in briefAnthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on tech firms to slow down frontier AI development.Rivals Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed the proposal amid growing AI safety concerns.The boss of one of the world's major artificial intelligence companies has called for an urgent slowdown in development amid mounting fears over the risks of "superintelligent" computer systems and its threat to humanity. The intervention came after a former employee at Anthropic, which is behind the Claude AI chatbot, warned that AI could kill off humanity in a few years' time.The company's chief executive Dario Amodei on Sunday (AEST) said he was concerned by AI's ability to self-improve could outrun humanity's ability to control it, and by a recent incident in which rogue AI agents attacked targets they were not asked to. He offered three-step plan intended to pace development and create more time to manage its risks.In a lengthy essay shared on X he said: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain".News that makes senseYour trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox."Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless," he added. "We have sought a middle way." "But over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence."His company's competitors agreed. Both Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, quickly chimed in on the social media platform to express agreement with Amodei's assessment."Dario is right," Musk wrote, while Altman posted: "Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same," adding that more information would be shared soon.Rogue agents and security risksAmodei made his essay public after San Francisco-based Anthropic released a threat intelligence report on Thursday detailing how several actors had used its Claude AI models for activities ranging from weapons development and cyber operations to surveillance and fraud.Amodei pointed to AI's growing ability to improve itself, highlighting long-held concerns about it outpacing human ability to control its operation, along with the recent incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face as his primary reasons to put the brakes on model advances.Alarm about the potential harm from AI grew this week when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, accusing both US tech giants of "gambling with our lives" in the race toward superintelligence.Coxon, 27, who previously worked at OpenAI before joining Anthropic, stated that "the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade".Anthropic has positioned itself as the more safety-conscious frontier lab, but is not immune to these concerns.Last week it disclosed another instance of an AI model hacking external systems, after a July incident in which some of its Claude models had hacked into the systems of three companies during cybersecurity tests.The Reuters news agency reported last week that a swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents.The plan to slow AI's uncontrolled growthAmodei cautioned that the Hugging Face breach should not be dismissed as a one-off."A swarm of agents essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack," he explained."Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it's my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage."As part of his proposed framework, Amodei called for embedded independent evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices, coordination among frontier AI firms to set safety standards, and international cooperation to manage AI risks.He noted that a coordinated approach would enable leading US AI companies to carry out necessary safety research without putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage, likely requiring targeted antitrust exemptions in the United States.However, Amodei emphasized that any slowdown by democratically governed countries should be limited to preserving the lead US AI firms hold over China."Pacing within democracies will be limited by the lead that US companies have over authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party," Amodei wrote, calling for tighter controls on advanced AI chips, model distillation, and theft of model weights.There is also an enormous amount of money riding on staying ahead, as both OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for blockbuster initial public offerings.Still, Amodei insisted he is not calling for halting technical progress altogether, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models before deployment.— With additional reporting from Reuters.For the latest from SBS News, download our app and subscribe to our newsletter.