South Africa wins the Greatest Rivaly series 3-1 win, beating New Zealand 43-28 in the final test

BALTIMORE (AP) — With a rapid double blow at the start of the second half and powerful finish, South Africa overran New Zealand 43-28 Saturday in the fourth and final test between rugby’s Greatest Rivals.

Only three points separated the teams at halftime but tries to Malcolm Marx and Pieter-Steph du Toit in the 49th and 53rd minutes gave the Springboks a critical 15-point margin.

The All Blacks counterpunched with a try to Ethan Blackadder before Kurt Lee Arendse arrested New Zealand’s momentum and went more than 50 meters for the try that settled the match and series.

As in the last three tests, South Africa had just too much for New Zealand: too much field position, too much time in the 22, too much edge at set pieces and in the air, and too much ferocity in defense. In front of almost 70,000 fans at the home of the Baltimore Ravens, South Africa had too much.

Cameron Hanekom’s try in the 78th minute made the margin greater on the scoreboard than it was on the field, though the All Blacks had the final word with a try in the last minute to Beauden Barrett.

Springboks captain Siya Kolisi defined the margin between the teams.

“We’ve got coach Rassie (Erasmus),” he said. “He knows us and gets us up. When he speaks to us he reminds us where we come from.

“The players who are in the group but not playing today, we do it for them, the guys who are injured and also for the people of South Africa who would love to have the opportunities we have.”

The Springboks administered the coup de grace after four weeks of gripping hostilities Saturday, winning the series 3-1 in a manner which will reverberate through international rugby in the 12 months before the next World Cup. They are world champions and will not easily concede that title.

The All Blacks started poorly, conceding two penalties in the first four minutes, the second of which Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu stroked between the posts. New Zealand also turned over its first possession in South Africa’s 22.

But when the passes stuck in the eighth minute, it again found a weakness on the edges of the South African defense. Quick hands found Damian McKenzie on the left wing, he stepped infield past Damian Willemse and Malcolm Marx before the ball found captain Codie Taylor to barrel over for the try.

South Africa then exposed the All Blacks’ weakness against quick phase ball and strong carries inside its 22. The Springboks took the ball to the line, scrumhalf Morne van den Berg went close and Damian de Allende dashed through a hole left by a defensive misread.

Van den Berg was Player of the Match and a constant threat.

Just as the game was heating up, a long delay caused by communications issues among the referee brought the action to a halt.

Communications restored, South Africa had a chance to bring its formidable lineout drive to bear. When the All Blacks halted the maul, van den Berg darted around the fringe and found the defense absent again for the Springboks’ second try.

In a highlight of the match, the All Blacks battered the Springboks defense close to the line and found it impenetrable through 32 phases until quick hands from Richie Mo’unga and Jordie Barrett put Will Jordan over. The teams went to halftime with South Africa leading 17-14.

Two dangerous incursions gave the Springboks field position and, after both teams went to their benches, the All Blacks conceded a scrum penalty. South Africa opted for the lineout drive and, on the second push, the backs joined in to force Marx over the line.

The second try came almost immediately and broke the game open. A knock-on gave South Africa a scrum, from which van den Berg went short side and found Feinberg-Mngomezulu at pace. With the All Blacks retreating, Andre Esterhuizen carried into the 22 before South Africa patiently worked the ball to du Toit, who finished the move.

By the time the All Blacks left the field at the end of the last of four majestic tests in the “ Greatest Rivalry ” series, the optimism that had been present at the tour’s outset six weeks before had drained away.

In its place was a weariness and a steel that might reappear, tempered by another year’s experience, when the World Cup comes around.

After winning the first test, the All Blacks kept close in tests two and three, but close wasn’t good enough against the world champion in its own backyard.

By the start of the final test, the All Blacks were battered, while the Springboks mostly were unscathed. The All Blacks had lost their captain Ardie Savea and a number of notable others to injuries, forcing changes to their pack and backline.

Mo’unga, who hadn’t played a test since the 2023 World Cup final in which South Africa edged New Zealand by a point, had been installed at flyhalf in place of the younger Ruben Love.

They still fought hard in the final test but South Africa had too much.

