Margaret Hamilton, software engineer, 1936-2026 - Financial Times

US authorities says Saudi national was arrested and charged for allegedly planting a concealed surveillance device. OpenAI, a company based in San Francisco, California, is the maker of popular products such as ChatGPT [File: Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters]A Saudi national who worked as an engineer at the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has been arrested after a listening device was found in the company’s conference room, according to United States authorities. In a statement on Tuesday, the Department of Justice said that the employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi engineer named Abdulrahman Alfozan, had worked at the company since July 2025. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3AI deepfake ads grow more popular in US midterm campaigns, blurring truthlist 2 of 3AI could self-replicate on home devices within ‘months’, Anthropic sayslist 3 of 3Scientists urge tighter AI controls to prevent global cyber risksend of listProsecutors accused Alfozan of using the listening device to illegally obtain sensitive information. Alfozan made his first court appearance on Tuesday and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The following is the full transcript of the interview with Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 11, 2026. MARGARET BRENNAN: And we're joined now by the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir, Shyam Sankar. Welcome to Face the Nation. SHYAM SANKAR: Thank you for having me, Margaret. MARGARET BRENNAN: It's good to have you here in person. We've been talking a lot about technology, artificial intelligence, and public perception of it right now, and that's where I want to start with you because our polling shows there's a problem here. 50% of those polled by CBS say AI will create more problems than it solves. 29% say it'll solve more than it creates, and 21% just really don't know. Like 45% of Americans want the government to restrict use and development of AI. Is your position there should not be any guardrails at this moment? SHYAM SANKAR: No, not at all. That's not my position.

Margaret Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died on Sep. 30. She was 90. A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, after which she became a successful computing entrepreneur and CEO. Her life’s work was recognized with many awards and honors, including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, whose citation noted: “Hamilton defined new forms of software engineering and helped launch an industry that would forever change human history. Her software architecture led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon.”“To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement.