Sam Altman backs Anthropic over slowing down AI development; vows to follow Amodei's proposal; Musk follows suit

Hours after Anthropic's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dario Amodei publicly acknowledged that the race to build increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems needs to be slowed, his rival, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, also voiced support for the idea. He added that the AI firm would adopt one of Amodei's proposed safeguards.

Amodei calls for slowdown in AI development

In an essay published Saturday (local time), Amodei noted that AI companies should slow down and proposed a three-part plan for doing so. He argued that AI advances are moving faster than researchers' ability to understand and control them.

In the essay, titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," Amodei highlighted the risks posed by rapidly evolving technology and wrote, "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."

Amodei cited two key developments that influenced his position: AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of developing more advanced AI, while an incident in July saw autonomous AI agents powered by an OpenAI model breach systems belonging to AI company Hugging Face.

Altman backs Amodei's proposal

Following Anthropic CEO's essay, OpenAI chief Sam Altman also voiced support for the idea of pacing down AI development. In a post on X, Altman wrote, "I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks." He added, "Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon."

Altman's reiteration of the need to slow down the development of AI systems comes days after he made similar statements, warning about the potential risks posed by increasingly powerful AI models.

Earlier this week, OpenAI's CEO told employees during a company-wide meeting that the firm was willing to consider slowing the pace of AI system development, Bloomberg reported. The AI firm has previously acknowledged reducing the pace of development in some areas of its models. The company also said earlier this week that it was advocating for mandatory nationwide AI safety standards in the United States.

In a post shared on X on 18 August, Altman announced, "We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment." He added, "We care very deeply about AI safety. We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime."

Elon Musk backs Amodei's warning

Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk also shared his two cents after Amodei's post and stated that the Anthropic CEO is "right." In a separate post, Musk reshared his post from 2023 and wrote, “I’ve been sounding the alarm on AI for a long time.”

The calls from leading AI figures to slow the pace of development come amid growing concerns over the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems, with two of Anthropic's researchers warning about the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems.

Anthropic researchers warn about AI risks

Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced that he was stepping down from his role. In a lengthy post on X, Coxon stated, "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger."

Shortly after, another Anthropic scientist, Evan Hubinger, voiced support for Coxon's stance and wrote, "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans."

Two other researchers who recently left Anthropic and Google DeepMind also expressed similar concerns.

As AI capabilities continue to advance rapidly, the debate over how much the industry should slow down and how safety measures should keep pace is likely to intensify.