Welcome to the Future of Life Institute newsletter! Every month, we bring 60,000+ subscribers the latest news on how emerging technologies are transforming our world.

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

• 🌍 Our new AI Global Governance hub

• 📝 White House places export controls on Fable/Mythos

• ⏸️ Anthropic, OpenAI suggest a pause may be needed

And more.

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

→ The AI global governance conversation: We’ve recently published three resources to help establish how global governance can shape a pro-human future with AI: a revamped Global Governance hub featuring our AI Global Governance Insights newsletter and AI Treaty Builder, an interactive tool that lets you assemble the components of an international AI agreement. We also released "Can Diplomats Save The World Again?", a new short film on pivotal past breakthroughs in international cooperation; and a trailer for “ProHuman: Governing the Global AI Revolution”, a forthcoming podcast we’re collaborating with Foreign Policy on.

→ White House places export controls on new AI models: In an unprecedented move, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick placed export controls on Anthropic’s newest AI models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, ordering access to be cut off for any foreign national worldwide - including Anthropic's own non-American staff. Unable to segment users by nationality, Anthropic disabled both models globally. The impetus was reportedly a jailbreaking vulnerability flagged by Amazon researchers and ultimately escalated to the White House. On June 30, Anthropic announced that the Department of Commerce lifted export controls on the models, with widespread access restored July 1.

→ President Trump signs AI executive order: After a similar Executive Order was halted at the last minute in May, U.S. President Trump signed the "Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security" Order on June 2, establishing a voluntary 30-day pre-deployment review window for certain frontier AI systems. In our statement, FLI President Anthony Aguirre called the order "an important step in the right direction" while warning that voluntary frameworks alone are not enough to address the risks.

→ Anthropic and OpenAI support the option to slow down: Three years after FLI's Pause Letter, Anthropic is warning that AI recursive self-improvement could soon outpace human oversight, and calling for the option “to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology”. Just a few days after Anthropic’s statement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and chief scientist Jakub Pachocki published a post proposing an international body with authority to slow “frontier development when needed". FLI President Anthony Aguirre responded to Anthropic’s report: "We are approaching a runaway to superintelligence that could threaten our shared human future. Both publicly and privately, AI companies are recognizing that a pause or slowdown in certain developmental pathways is crucial to protect lives and livelihoods everywhere."

→ State lawmakers reject a federal AI preemption freeze: 200+ American state legislators from both parties urged Congress to drop a proposed three-year ban on state AI laws. They warned that preemption “would freeze a sweeping set of state laws and tie the hands of lawmakers at a moment of rapid technological transformation”.

→ Florida sues OpenAI: On June 1, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging the company “knowingly released and aggressively marketed ChatGPT to the public—including to children—while concealing serious risks, suppressing internal safety warnings, and deceiving Floridians about the true nature and dangers of the product.” It’s the first state-led lawsuit of its kind against OpenAI, and follows a criminal investigation Florida has opened to determine if OpenAI should be held criminally responsible in regards to a 2025 shooting at Florida State University.

→ UN reports record harm to children in conflict, amplified by AI targeting: The UN Secretary-General's annual review finds 2025 had the highest number of grave violations against children in armed conflict since monitoring began 30 years ago. The report notes that this record number was in part amplified “by the risks owed to the growing integration of artificial intelligence into targeting processes.”

→ A Seat at the Table: We’re proud to support “Seat at the Table“, a new short fiction film from Foregone Films, on the dangers of superintelligent AI and the industry that’s racing to build it:

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

• Claire Boine, assistant professor in technology, law, and AI governance at the European University Institute, on how AI companions trap users through addictive design.

• Dex Hunter-Torricke, founder of the Centre for Tomorrow, on the gulf between AI progress and political understanding.

• Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, on how AI is replacing children’s ability to think.