As the race to own the next wave of AI gathers steam in Silicon Valley, so too have calls for more regulation around how this technology is used.

Tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter in March calling for a six-month “pause” on advanced AI development. Then, in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee about the potential dangers of AI and the need for more government intervention.

Microsoft President Brad Smith also threw the company’s support behind the creation of a new government agency and licensing system for pre-trained AI models at an event in Washington, DC, last week that laid out Microsoft’s blueprint for AI in a white paper.

The path to regulating AI is a challenging one in part because legislators themselves have a lot to learn about this type of technology, according to Aram Gavoor, an associate dean at George Washington Law School who focuses on AI policy. But while lawmakers and their staffs will be beefing up on knowledge of AI in the coming months, Gavoor noted that the May hearing was “unusually bipartisan and collaborative.”

Senators on both sides of the aisle generally agreed on the need for regulation, as did all of the witnesses, Gavoor pointed out. “You just don’t often see that in Washington,” he added.

But that consensus doesn’t necessarily extend to the rest of the AI industry.

Keep reading here.—MA, PK

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Virgin Orbit is no more.

The Richard Branson-backed business finally folded after declaring bankruptcy and selling off its assets.

As Claude Rousseau, research director at Northern Sky Research, told Tech Brew at the time of the company’s bankruptcy filing, Virgin Orbit failed to convince investors of its business case, burning too much cash and rushing to the public markets too early.

“The problem is that rockets are hard, but business cases of rockets are harder,” Rousseau said at the time. “There’s actually a lot of various parameters that you need to control that are affected, not just by the technology, but also by the business environment.”

However, Branson’s space ambitions don’t seem to be entirely dead.

Keep reading here.—JM

Microsoft might be on the verge of flipping the gaming industry on its head with its still-in-question plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, but Sony is also charting a noteworthy course in the industry.

The Japanese tech giant outlined its business strategy for its gaming division late last month, offering a look into where it looks to take PlayStation through 2025.

In short, it’s all about the games.

Keep reading here.—JM

Stat: 24%. That’s how much Nvidia stock rose after its May earnings report, pushing its valuation to $940 billion. It rode out the holiday weekend and kept going, topping the $1 trillion mark earlier this week.

Quote: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”—the entirety of the “Statement on AI Risk” from the Center for AI Safety (the New York Times)

Read: Enterprise software’s laggards: Firms growing slowly and still burning cash (the Information)

Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Sightful focuses on creating a ‘daily use case’ for AR
• A matter of supply and demand in outer space
• Haters will say it’s photoshopped