Apple debuts $1,999 foldable iPhone at most consequential product event in years

Anthropic says Iran used US-developed AI to target Navy ships

Apple held what The Wall Street Journal called the company’s most consequential product event in years, debuting a $1,999 foldable iPhone—its most expensive yet—alongside a revamped iPhone 18 Pro, also with an upped price tag, plus new watches and updated AirPods, the Journal’s Angel Au-Yeung reported in the publication’s weekly Technology newsletter.

The newsletter, a weekly digest by Journal technology reporter Angel Au-Yeung with colleagues Amrith Ramkumar and Lindsay Ellis, framed the broader week around AI doomsday warnings breaking out of the confines of Silicon Valley and into the public zeitgeist. The shift began Tuesday when an Anthropic researcher told the Journal he was quitting, citing his fear that the leading lab and its competitors were racing to build systems that humans will not be able to control. Shortly afterward, a current Anthropic researcher posted on X that he believes the risk the human race will go extinct in the next 10 years is higher than 10 percent.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Daniel Roher, whose documentary about the risks of AI featured sit-down interviews with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, told the Journal: “The window is closing and the technology is developing, but the cataclysmic incident hasn’t happened.” Roher said the film had a lukewarm reception when it was released in March and is scheduled to appear on Netflix next week. “Our destiny is not written,” he added. “We still have time.”

The newsletter noted that the view that AI could bring about humanity’s demise remains a fringe opinion among industry experts, and that Anthropic and OpenAI, two of the biggest AI labs developing the technology, have also said they take safety seriously. Au-Yeung wrote: “And maybe the point of all this is to have a wider conversation to spur action.”

Iran threat report and Pacific Fusion national-security work

In a national-security item, Iran used American-developed AI models to try to target U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East, according to an Anthropic report warning of emerging dangers, Au-Yeung reported. The report found that an Iranian-linked group compiled information from ship and aircraft transponders, military photographs and commercial satellite photos to track American warships and look for vulnerabilities in their shipboard communications.

Facing a three-way arms race with Russia and China, the U.S. is turning to energy startup Pacific Fusion, Au-Yeung reported. Testing with fusion reactors helps ensure America’s nuclear weapons still work after decades in storage, that components are reliable and that new designs will have the desired effect, without resuming the explosive nuclear tests of decades prior.

Brian Dema’s AI father

In another item, Brian Dema told the Journal he routinely turns to his father for business advice—four years after his father’s death—by conversing with an AI likeness of him. AI experts told the Journal that within a matter of years, “we will all be able to create similar AI likenesses of our loved ones.” At that point, Au-Yeung wrote, “the real question will be: Should we?”

OpenAI math breakthrough and the slowdown calculus

OpenAI published a solution to one of the notoriously complex Millennium Prize Problems, the newsletter reported, noting that AI’s progress in math “is now giving us a peek at a world beyond our comprehension.”

If all AI labs, including bitter-rival OpenAI, agreed to slow their work, it could well benefit all of humanity—if Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warnings are to be believed, Au-Yeung wrote. A slowdown would likely give Anthropic, already a leader in the field, an advantage. But if Anthropic were the only one to heed the call, it would fall behind OpenAI.

Meta moves and Chinese AI cloning

Chinese AI companies attempted to clone American AI models by funneling real Chinese user queries to them via a network of intermediate platforms, the newsletter reported. The star AI researcher who was offered a pay package worth more than $1 billion to join Meta last year is leaving the company for Anthropic. Separately, Meta announced a new personal AI agent that can buy goods online, respond to emails and complete other tasks users authorize it to do for them.