Industry Leaders Call For Slowing Down AI's Development
September 13, 2026
IBL News | New York
Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of AI development in a 3,800-word essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” on Saturday. This three-part essay came days after one of Anthropic’s researchers, Jacob Coxon, quit over concerns about the technology’s safety.
On Tuesday, he posted a series of social media posts arguing that the leading AI labs were not developing the technology responsibly and were gambling with people’s lives.
Yesterday, Dario Amodei said that AI was advancing too rapidly for researchers to continue safely, while he highlighted that the technology could bring many benefits.
“Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems so they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report incidents, and assess model alignment during training,” he wrote.
Top executives from other major AI companies quickly joined the call. Elon Musk wrote, “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote, “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.” Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, said Amodei’s essay was a step in the right direction. “The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment.”
For years, Dario Amodei has warned about the safety risks of AI while building a leading company in this industry.
He called for independent auditors to assess companies’ compliance with safety standards and urged global cooperation to establish rules for AI development.
Tensions have risen further after leading AI labs discovered security breaches committed by their own programs without their knowledge. In one incident this year, OpenAI’s systems breached an AI start-up called HuggingFace, and the breach went undetected until HuggingFace informed OpenAI weeks later.
Computer scientists believe that what they call “recursive self-improvement” can lead AI to spin out of their control. call is what some top A.I. developers. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” Mr. Amodei said.
For years, top AI labs have been locked in bitter competition with one another. But as these systems have advanced, there has been some broader agreement among executives at rival companies that something needs to be done.
In June, President Trump signed an executive order asking for AI labs to voluntarily submit their models for review before public release.
Last month, when OpenAI released its latest model, Astra, it said it had intentionally slowed its development pace, citing advancements in cybersecurity capabilities.
Many in the tech world believe that Mr. Amodei’s intentions are not altruistic. Critics say that Anthropic and OpenAI are looking to cement their position as AI market leaders, as they pursue their upcoming trillionaire IPO, by stoking fear and asking the federal government to create regulatory frameworks that would make it more difficult for smaller companies to compete with them.
We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.
Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.
You can read the full post here: https://t.co/OGyPb7yaYt
— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 12, 2026
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