Monday, 14 September - Near, far, wherever you are

Good morning, it’s Monday, 14 September. In your Squiz Today…

• AI bosses call for a tech slowdown

• The Squiz audience survey results are in

• And Celine Dion returns to the stage in Paris… 👸🏼

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Andrew Williams, Anna Pykett and Sophie Felice

Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said Judge Judy, the daytime TV legend, who’s announced she’ll be hanging up her robe  after 30 years on television. But the family business stays open - her son Adam Levy has his own show, Adam’s Law, beginning this week. The gavel doesn’t fall far from the tree…

Dario’s nightmare scenario

The Squiz

Yesterday, some prominent tech leaders started wondering if it might be time to pump the brakes on artificial intelligence. Now, alarm bells over AI are nothing new, but it’s the names ringing them that might surprise you… Dario Amodei, the CEO of major AI company Anthropic, kicked things off by warning that rogue AI agents might be able to take over “the entire internet” in the next year - and then both Sam Altman (who runs OpenAI) and Elon Musk (who runs SpaceXAI) jumped in to support him. Given those 3 are probably the most famous names in the industry - and have a fair bit of skin in the game - their warnings are making major headlines.

Why the change of heart?

According to Amodei’s own blog post, he says the risks are beginning to outgrow our ability to prevent them - mainly because AI models are now creating the new generation of AI models. Those risks involve things like AI being used for cyberattacks or terrorism, or losing control of an AI program/system. That second one already happened back in July - an incident that Amodei says got him thinking about whether things were moving too fast. Now, before things get a bit too Terminator for everyone’s liking, Amodei says AI still brings lots of benefits that make some of the risks worth it - but he says AI companies need to slow down development so they can spend more time ensuring that it’s safe to use. And he has a 3-step plan to make that happen…

So what’s the plan, AI man?

First of all, he says an independent, third-party team of evaluators should have access to every major AI company’s systems to make sure things aren’t getting out of control - and says Anthropic is already doing that. Second, he wants democratic countries to work together to come up with common safety standards - and third, he wants those countries to then work to ensure authoritarian countries are doing the same. Some critics have pointed out that if Amodei’s getting worried, he should stop development altogether, or cancel Anthropic’s upcoming IPO. On the flipside, the Trump administration isn’t keen on a slowdown - partly because it doesn’t want to let China get ahead of the game. As it happens, AI is set to be the top talking point when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Washington on 24 September.

Squiz the Rest

Another war of words…

… has been playing out between One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and PM Anthony Albanese, over comments she made about his late mother. She was speaking on a podcast earlier this year, where she mimicked Albanese crying, and mocked his account of growing up in social housing, which Hanson labelled as “pathetic”. For context - Maryanne Albanese was a single mother who had several health challenges, which meant she relied on a disability pension. Yesterday, Albanese defended her, saying he was proud of his upbringing, and calling the ‘attack’ nasty and spiteful. This follows a separate row between the One Nation leader and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie - who has weighed in, saying mothers should be left out of politics.

Vale Mary Gaudron

Australia’s first female High Court judge has died at 83yo. Born in the NSW town of Moree, Gaudron studied arts and law at the University of Sydney before embarking on a run of firsts - the first female part-time student to be awarded the Medal for Law, the first woman appointed to the NSW Bar Council, and in 1987, the first female High Court judge. In 1992, she and 5 of her fellow judges voted in favour of the Mabo native title case, where she called the treatment of First Nations people “the darkest aspect of the history of this nation”. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said Gaudron “broke barriers at every stage of an extraordinary legal career”.

Survey says…thank you

A couple of months ago, we pestered you a bunch to fill out our annual audience survey, and boy howdy, did you respond… Over 7,000 of you chipped in to help us out (that’s our largest response ever) and we’ve published the results this morning. You can dig in here, but 3 things stood out: first, a clear distinction between fact and opinion is very important to you. Second: lots of you are cutting back on social media use, because you think it’s a waste of time. And third, nearly half of you would consider financially supporting independent media just because you think it plays an important part of our society. And here’s a stat we didn’t publish, but it’s definitely true: 100% of you are just the best. 

Betting on Ben

The hopes of American tennis fans are resting on one man this morning, as Ben Shelton takes on #1 seed Alexander Zverev in the US Open men’s singles final. No American man has won their home tournament since Andy Roddick in 2003, so it’s been a wait. #8 seed Shelton defeated countryman Frances Tiafoe to make his first grand slam final - and he’s currently one set down. Over on the women’s singles, Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina won her first US Open and third Grand Slam title by defeating Aryna Sabalenka in 3 sets. Rybakina is now the #1 ranked player in the world, so she’s a name worth knowing - and knowing how to pronounce.

The return of the Queen…

…of Power Ballads, Celine Dion, who performed her first full concert in 6 years in Paris over the weekend. Dion, who was born in Canada, released several French-language albums, and won Eurovision for Switzerland (she’s multinational, what of it), had to stop performing after she was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome. Paris celebrated her return with a series of events across the city, including a mass karaoke event - and the show itself was reportedly a triumph, with 30,000 people watching Dion belt hits like All By Myself and The Power of Love. It was the first of 5 weeks of shows to come, and according to the reviewers, it all came back to her pretty quickly…

Apropos of Nothing - Sports bits and pieces

We flagged that the first regular season NFL game in Oz was happening on Friday, and 100,021 fans filled out the MCG to watch the San Francisco 49ers make short work of the LA Rams. And they got to see the Jonas Brothers cover Farnesy as part of the bargain.

The Aussie Opals have missed out at the women’s basketball World Cup in Berlin, knocked out by Spain in the quarter-finals. This might not knock your socks off, but the tournament was taken out this morning by - who else - the US of A.

And Italian driver Kimi Antonelli has won the Spanish Grand Prix this morning, which was held for the first time at the new Madring street circuit in Madrid. Aussie hope Oscar Piastri finished eighth, and currently sits seventh in the drivers championship.

Squiz the Day

9.00am (AEST) - The Regional Australia Institute's Regions Rising National Summit. Speakers include Regional Development Minister Kristy McBain and Reserve Bank assistant governor Sarah Hunter. The 2026 theme is 'People Power' - Canberra 

9.00am (AEST) - National Rural Health Conference (until 16 September) - Adelaide 

9.30am (AEST) - International CleanUp Conference 2026, which brings together experts to tackle the world's pressing contamination and pollution challenges - Adelaide

10.00am (AEST) - Hearing begins for the production company for the film The Deb and its director Rebel Wilson. The company is suing Wilson for blocking the film's release with legal threats. The film's star Charlotte MacInnes sued Rebel Wilson separately for defamation, which was dismissed - Sydney 

Ganesh Chaturthi - a Hindu celebration of the birth of Lord Ganesha (until 25 September)

Australian Peacekeepers Day

Anniversary of:

• Amy Winehouse’s birthday (1983)

• Francis Scott Key penning the poem that would later become known as The Star-Spangled Banner, the US national anthem (1814)

• Soviet probe Luna 2 becomes the first human-made object to reach the moon (1959) 

• the founding of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (1960) 

• the debut of The Golden Girls (1985)

• the deaths of Princess Grace of Monaco (1982) and actor Patrick Swayze (2009)

• Malcolm Turnbull ousting Tony Abbott as PM and leader of the Liberal Party (2015)

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