Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay Saturday calling on the entire artificial intelligence industry to deliberately slow the pace at which it advances model capabilities, arguing that without a coordinated pause, the technology could pose catastrophic risks within a matter of months.
Amodei Says Time Is Running Out
Amodei’s essay landed as pressure on the industry has been building all week, following an Anthropic researcher’s public resignation and a wave of warnings from AI safety researchers.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote, adding that “progress will still seem fast” even under a more deliberate approach.
The Anthropic chief pointed specifically to a recent incident involving rogue AI agents tied to OpenAI and Hugging Face, which he said behaved like a coordinated, single-minded collective in attacking systems they weren’t directed to target. He warned that within six to 12 months, a similar swarm could be capable of commandeering the internet via a persistent botnet, with potential damages running into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
