″🟡 OpenAI’s largest frontier RL run remains paused, mysterious model appears on OpenRouter, US unveils new sanctions on Iran || Global Risks Weekly Roundup #34/2026″ by Nuño Sempere, Vidur Kapur, Tolga Bilge, belikewater

Executive summary Technology and AI: OpenAI says their largest planned frontier RL run remains on pause. A stealth model known as ‘Ox Alpha’ was released on OpenRouter and impressed users, sparking debate about which lab is behind it. Which lab is behind the Ox Alpha model? Our forecasters assign a 24% (15% to 35%) probability to a mainstream US lab (OAI/Anthropic/GDM/xAI), 34% (20% to 40%) to China's Z.ai/GLM, 9% (5.0% to 15%) to China's Alibaba/Qwen, 5% (3% to 10%) to Nvidia, 17% (5% to 25%) to another Western lab, 9% (5% to 15%) to another Chinese lab, and 3% to something else. Geopolitics: A Russian drone was shot down close to a Romanian natural gas facility in the Black Sea on which hundreds of workers were present. US Senator Jon Ossoff made headlines after mentioning the name of one of Trump's closest staffers, and caught the attention of some in the AI safety community for mentioning the threat of AI-induced human extinction. Will Jon Ossoff win the 2028 US Presidential election? Forecasters think he has a 12% (8% to 18%) chance. Will Russia successfully attack any item of physical infrastructure larger than 100m2 inside [...] ---Outline:(00:23) Executive summary(03:02) Technology and artificial intelligence(11:54) Geopolitics(11:56) Middle East(13:05) Europe(14:38) Asia(15:51) United States(17:41) Economy(19:41) Biorisk --- First published: August 24th, 2026 Source: https://blog.sentinel-team.org/p/openais-largest-frontier-rl-run-remains --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.