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NYC Schools Move to Ban AI for Every Student Through Eighth Grade: New York City public schools are expected to release a policy this week barring student-facing generative AI tools, including chatbots and AI tutors, for all students from pre-K through eighth grade, with high school access restricted by subject and limited pilot programs. Pre-K through second grade lose individual classroom devices entirely; grades 3-5 are capped at 30 minutes of device time and grades 6-8 at 45, with exceptions for computer-administered reading and math assessments and accommodations for English learners and students with disabilities. Teachers may use AI for lesson planning, translation and drafting communications, but not for grading, behavior monitoring, counseling or special education planning. The rules take effect before classes begin Sept. 10, after the city acknowledged “missing the mark” with its March guidance. Link

Michigan Poll Finds 73% Opposed to Data Center Tax Breaks: An EPIC-MRA survey commissioned by the clean-energy advocacy group Climate Power found 73% of Michigan voters oppose the federal tax breaks and policies enacted to speed data center development, against 12% in support and 15% undecided; 61% said they were strongly opposed. Opposition crosses party lines, 77% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 67% of Republicans. A separate question found 62% opposed to data center development in Michigan generally, with 50% strongly opposed. EPIC-MRA has not published the field dates, sample size or margin of error. Link

Ohio Supreme Court Orders Trenton to Certify Its Data Center Ban for the Ballot: The court ruled Sept. 1 that the city council “disregarded applicable law” when it refused to certify a proposed charter amendment prohibiting data centers above 25 megawatts, and ordered the measure certified and sent to the Butler County Board of Elections. The board had already validated 336 signatures against the 128 required under state law; the council argued the charter set the bar at roughly 820. Whether the question goes on the November ballot or to a special election 60 to 120 days out is not yet settled. Link

Independence Voters Recall a Councilman Over a Data Center Tax Vote: First District Councilman John Perkins was recalled Sept. 1 with 68.05% voting yes, in what observers call the first US recall driven by a data center vote. Perkins was among the council members who approved tax abatements for a Nebius AI data center in March on a 5-2 vote; residents began gathering signatures in late April and filed 1,214 to force the election. Link

Nevada Panel Sends a Bill Draft to End Data Center Tax Breaks and Freeze New Builds: Sen. Dina Neal, who chairs the Joint Interim Standing Committee, requested a bill repealing the partial tax abatements Nevada grants new and expanded data centers and imposing a statewide moratorium on their creation or expansion, citing strain on water and power. The committee approved sending it to the 2027 Legislature, so nothing moves before then. Assembly member Lisa Cole opposed the approach, backing continued subsidies tied to water-conservation and grid standards negotiated through local development agreements. Link

An El Reno Data Center Leaks 3 Million Gallons During Oklahoma's Worst Drought Since 2022: A failed private water line at a site owned by Athlon BT, which builds mobile data centers for AI storage and bitcoin mining, released more than 3 million gallons and dropped water pressure across El Reno, closing schools and government offices while crews stabilized the system. City officials traced the loss to a privately owned fire hydrant on the property. Drought data released Aug. 27 placed much of western and central Oklahoma in the two most severe categories after a 30-day stretch at 21% of normal rainfall. Link

OpenAI Says Astra Is Its First Model to Cross the 'Critical' Cyber Threshold: The company said Sept. 1 that its upcoming Astra model is the first to reach the Critical tier for cybersecurity capability, which obliges it to add guardrails before release. Amelia Glaese, the vice president overseeing safety, said Astra “can find previously unknown security flaws and develop ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems without a person guiding each step.” The threshold covers models able both to discover and exploit novel vulnerabilities and to plan and execute multi-step attacks with minimal human involvement. OpenAI has tightened refusals on harmful cyber requests and will monitor Astra for signs it has broken through its safeguards. Release is limited and undated. Link

Anthropic Reverses Its 30-Day Retention Rule for Enterprise Customers: Anthropic said Sept. 1 that businesses can keep safety-scanning data inside their own cloud infrastructure under a program called Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, offered at no charge. It undoes the 30-day traffic retention requirement imposed in June alongside Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, which the company had defended as necessary against novel cyberattacks while conceding in a report that it would “be unpopular with customers who have come to expect zero retention.” Kate Jensen, head of Americas, said Anthropic spent hundreds of hours with customers building the alternative. The safeguards shipped with the Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 release. Link

A Reuters Review Puts Data Center Power Requests Above 700 Gigawatts: Utility and grid data reviewed by Reuters shows electricity requests from very large users, mostly data centers, exceeding 700 gigawatts — more than ten times industry estimates of current US data center consumption. In Texas, ERCOT interconnection requests climbed from about 48 GW in 2023 to more than 474 GW. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an audit on Aug. 3 requiring projects to supply information verifying they are legitimate before proceeding, with non-compliant projects denied a connection, making Texas the first major hub to freeze new grid connections. There is no common reporting standard: some utilities count only signed contracts, others log every inquiry. Link

Google Will Pay Entergy $526 Million for an Arkansas Solar and Battery Plant: Records obtained through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request to the Public Service Commission show Google covering $526 million of the $1.602 billion Cypress Solar project — a 600-megawatt solar field paired with 350 megawatts of battery storage — plus $190 million for the transmission upgrades needed to serve it. The plant feeds the grid supplying Google's $4 billion, 1,100-acre data center outside West Memphis, and Entergy expects it online by the end of 2028. Link

Musicians Sue Suno Over Identities Encoded Into Its Model: Jason Isbell, David Lowery, Guy Forsyth and Eduardo Calle filed a federal class action against Suno on Aug. 31 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging the company turned artists' identifying attributes into “tokens” inside its music model and collected and stored their voiceprints without consent. The suit is pled on right-of-publicity grounds rather than copyright, and seeks statutory and punitive damages, an injunction barring further use of the plaintiffs' identities, and class certification. Link

Ex-Google Engineer Gets Under a Year as a Judge Vacates Every Espionage Count: Linwei Ding was sentenced to just under 12 months plus two years of supervised release, roughly $190,000 in restitution and a $2,500 fine, against the 70 months prosecutors sought. The judge threw out all seven economic espionage convictions for insufficient evidence that Ding intended to benefit Beijing, leaving the seven trade-secret theft counts from his January conviction over more than 2,000 pages of Google chip and supercomputing files taken while he was in talks with two Chinese companies. It was the first US conviction on AI-related economic espionage charges, and it did not survive post-trial review. Link