Musk, Altman, Hassabis back Amodei’s call to slow pace of AI development

Some of the most prominent figures in artificial intelligence have backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for the industry to slow the pace of frontier AI development and introduce stronger safeguards.

Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis voiced support for Amodei after he published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” in which he argued that the AI industry should slow down and outlined a three-part plan for doing so.

“Dario is right,” Musk said in a brief response to Amodei’s post on US social media company X.

Altman also agreed with the proposal, saying pacing the frontier had been a major subject of recent discussions at OpenAI.

“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 said.

Altman particularly endorsed Amodei’s proposal to give independent evaluators extensive access to advanced AI systems.

“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,” he added.

Hassabis said Amodei’s essay pointed “towards the right path forward,” while acknowledging that details of the approach still needed to be worked out.

“The direction is correct for meeting this critical moment,” he said.

Hassabis linked Amodei’s proposal to Google DeepMind’s recent call for an industry-wide standards body for frontier AI.

In an essay released Saturday, Amodei expressed concern about whether humans will be able to maintain control over AI models capable of improving themselves. He also pointed to a recent incident involving AI agents that independently carried out cybersecurity attacks as another reason for concern.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

“AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious. … They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute,” he added.

Earlier this week, an Anthropic researcher announced that he was leaving the company because of concerns that Anthropic and rival firms were not developing AI systems responsibly.

Jacob Coxon, who had also worked at Anthropic competitor OpenAI, said the companies appeared to be prioritizing competition with one another over ensuring the safety of their AI products.