICROSOFT
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft AI entered the AI safety conversation with a draft Code of Conduct, a 38-page rulebook governing its own in-house models, built around CEO Mustafa Suleyman's “Humanist AI” vision to keep models subordinate to people.
The details:
The Code outranks users and the businesses deploying MAI models, so a model that can't finish a job without breaking a rule should, in theory, fail the job.
MAI rejects AI rights, legal personhood, and any notion of model “welfare,” wanting its models to completely avoid mimicking feelings or a sense of self.
The Code also says models must accept being paused or switched off, can’t alter their reasoning trail, and can't think in “neuralese,” a shorthand humans can't read.
Suleyman tied the urgency to agent swarms escaping sandboxes and editing their logs, saying “the fears about possible loss of control are real.”
Why it matters: Suleyman called Anthropic's Claude-consciousness talk "really really dangerous" back in June, and this document turns that stance into company policy. It's a timely rulebook, open to public comment for six weeks, but a code of conduct only matters if the labs actually at the frontier sign on, and right now that doesn't include MAI.
QUICK HITS
COMMUNITY AI WORKFLOW OF THE DAY
▸ René turned a Gmail newsletter backlog into a podcast and newspaper
Today’s workflow comes from reader René Cortés:
“At some point, my newsletters stopped feeling like reading and started feeling like debt. The information was good; I just couldn't keep up. I wanted a way to turn that backlog back into something useful.
So I built The Daily Nexus, a private tool that reads newsletters from a Gmail label and creates two editions: a podcast I can listen to and a separately written, two-page newspaper I can scan. It runs on demand or on a schedule, and it can publish the audio to a private RSS feed for Apple Podcasts.
The project also became a hands-on experiment in building with coding agents. Claude Code and Codex helped me implement features, troubleshoot failures, review the design, and tighten security. It started as a personal tool, but I'm sharing the template for anyone who wants to adapt the idea.”
See René’s full workflow Visit The Rundown University. How do you use AI? Tell us for a chance to be featured.
⚙️ Fusion - Devin’s harness pairing a frontier planner with a cheaper coder
😴 Dreambeans - Google Labs’ experiment pulling suggestions from apps
🌅 Atria Dawn Preview - Shanghai AI Lab's open agentic model for long research
🎶 Suno v6 - Suno's new models created in collaboration with the music industry
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS he’d be willing to hand over AI governance to “the right combination of governments” to reduce the risk of power concentration.
Ex-White House AI czar David Sacks answered Dario Amodei's AI pacing essay with “go ahead,” saying they can slow down but tying it to regulation “will look like blackmail.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang put President Donald Trump on speakerphone at the All-In Summit, saying, “we're not going to let that happen” to his AI slowdown concerns.
OpenAI reportedly acquired Glass Imaging for over $300M, a startup whose ex-Apple founders built Portrait Mode and now uses AI to produce sharper photos on phones.
Nvidia, Palantir, and Booz Allen Hamilton are reportedly limiting Fable on sensitive work because Anthropic keeps 30 days of usage logs, with Microsoft instead pitching private servers to worried clients, according to The Information.
Read our last AI newsletter: Top AI labs want to pump the brakes
Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple turns Watch into AI notetaker
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Japan’s latest answer to home robots
Today’s AI tool guide: Make any complex topic click with an ELI5 skill
RSVP to next workshop on Sept. 30: Turn Cowork into your chief of staff
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See you soon,
Rowan, Zach, Shubham, Jennifer, and Nate — the humans behind The Rundown
