Over the weekend, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for artificial intelligence (AI) companies, including his own, to slow down their work. Sam Altman and Elon Musk, heads of rivals OpenAI and xAI respectively, agreed.
The move reflects concern across the AI industry and more broadly about the dangers of new, rapidly improving systems. Recent high-profile incidents such as OpenAI AI agents hacking another company and hijacking a public website have shown current systems can break out of safety confines – and even more capable systems are in development.
Further complicating AI safety is the tension between safety and performance. Companies will be reluctant to limit the performance of their models in the name of safety for fear of losing ground to competitors. US President Donald Trump has also rejected calls for a slowdown, for fear of losing ground to China.
This means any successful effort at “pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up”, as Amodei puts it, will require significant cooperation between rival companies – and nations.
Risk minimisation
