OpenAI/Anthropic reporter @ Business Insider / Let's talk off-record on Signal, text or WhatsApp: 415-757-8198
SF
Joined July 2016
- Tweets939
- Following1.5K
- Followers1.9K
- Likes4.6K
Pinned Tweet
Delighted to be starting at @BusinessInsider this May!
I'll be focusing on the leading AI labs, the ecosystem around them, their impacts and their workforces — still reporting from San Francisco.
To get in touch: stephencouncil.36 on Signal.
businessinsider.com/exciting…
I liked the inclusion of manual trades in this breakdown
Part of why Ant/OAI workers hype up the tech and its impacts is that they see AI up close. But another reason is that they're white-collar workers. my writeup: businessinsider.com/anthropi…
Today, we're publishing two new findings from inside Anthropic: how work and hiring are changing at a company at the frontier of AI adoption, and how Anthropic staff expect AI to change the economy.
anthropic.com/research/expec…
Stephen Council retweeted
NEW: AI labs are fueling a *wild* market for your Slack DMs.
Mundane work files are perfect training data for AI giants racing to automate white-collar work.
Business owners are getting six-figure 'exploding offers' for their records, with 48 hours to say yes.
Stephen Council retweeted
That Slack message you sent to your boss? The email you received from HR? Both are now a hot commodity in the world of AI training.
For @BusinessInsider, @CharlesRollet1, @tom_hcarter, and @stephencouncil, explored the booming market for employee data.
businessinsider.com/ai-train…
Robinson's essay in The Atlantic this morning calls out OpenAI's trial-and-error approach. He says the company needs to behave more like a nuclear power plant, with more rigor toward safety.
'I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken'
theatlantic.com/technology/2…
OpenAI's David Robinson has resigned, BI can confirm.
He led safety transparency at the company, working on system cards, and left last week. The news comes alongside OpenAI firing three researchers over allegedly mishandling information.
businessinsider.com/safety-l…
OpenAI's David Robinson has resigned, BI can confirm.
He led safety transparency at the company, working on system cards, and left last week. The news comes alongside OpenAI firing three researchers over allegedly mishandling information.
businessinsider.com/safety-l…
who is Jared Kaplan?
Anthropic’s top scientist invented AI’s “scaling laws” and is responsible for AI safety at the company. He predicted the core of today’s doom debate.
I interviewed collaborators and his grad school physics adviser:
businessinsider.com/jared-ka…
Stephen Council retweeted
🚨NEW: Mark Zuckerberg told Trump in a phone call that the WH plan to create a FINRA-like body to regulate AI is flawed
- Demis Hassabis briefed WH officials this summer about his idea for a FINRA-style regulator
- senior WH officials previewed the idea w/ Trump and separately w/ major tech companies, including Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, in mid-August
- But when Trump spoke with Zuckerberg week of Aug. 17, Zuckerberg said he opposed the proposal, according to a senior WH official
- Another person familiar said Zuckerberg did not ask Trump to change his position, but told him that people the WH might appoint to the regulatory body should reflect Trump’s own approach to AI, which is widely seen as light-touch.
-Trump called Zuckerberg first, that person added.
-The admin is now considering two paths forward: the FINRA-style regulator, or a group with less government involvement modeled on the Motion Picture Association, as David Sacks has proposed.
w/ @CharlesRollet1 @Katie_Roof @dlippman @stephencouncil @BrendanBordelon @declanharty
first @politico @BusinessInsider collab for @AxelSpringerGRN
politico.com/news/2026/09/03…
Interviewed @ajeya_cotra and @RyanGreenblatt about their report on OpenAI-Hugging Face.
"If we can't trust the process by which these AIs were produced because earlier systems might have compromised it, that seems really concerning," Greenblatt said.
businessinsider.com/openai-a…
my latest, a deep profile of Dean Ball that also examines AI’s changing political winds
Trump alum and voluble Substacker Dean Ball is angling to shape the future of OpenAI, if he can get people to listen. bit.ly/4fLTmL1
Stephen Council retweeted
AI nonprofit METR, led by Beth Barnes, struggles with talent scarcity in the field. Even competitive salaries fail to attract enough experts for evaluating AI's swift advancements. bit.ly/3TypvwX
Stephen Council retweeted
Business Insider has moved away from aggregation. Under @JamieHeller leadership, the website is 80% scoops/exclusives niemanlab.org/2026/07/busine…
OpenAI workers found body bags outside their HQ this morning, placed in protest of tech companies’ work with the military.
The banner includes names of children killed in the US bombing of an Iranian school. Senators are pressing the DoD to release its findings about the strike.
Stephen Council retweeted
SCOOP: Trump AI executive order, planned for release as soon as this week, seeks early government access to advanced models axios.com/2026/05/20/ai-trum…
Stephen Council retweeted
Musk has lost his case against OpenAI in the most anti-climactic way possible. Less than 2 hours of jury deliberation despite 3 weeks of testimony and hundreds of documents. The jury didn't weigh in on whether Musk was right or wrong, they just said he failed to bring his claims in time
I've reported on Sam Altman since ChatGPT's release, so I was eager to see his trial testimony in his fight with Elon Musk.
Altman defended his company, and hyped up the promise of AI. But during a strange, tense stretch, he struggled to defend himself: businessinsider.com/sam-altm…
New: Before ChatGPT's release, before Microsoft's $1 billion bet, and long before plans for an IPO, there was the University of Michigan — putting $20 million into OpenAI.
The possible $2 billion payday would equal about a tenth of @UMich's current endowment.
