Thursday, September 24, 2026
Headlines Daily Digest
TODAY: A New Compact for Connectivity
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The Internet is Essential Infrastructure. We Should Govern It Accordingly.
The Pope’s AI Guy Is Worried About ‘Cartel’ Behavior Among Big Labs
Broadband Infrastructure
AI
You’d be hard-pressed to find many people who don’t intuitively consider the internet essential infrastructure, and their broadband service an essential utility. The last time Congress comprehensively addressed how we should govern the communications landscape was the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Thirty years ago, we went on the internet. Now, we live there. Ninety percent of American adults use the internet daily. Schools, health care providers, public benefits, job applications, and a good share of our relationships now run on broadband. Yet as Scott Jordan, the Federal Communications Commission's former chief technologist, wrote the Telecommunications Act of 1996 "barely covers the communications services that Americans actually use." Broadband customers enjoy none of the common carrier protections that once applied to the landline telephone service high-speed internet replaced. Mobile data sits largely outside the statute's reach. We need a new law that governs communications as we use them now, not as they existed when America Online told us, “You’ve got mail.” While technology has changed, many of the issues the Telecom Act was intended to address have not. Profound questions about universal service, competition, affordability, nondiscrimination, interconnection, privacy, and the responsible stewardship of public resources still need to be answered. We have spent decades stretching old legal categories to fit new facts. We need a new compact.
Leaders of several major artificial intelligence companies told United Nations members that robust international efforts to regulate the technology are required amid escalating concern that AI could pose a significant risk to humanity. Sam Altman, the chief executive of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, addressed leaders in the U.N. Security Council chamber, saying the pace of AI progress could “accelerate rapidly,” and calling for “extreme care” and for nations to work together in deciding how to regulate the technology instead of concentrating power in the hands of a few firms. Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, remotely addressed the body and said that as AI models become more powerful, stringent safety measures will be required and labs making the technology must exercise caution. “We will slow down as much as necessary in order to make sure every successive AI technology we release is actually safe,” he said.
Recently, warnings from researchers inside the world’s largest artificial intelligence labs about the rapid pace of development have led to panic about the possibility that the technology could extinguish humanity. Those warnings are predicated on the idea that—propelled by ferocious competition and a rivalry between the US and China—labs are barreling toward superintelligent models whose abilities will far surpass those of humans. But according to Father Paolo Benanti, a priest who advises the Catholic Church on AI, the handwaving over superintelligence distracts from the need for open debate about how to constrain the companies building the technology. By casting the problem as so complex that only they can solve it, he says, the big labs exclude everyone else from the conversation.
Sen Sanders, Rep Casar Introduce Legislation to Create New Federal Agency to Ban Artificial Superintelligence, Pause Advanced AI Development
Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep Greg Casar (D-TX) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act—legislation to stop artificial intelligence oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control and to pause advanced AI development until we have put in place rigorous federal testing and oversight to ensure AI does not harm humanity. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act will protect humanity by:
- Banning Artificial Superintelligence.
- Pausing Advanced AI development.
- Establishing a new cabinet-level federal Department of Artificial Intelligence.
- Setting penalties for any person or entity that attempts to violate or circumvent the pauses and prohibitions laid out in this bill.
- Working to ban superintelligence around the world.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) says President Trump is "not really dug in" against guardrails for AI, despite President Trump's public campaign against restricting the technology. Sen Thune said he spoke privately with the president as the AI issue was getting "pretty hot" a few weeks ago and believes some of President Trump's strong pushback is against public "paranoia and noise around the subject." Sen Thune reads President Trump's position as a preference for companies coming up with ways to secure their systems, rather than Congress or the administration. That approach relies more on experts to provide guidance. President Trump has called recent fears around AI safety a "hoax."
Lumen Technologies has launched Lumen Intelligent Internet, which lets its enterprise customers buy connectivity in minutes and scale bandwidth up or down as their AI, cloud, and business needs demand. International Data Corporation research found that 37% of enterprises have seen their bandwidth needs grow by more than 50% year over year, while 29% have struggled to align their networks with AI workloads. More than ever before, enterprises are struggling to plan for their bandwidth capacity needs because of the change in traffic patterns due to AI. Without on-demand connectivity, they must forecast bandwidth months in advance and provision for peaks that may never happen. “Businesses can easily scale compute and storage up or down as their needs change. Enterprise internet should work the same way,” said Jim Fowler, Lumen’s chief technology and product officer.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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Benton Institute
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