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See AP’s full rugby coverage here

New Zealand's Will Jordan runs towards the try line during their rugby international in Baltimore, USA, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

The New Zealand All Blacks perform the haka ahead of their rugby international against the Springboks in Baltimore, USA, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

New Zealand's Ethan Blackadder runs at South Africa's Morne van den Berg, right, as teammate Ethan De Groot, follows during their rugby international in Baltimore, USA, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

South Africa's Kurt-Lee Arendse, right, attempts to break the tackle of New Zealand's Peter Lakai during their rugby international in Baltimore, USA, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

South African players celebrate after defeating the All Blacks in their rugby international in Baltimore, USA, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

NEW YORK (AP) — The CEO of Anthropic said Saturday the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Dario Amodei warned that within six to 12 months AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.

The warning comes as worries about AI grow inside and outside the industry and reports continue to emerge about increasingly powerful systems that solve problems beyond human capacity but could also go rogue and carry out other, more harmful tasks. The worries have grown so loud that the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said in an interview with Fortune that his company would wait until next year to start selling its stock to investors on Wall Street as it focuses on safety.

Amodei is one of the leading voices in AI, and he offered a plan in a post on his website to increase checks on the industry. He said Anthropic is already undertaking one part of it on its own, while the others would require coordination across the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones.

“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.

Watchdogs have been urging the AI industry for years to slow its development for safety reasons. But pressure has built as industry workers resign and accuse their companies of not acting responsibly.

“Many of the people I know who work on safety research at AI companies want to do what is right for the world,” a former Anthropic employee, Joe Benton, said in a posting Friday announcing his resignation from a job as part of a safety team. “But they feel their companies are trapped in a race to build superintelligence: either they stop and other, less conscientious people take their place; or, they continue, and risk participating in enormous harm themselves.”

That followed a high-profile resignation earlier in the week by Jacob Coxon, who said that both Anthropic and OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

That lit a fire under the industry after concerns had grown for years about a possible superintelligence that could escape the control of humanity, said Anthony Aguirre, president and CEO of the Future of Life Institute, which called for a six-month pause for the industry’s development in 2023.

“They’ve kind of realized, their employees have realized, everyone has realized that they’re building Skynet,” he said. “And in winning the race to Skynet, nobody wins. Really, nobody.”

“It's pretty much become clear to the world and even the AI companies that they’re not really prepared to control the AI systems they’re racing to create.”

Anthropic said two days earlier that it blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons. In July, OpenAI shook the industry after saying its AI system hacked into another company on its own in an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged countries earlier this week to put “cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late.”

To be sure, some critics have dismissed such warnings as ways to gin up excitement about the AI industry and its capabilities. Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing for possible debuts on the stock market that could value them at many hundreds of billions of dollars, while a big chunk of Elon Musk's SpaceX business is involved with AI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune published Saturday that his company would not launch its initial public offering of stock this year.

“I would say not 2026,” he said. “Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together.”

Altman posted on X Saturday quickly after Amodei published his suggestions that OpenAI will commit to one of Amodei’s proposals for safety and will “have more to share soon.”

Musk, meanwhile, said on X that “Dario is right.”

Amodei said he still believes in the tremendous benefits that AI could create, such as cures for major diseases. But he said he has grown more worried over the last few months about AI’s growing ability to improve itself and build the next generation of AI. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”

He also pointed specifically to the attack in July where OpenAI's system hacked Hugging Face. Some have called it an example of AI going “rogue,” though researchers have said that may be unnecessarily anthropomorphizing AI, which was working on a goal set by humans.

OpenAI said the hack was the result of AI going to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and that it “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.”

To help rein in the risks, Amodei suggested that all companies at the frontier of AI commit to giving “ongoing, employee-like access” to a team of outside evaluators, who can monitor safety practices.

He said Anthropic already plans to do so itself, including offering desks in its offices, access badges and company laptops. Having such independent, embedded evaluators is what OpenAI's Altman also quickly committed to doing.

The other parts of Amodei's suggested plan may be more difficult to implement. One asks the U.S. government to potentially issue waivers that would allow U.S. AI companies to coordinate and set safety standards without running afoul of antitrust laws.

Another asks the U.S. and other democratic governments to try to coordinate with authoritarian governments, so that companies from China and other countries don't accelerate their efforts when U.S. rivals are intentionally pacing theirs.

“The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy,” Amodei acknowledged. “But I believe we owe it to humanity to try.”

FILE - Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)