Welcome to the Future of Life Institute newsletter! Every month, we bring 70,000+ subscribers the latest news on how emerging technologies are transforming our world.

If you've found this newsletter helpful, why not tell your friends, family, and colleagues to subscribe?

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

• 🏛️ Illinois passes America's strongest AI safety bill

• 🛤️ A Better Path for AI: tools, not replacements

• ✝️ Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical: "Humanity must never be replaced or surpassed"

• 🛑 The executive order on AI security that David Sacks killed

And more.

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

→ A Better Path for AI: We recently launched A Better Path for AI - a new framework making the case that the race to build smarter-than-human AI is neither inevitable nor desirable, and that there’s a better path we can still divert to: building powerful AI tools that augment humans rather than replacing us. A Better Path picks up where the Pro-Human AI Declaration left off, bringing in the principles outlined in FLI CEO Anthony Aguirre’s Keep the Future Human essay as well. Explore the full framework at betterpathfor.ai, and learn more about it in Anthony’s FLI Podcast episode in the bottom section of this newsletter.

→ Illinois passes America's strongest AI safety bill yet: On May 27, the Illinois House of Representatives passed SB 315, an AI safety bill that, once signed by Gov. JB Pritzker, will be America’s most comprehensive AI safety law. SB 315 requires major AI corporations to implement a safety framework, report AI models’ catastrophic risk capabilities, and - critically - have their safety disclosures independently audited every year by a third party, making it even stronger than AI safety legislation passed in California and New York. Major kudos to the co-sponsors of the bill, who pushed ahead in the face of Big Tech lobbying efforts. We look forward to seeing Gov. Pritzker sign it!

→ A welcome voice in the AGI debate: On May 25, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding humanity in the age of AI. FLI's Religious Outreach Lead Will Jones called it "a direct rebuke of the leading AI companies' stated goal of creating smarter-than-human superintelligence", and noted the encyclical "mirrors and champions many of the core principles found in the Pro-Human AI Declaration, calling for humanity always to come first". This past month, Will also had an essay published in Compact Magazine explaining how the Catholic Church can again be a moral leader on technological developments by opposing superintelligence. Additionally, we announced more than $1.5 million in funding for 16 religious projects tackling the challenges posed by the AGI race - learn more about the winning projects here.

→ Endgame: FLI is proud to support Endgame, a new podcast series from journalist Jamie Bartlett and The Observer. The series investigates how worried we should really be, when AGI will arrive, and if there is anything we can do to stop this from being the "biggest coin toss in history". Listen to it here.

→ The Executive Order that almost was: A White House Executive Order that would have required federal agencies to evaluate frontier AI systems for safety and security before public release was reportedly halted after a last-minute phone call from venture capitalist David Sacks, former White House AI czar - despite a national poll the week prior showing 82% of Americans support exactly that kind of review. We'll see what comes next.

→ The US and China move closer to AI safety talks: At a Beijing summit on May 14, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent announced the U.S. and China would begin discussions on AI safeguards and best practices, to work towards addressing concerns including autonomous weapons, unexpected model behavior, and open-source AI weaponized by non-state actors.

→ London Mayor rejects £50M Palantir deal: London Mayor Sadiq Khan stopped Scotland Yard from signing a £50 million contract with Palantir, citing procurement violations and concerns about public funds going to companies that may not "share the values of our city".

→ CA Gov. Newsom signs the first state EO on AI-driven economic disruption: California's new Executive Order directs the state to prepare workers and businesses for AI displacement, exploring severance standards, universal basic capital, and expanded training. It comes alongside new AFL-CIO polling that found 9 in 10 Americans support a pro-worker AI agenda - and trust unions more than either political party to deliver it.

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

• Charlie Bullock, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Law and AI, on
  how to govern AI when you can't predict the future.

• Anthony Aguirre, FLI CEO, on A Better Path and why we should build AI tools, not AI replacements. Check out the shorter highlight reel here.

• Michael Toscano, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and Director of its Family First Technology Initiative, on why AI chatbots are a rival to families.