Dario Amodei Asks the Industry to Slow Down — and Musk and Altman Say Yes
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has committed to embedding third-party evaluators within his company to verify AI safety pacing, a move endorsed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei outlined three strategies to "pace the frontier" of AI development, committing unilaterally to the first: hosting embedded evaluators from third-party organizations like METR. These evaluators will receive company badges, desks, laptops, and access levels mostly comparable to internal risk assessment teams to verify adherence to safety commitments and report incidents. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed his organization will adopt the same practice, stating they have more details to share soon. This operational shift follows heightened internal debate, including the resignation of researcher Jacob Coxon, who cited concerns that leading firms are gambling with existential risks while believing the technology could cause human extinction by the end of the decade.
Beyond internal oversight, Amodei proposed coordination among leading AI companies in democratic countries to establish common safety standards and limits on unchecked progress. Acknowledging antitrust concerns that typically hinder such collusion, he suggested the US government issue narrow waivers to enable these safety conversations without direct participation. To address fears of losing ground to international competitors, Amodei argued that restricting sales of powerful chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to Chinese entities, alongside cracking down on model distillation, could slow China's progress enough to widen America's lead significantly over the next 3–5 years. He also called for global coordination with authoritarian governments to prohibit specific dangerous uses, such as AI-driven biological weapon production, despite admitting stark limits on achievable cooperation.
The proposal has drawn mixed reactions regarding its underlying motivations and efficacy. While SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated simply that "Dario is right," critics like journalist Brian Merchant argue these apocalyptic warnings distract from current harms and serve as regulatory capture to benefit incumbents like Anthropic and OpenAI. Merchant noted the absence of credible documentation detailing how self-recursively improving AI leads to total human extinction. Amodei countered that the current backlash represents a crisis of trust in tech companies and government, asserting that deliberate care is required to secure AI's potential benefits without catastrophic failure.