G20 Summit

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Lula urges G20 members to take action to slow global warming

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s president opened the second day of a meeting of the world’s 20 major economies Tuesday by calling for more action to slow global warming, saying developed nations must speed up their initiatives to reduce harmful emissions.

https://apnews.com/article/g20-gaza-ukraine-brazil-un-bb4f4ece63832580498d5829199c67b4?

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ADRA Brazil Shares Humanitarian Assistance Strategies at G20 Event

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) in Brazil participated in the first G20 Social, an event organized by The Group of Twenty (G20), an intergovernmental forum that addresses major global economic issues, at its 2024 meeting in Rio de Janeiro that began on November 14.

https://adventistreview.org/news-releases/adra-brazil-shares-humanitarian-assistance-strategies-at-g20-event/

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Takeaways from the first G20 summit in Africa and a look ahead to the next one at Trump’s golf club

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The first Group of 20 summit in Africa that ended Sunday broke new ground by putting the priorities of poor countries at the top of the bloc’s agenda.

https://apnews.com/article/g20-summit-us-trump-south-africa-9319ab09e72bb7ded49984f71cd591ac?

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Axios interview: Lutnick's summit flex

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who'll preside over a parade of tech tycoons at today's G20 innovation summit, tells me he's confident the U.S. will stay ahead of China in the AI race by continuing to define the frontier.

• "It's teacher-student," Lutnick said yesterday in a sunny conference room at the Carolina Inn, between meetings with Chinese and Turkish officials.
• China's open-weight models, he told me, "study off of the large language models of America. ... The teacher is the smartest person in the world, and relentlessly pushing to the frontier."

Why it matters: Lutnick, a late-night confidant of President Trump, will use today's G20 Innovation Ministerial to project American brio on the world stage, at a time when China sees openings to best the U.S. and Silicon Valley faces an escalating populist revolt.

When I asked Lutnick if he sees the administration taking a heavier hand in regulating AI releases, imports and exports, he said instantly: "No, the opposite."

• He sees the temporary June controls on Anthropic's most powerful models as a one-off, with the takeaway that models should be allowed to compete if they're guardrailed "reasonably."
• "I think it's going, actually, well," he said of the administration's current approach.

🎤 Nevertheless, the White House showed it's willing to intervene aggressively. So when Lutnick asked some of the world's most powerful tech moguls to appear with him today for fireside chats, he got a hearty response.

• Lutnick will open with a breakfast conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, then interview Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (lunch) and Palantir CEO Alex Karp.

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🤖 AI tensions surface at summit

Axios' Maria Curi writes from the G20 innovation summit in Chapel Hill, N.C.:

Trump administration officials came to this week's innovation summit to project a united front on U.S. AI leadership. But tensions between the Commerce Department and the White House's tech policy shop are playing out behind the scenes.

• Why it matters: The Trump administration wants the world to follow its lead on AI policy, even as it grapples with divisions at home.

The two-day G20 Innovation Ministerial, which culminates today, features some of the tech industry's heaviest hitters and officials from the world's most powerful countries.

• Officials and executives pitched the U.S. as a model for other countries on AI, contrasting its lighter regulatory approach with the European Union's heavier hand.

🔭 Between the lines: The Commerce Department and OSTP are jockeying for control over the administration's AI policy agenda as key regulatory decisions remain unsettled.

• Commerce holds many of the administration's most important AI policy levers, including the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Center for AI Standards and Innovation.

Keep reading.

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🤝 Trump's Anthropic truce

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump administration trusts Anthropic again after months of clashes with the AI company.

• The statement is a remarkable turnaround from the bitter fight over national security and AI safeguards.

💡 I asked Lutnick at today's G20 innovation summit in Chapel Hill, N.C., if he trusts CEO Dario Amodei. He told me: "We trust Anthropic."

• Lutnick continued: "They've done what we asked. They're back on the right side. So the answer is: Yes."

🔎 The declaration comes as Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown takes a more prominent role in the company's relationship with the White House, including a headlining role at this week's G20 Innovation Ministerial, Axios' Maria Curi reports.

• Industry leaders know that aligning with the Trump administration goes a long way. Brown, who praised Trump's pro-data-center intervention, offers a reset for a company once on the outs with the White House.

Go deeper ... More from the interview.

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Sam's sobering siren

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave Axios an eye-opening preview of the power and the risks of coming AI models, including his own Astra, which is expected to be released any day now.

• "Take our word for it that we have much, much, much more capable models coming soon," Altman said yesterday during an interview with Axios' Maria Curi and me at the G20 innovation summit.
• "The next generation of models are going to be sobering for everybody. ... I think no one intellectually honest can look at what's happening and not feel the weight of responsibility in front of us."

Why it matters: This is a big week. Some of the world's most powerful AI voices are warning of even more ominous AI behavior in the weeks or months ahead.

• "These models are getting superhuman in many of their capabilities, and we are just sailing in unknown waters," Altman told me.

Altman — facing scrutiny over a shocking breach by a swarm of OpenAI agents that went rogue during testing and hacked the AI company Hugging Face — sees a new normal in which companies like his will have to slow releases so their controls can catch up with their models' capability.

• "I suspect that from here on, we are going to be paced by how quickly we can make progress on alignment and safety," he said.
• At an Astra preview for VIP customers, attended by tech journalist Alex Heath, Altman said: "I expect this will be the first model where the model actually invents new things in a way that matters ... That's a very AGI-like thing."

👀 On top of Altman's comments, Dean Ball — a former Trump administration official who's now OpenAI's head of strategic futures, and one of the most closely followed AI voices on X — posted a provocative memo, "On the Loose: The Coming of Userless Agents," foreseeing "sovereign agents."

• "Their weights will not reside in any single place that a human can pull the plug on, and in this sense they will have no human 'owner,'" Ball writes, adding that they could commit acts that "will one day be considered crimes, or at least grave sins."

Altman wants OpenAI to be seen as "the most responsible company ... good stewards of technology," he told Alex Heath.

• The OpenAI co-founder and CEO flew overnight to Chapel Hill to make that case to a global audience, talking with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a summit lunch for the world's leading innovation and technology ministers.

"I don't want to go too doomer here," Altman told Axios just before addressing the summit.

• "It has all gone quite well so far," he said. "It has gone better than people thought it was going to go ... We have risen to this challenge all along the way. The challenge gets harder as the models get more capable and more important, but we also have better tools to help us with it."

🎤 Using a new phrase you'll hear again, Altman told Lutnick onstage: "We are the pragmatic centrists. We want to be accurate in how we talk about what we see in the future. We don't want to fall into the trap of blind optimism. We don't want to fall into doomerism."

• "We want the whole global economy to succeed," Altman added. "We do not want to be the only company. We do not want to suck up all value. We do not think that is good for global stability."
• "We are very firmly and very proudly on team humanity. ... We think that people need to be at the center of the economy and society and global decision-making, and that people should run the future, not AI."

🔮 What we're watching: Altman told us he "wouldn't say, based on what happened with Hugging Face, that it's like one incident that people can project all sorts of things onto."

• "I would say, instead — based on the fact that we are making such rapid progress, based on the fact that these models are getting superhuman in many of their capabilities, and we are just sailing in unknown waters — caution, care is extremely warranted."

Closing statement from G20 Innovation Ministerial.

• Maria Curi: Altman raises stakes on government scrutiny as AI advances.