The safety practices of major artificial intelligence companies, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and Meta, are “far short of emerging global standards,” according to a new edition of Future of Life Institute’s AI safety index released on Wednesday.

The institute said the safety evaluation, conducted by an independent panel of experts, found that while the companies were busy racing to develop superintelligence, none had a robust strategy for controlling such advanced systems.

The study comes amid heightened public concern about the societal impact of smarter-than-human systems capable of reasoning and logical thinking, after several cases of suicide and self-harm were tied to AI chatbots.

“Despite recent uproar over AI-powered hacking and AI driving people to psychosis and self-harm, US AI companies remain less regulated than restaurants and continue lobbying against binding safety standards,” said Max Tegmark, MIT Professor and Future of Life President.

The AI race also shows no signs of slowing, with major tech companies committing hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrading and expanding their machine learning efforts. The Future of Life Institute is a non-profit organisation that has raised concerns about the risks intelligent machines pose to humanity.

Founded in 2014, it was supported early on by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In October, a group including scientists Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio called for a ban on developing superintelligent artificial intelligence until the public demands it and science paves a safe way forward.

XAI said “Legacy media lies”, in what seemed to be an automated response, while Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Z.ai, DeepSeek and Alibaba Cloud did not immediately respond to request for comments on the study.

(Those in distress or having suicidal thoughts are encouraged to seek help and counselling by calling the helpline numbers here)

OpenAI has agreed to acquire Neptune, a startup that provides tools that help companies track their AI model training, the ChatGPT maker said on Wednesday.

While OpenAI did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, The Information reported that OpenAI is paying less than $400 million in stock, citing people with knowledge of the deal.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for confirmation on the deal value.

The Sam Altman-led firm is already a Neptune customer, using Neptune’s tracker to monitor and debug training of its GPT large language models. Some of Neptune’s other clients include Samsung, Roche and HP.

Initially an internal tool at Deepsense, Neptune was spun off as an independent startup in 2018. The company has secured more than $18 million in funding, according to its website.

OpenAI reached a valuation of $500 billion in October, following a deal in which current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion worth of shares.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI is preparing for what could rank among the largest IPO ever, with a potential valuation of up to $1 trillion. The firm is laying the groundwork to go public and may file with securities regulators as early as the second half of 2026, Reuters has reported.

However, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, said later in November that a listing is not in the startup’s near-term plans.

OpenAI has taken a stake in Thrive Holdings as part of a partnership to embed artificial intelligence into traditional industries such as accounting and IT services.

Memory chipmaker Micron Technology said on Wednesday it will exit its consumer business, as it doubles down on advanced memory chips used in artificial intelligence data centres amid a global supply shortage of the essential semiconductors.

Shares of the company were down 2.6% in afternoon trading.

Micron’s move to dissolve its consumer business comes against a backdrop of worldwide strain in memory supply chains, with tight availability of semiconductors ranging from flash chips used in smartphones to advanced high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, employed in AI data centres.

It will halt the sale of the “Crucial” unit’s consumer-branded products at retailers, e-tailers and distributors worldwide, but will continue product shipments through the consumer channel until February 2026, Micron said.

Micron has long been shifting focus to its HBM business, which has emerged as the most competitive area between the world’s three largest memory suppliers: Micron and South Korea’s S.K. Hynix and Samsung.

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” said Sumit Sadana, chief business officer at Micron.

“Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”

HBM — a type of dynamic random access memory — involves stacking chips vertically to reduce power consumption, helping process large volumes of data, making it invaluable in AI development. These chips are pricier than consumer memory and generally fetch lucrative margins.

In the August quarter, Micron’s HBM revenue grew to nearly $2 billion, implying an annualised run rate of nearly $8 billion, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in September.

The Trump administration on Wednesday (December 3, 2025) announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo saying that anyone involved in “censorship” of free speech be considered for rejection.

H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields, are crucial for U.S. tech companies which recruit heavily from countries including India and China. Many of those companies’ leaders threw their support behind Mr. Trump in the last presidential election.

The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on Tuesday (December 2), orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants — and family members who would be traveling with them — to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.

“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.

Details on the enhanced vetting for H-1B visas, including the focus on censorship and free speech, have not been previously reported. The State Dept did not respond to a request for comment on the contents of the cable.

The cable said all visa applicants were subject to this policy, but sought a heightened review for the H-1B applicants given they frequently worked in the technology sector “including in social media or financial services companies involved in the suppression of protected expression.”

“You must thoroughly explore their employment histories to ensure no participation in such activities,” the cable said.

The new vetting requirements apply to both new and repeat applicants.

The Trump administration has made free speech, particularly what it sees as the stifling of conservative voices online, a focus of its foreign policy.

Officials have repeatedly weighed in on European politics to denounce what they say is suppression of right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, accusing European authorities of censoring views like criticism of immigration in the name of countering disinformation.

Explained: What has the U.S. clarified on H-1B visas?