Description
Nine of the world's biggest AI labs were just graded on safety — and not one scored above a C+. The Future of Life Institute's Summer 2026 AI Safety Index ranks nine developers across six domains, from risk assessment to governance. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind lead, but the whole industry sits at mediocre-or-failing: xAI, DeepSeek, and Mistral all earned failing grades across three continents, and Mistral debuted dead last at 0.33 despite the EU's regulatory leadership — a paradox researchers call 'European dissonance.' The panel found safety commitments weakening under competitive pressure, with labs reversing bans on military work to chase defense contracts, even as capabilities race ahead. We also cover OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family (Sol, Terra, and Luna) plus GPT-Live, Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 with its new Muse Image and Muse Video media models, and SpaceXAI's Grok 4.5, co-trained with Cursor.
AI-Native Course this week
This week's recommended course is Understanding the EU AI Act — the perfect companion to this week's safety-and-governance story, walking through how the world's most comprehensive AI regulation actually classifies and controls AI risk.
https://www.datacamp.com/courses/understanding-the-eu-ai-act
About DataCamp
The Median is DataCamp's weekly AI newsletter. DataCamp helps millions of learners build real, AI-native data and AI skills.
DataCamp Mobile: https://www.datacamp.com/mobile
DataCamp for Business: https://www.datacamp.com/business