Welcome to the Future of Life Institute newsletter! Every month, we bring 50,000+ subscribers the latest news on how emerging technologies are transforming our world.

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Today's newsletter is a nine-minute read. Some of what we cover this month:

• 📡 Exhibit AI: our new hub tracking every AI harms lawsuit

• 🚫 The UN and Red Cross: "dangerously close to crossing a moral red line"

• ⚖️ Meta settles for $17 billion over child safety

And more.

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to send them to [email protected].

→ Introducing Exhibit AI: We've launched Exhibit AI, a free, continuously-updated hub mapping the AI litigation landscape: the lawsuits (200+ cases already being tracked), regulatory actions, and legal precedents shaping the future of AI. Led by FLI’s Legal Strategist, David Atkinson, Exhibit AI aims to offer helpful information for lawyers, legal scholars, researchers, journalists, and even those harmed by AI systems.

Check it out here, and be sure to subscribe to the Exhibit AI newsletter while you’re at it!

→ "Dangerously close to a moral red line": On August 25, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric issued a powerful joint appeal for states to urgently adopt new rules regulating autonomous weapons systems, with clear prohibitions and restrictions.

Following this space? Subscribe to the Autonomous Weapons Newsletter, with a new edition coming soon.

→ Meta settles for $17 billion: Meta agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties, and expand Instagram and Facebook's safety features - including teen usage limits, parental controls, and age verification. This settles a landmark case brought against Meta in federal court by 47 states, D.C., and U.S. territories. While historic, child safety advocates such as Megan Garcia, who lost her 14-year-old son to suicide after he engaged with a highly addictive AI chatbot, say it's nowhere near what's needed, and are calling on Congress to require protections across every platform. Watch Megan’s interview about the Meta lawsuit here.

→ Brussels acts on the AI Act: The European Commission used its EU AI Act enforcement powers for the first time, ordering leading AI developers to detail their cybersecurity, safety, and copyright practices, just weeks after the Act’s general-purpose AI rules took effect. Companies are legally obliged to answer, with further escalation - including hefty fines - possible for non-compliance.

→ Tracking rogue AI: A new independent Rogue AI Tracker gathers incidents, research, and capability advancements involving AI agents operating outside human control. It’s a useful, though frightening, bird’s eye view of the path we're (currently) on.

→ Bill Gates sounds the alarm: In a new essay, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates argues that the world is sorely underprepared for the challenges AI could pose to humanity, and that if we want to ensure the good from AI outweighs the bad, we need a plan now. In a subsequent interview with MIT Technology Review, Gates shared that he’s speaking out now because “We’ve crossed the thresholds in terms of the bio-capabilities, cyber-capabilities, psychosocial capabilities, job-market-destruction capabilities, and even the lack of control; we’re seeing signs of difficulties there”, and that he’s “just stunned at the lack of concern and discussion outside of the industry”.

→ TIME100 AI: We’re pleased to share that FLI co-Founder and Chair Max Tegmark has again been named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI list. Read the full profile tracing his and FLI’s work on AI here.

→ On the FLI Podcast, host Gus Docker was joined by:

• Paul-Enguerrand Fady, Senior Biosecurity Policy Manager at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, on how AI is shifting the offense-defense balance in biosecurity.

• Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario and the new Biological War: A Scenario book, on the first 24 hours of a bioweapon attack.

• Benjamin Weinstein-Raun, Head of Research at Palisade Research, on why AI hacking is becoming hard to control.