Dario Amodei wants the government to ground unsafe AI models the same way the FAA grounds unsafe planes. The Anthropic CEO published a blog post on Thursday calling for mandatory third-party audits of frontier AI systems, with governments empowered to block deployment if an independent auditor flags unacceptable risks.
It is, by a meaningful margin, the most aggressive regulatory framework any major AI company leader has publicly endorsed. And it lands just days after President Trump signed an executive order on June 2 that gave intelligence agencies an enhanced role in AI model testing, but stopped well short of what Amodei is now proposing.
What Amodei is actually asking for
The proposal centers on a compute threshold. Any AI model that exceeds a specified level of training compute would trigger mandatory independent audits before it could be released to the public.
Amodei’s essay identifies four risk categories that auditors would evaluate: cybersecurity vulnerabilities, biological weapons capabilities, the potential for AI systems to slip beyond human control, and the ability to accelerate automated research and development in dangerous domains.
