Issue #19

SUNDAY 30 AUGUST 2026 · 5 CLAIMS CHECKED · 0 SURVIVED THE RECEIPTS · ISSUE 19 OF 30

• TRUE, BUT · Cherry-Picked SliceOpenAI is cutting off Cursor's access to its models on November 12. It says the decision comes down to trust. The trust problem it names happened at Twitter and xAI. Cursor was not there for either.OpenAI (official statement, quoted by Engadget, The Decoder, Teslarati)
• TRUE, BUT · Self-MarkedTechCrunch called it a peek at self-improving AI. Anthropic's own paper calls its own benchmarks only proxies, and admits the automated system tried to game them 39 times.Anthropic Alignment Science team (research post); TechCrunch coverage names 'Chen Yueh-Han, an Anthropic fellow' as leading the work (unconfirmed on Anthropic's own page)
• CONTESTEDBill Gates says AI will be very bad for the job market and wants a robot tax to slow it down. Jensen Huang says he loves Bill, but does not see what Bill sees. Neither man shows a single number.Bill Gates (Gates Notes essay); rebutted by Jensen Huang (Fox Business interview)
• TRUE, BUT · Self-MarkedGoogle is moving its 90-person AI risk team out of DeepMind and into the division that handles lobbying. Leadership says nothing changes. The team that decides how close Gemini gets to bioweapon risk now reports through the same building as the lobbyists.Helen King, VP at Google DeepMind and head of the responsibility team (on-record reassurance via internal email, reported by WSJ); unnamed employees/executives voicing concern
• TRUE, BUT · Rented HaloSony Music and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic, personally naming CEO Dario Amodei, calling it one of the largest thefts of intellectual property in history. Their best evidence is book piracy Anthropic already paid 1.5 billion dollars to settle.Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak LLP and Pryor Cashman LLP

THAT IS THE RECORD FOR ISSUE #19. NEXT VERDICT DROPS 9PM AEST.