Weekly AI news

Iowa AI News for 2 October 2026

• October 1, 2026

  Carroll County weighs rules for how employees use AI

  Carroll County is considering a draft policy that would let employees use artificial intelligence while protecting county information. IT director Dalton Morrison told the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 28 that the county already pays for a ChatGPT subscription, and that staff would need his approval before using AI for county services. Supervisor Gene Meiners said the county needs the policy as the tools become more involved in the work.

  • Government
  • Iowa

  Read the original at Carroll Times Herald (opens in a new tab)

• October 1, 2026

  Iowa State center says the region should plan for AI

  Mike Howard, who directs Iowa State University's Murray G. Bacon Center for AI Ethics in Business, told the Business Record that regions need a plan because AI is reaching nearly every industry and the tools keep changing. The center expects to field an annual Iowa survey later this year, and it has joined a National Science Foundation proposal that would support a yearly planning process if the grant is awarded. The Greater Des Moines Partnership is also set to take up AI at its regional summit on Oct. 8.

  • Schools and training
  • Iowa

  Read the original at Business Record (opens in a new tab)

• October 1, 2026

  Larger Iowa employers say they are already spending on AI

  Early results from an Iowa AI business survey, shared at the Technology Association of Iowa's Digital Infrastructure Summit, describe larger employers as already using AI in day-to-day work. Chris Porter of Drake University said the 36 responses so far, mostly from bigger Des Moines companies, show widespread use of Microsoft Copilot, plans to spend more on AI next year, and an expectation that those firms will not cut jobs because of it. Respondents also reported training workers, and many could not say whether Iowa colleges are producing the AI skills they need. The sponsors hope to release the full findings on Nov. 5.

  • Economy
  • Schools and training
  • Iowa

  Read the original at Business Record (opens in a new tab)

National AI News for 2 October 2026

Includes reporting from outside the United States.

• October 2, 2026

  A North Carolina community college expands hands-on AI training

  Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem is in line for a $916,000 National Science Foundation grant to grow its AI degree, add lab equipment, and later bring humanoid robots and robotic arms on campus for students to program. About 80 students are in the college's AI certificate and degree courses this fall. Student Hannah Willson said she is already using classwork on machine learning and chatbots in her job the same day. The college also helped write 24 AI courses meant to be available at all 58 of North Carolina's community colleges.

  • Schools and training

  Read the original at Spectrum News (opens in a new tab)

• October 2, 2026

  China aims to teach AI in every school by 2030

  The Washington Post reports that Beijing wants artificial intelligence education in all of China's schools by 2030, and that interest in AI-themed study tours rose this summer. The story opens with Beijing entrepreneur Zhang Mingrui, who spent the summer using AI tools while helping run a start-up that sells digital scales.

  • International
  • Schools and training

  Read the original at The Washington Post (opens in a new tab)

• October 2, 2026

  Open-weight models, including China's, are harder to oversee

  CBS News reports that open-weight AI models can be downloaded and changed, which makes them harder for their makers to police than closed models that stay on a company's own servers. The story says China has leaned into open-weight models. It looks at Moonshot's Kimi K3, which the company says still trails the leading Anthropic and OpenAI models overall while beating some of them on rebuilding software from scratch. Researchers told CBS that safety limits on an open-weight model can be removed after release.

  • International
  • Models and benchmarks

  Read the original at CBS News (opens in a new tab)

• October 1, 2026

  A new index lines up AI models by score, price, and hardware

  Austin company Iternal Technologies said on Oct. 1 that it has opened Ultrabench, a free index that ranks current AI models on one 0-to-100 score, their price, and the computers needed to run them. The company said the Sept. 30 snapshot covered 309 models drawn from published benchmarks, with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 in the lead and Moonshot's open-weight Kimi K3 as the highest open model on that list. Those figures are the company's own tally.

  • Models and benchmarks

  Read the original at PR Newswire (opens in a new tab)

• October 2, 2026

  Federal agencies are told to say super intelligence instead of AI

  An executive order published in the Federal Register on Oct. 2 tells executive-branch agencies to use the words Super Intelligence and SI instead of artificial intelligence and AI in official documents that are not set by statute. Signed Sept. 29, the order defines those new labels as the same systems already covered by the existing federal definition of artificial intelligence. It gives the White House science adviser 60 days to propose a legal definition for Congress, and it does not require agencies to rewrite old regulations, contracts, or grants.

  • Government

  Read the original at Federal Register (opens in a new tab)

• September 30, 2026

  Mesa County pauses new data-center applications for a year

  Commissioners in Mesa County, Colorado, voted unanimously on Sept. 30 for a one-year halt on land-use applications for data centers in the unincorporated county. They said the pause gives them time to rewrite the land-use code and answer residents' questions about water and electricity. County officials said no data-center developer has approached them about a project there.

  • Data centers

  Read the original at KJCT (opens in a new tab)