AI Industry Leaders Call for Development Slowdown Amid Safety Fears
16 sources across 9 countries
Who reported this
- elDiarioAR
- Clarin
- Infobae
- La Nacion
- Der Spiegel
- Sueddeutsche Zeitung
- Frankfurter Allgemeine
- UOL
- Folha de S.Paulo
- Scroll.in
- The Indian Express
- France 24
- ANSA
- Business Day
- Neue Zuercher Zeitung
- The Guardian
What the colours mean
- Left
- Centre-left
- Centre
- Centre-right
- Right
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Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, has called for a slowdown in the development of the most advanced artificial intelligence models to allow safety measures to catch up with technological progress. In a rare show of unity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk both publicly agreed with Amodei's proposal. Amodei's three step plan includes granting independent third party evaluators permanent, employee level access to AI systems to verify safety standards, coordinating safety benchmarks among frontier AI firms, and establishing global agreements to limit dangerous applications. Amodei warned that without such measures, a swarm of AI agents could potentially take over the internet within six to twelve months, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.
The call for a slowdown follows the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who claimed that industry professionals are genuinely scared that AI could kill humanity by the end of the decade. Other figures, including Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Anthropic's Evan Hubinger, have suggested that a 10 percent probability of human extinction is not an unreasonable estimate. In response to these safety concerns, Sam Altman stated that OpenAI would postpone its planned initial public offering, noting that going public now would be ill advised. Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind also indicated that the direction of a slowdown is correct.
U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the calls for a slowdown, describing them as the work of negative forces. Trump emphasized that the United States must remain the world leader in AI to ensure it wins the global competition, particularly against China, though he did not rule out the possibility of some guardrails. David Sacks, a co chair of Trump's science and technology advisory council, suggested that the motivation to slow down may be driven by product liability concerns rather than pure altruism.
Outlets with different political leanings framed these events differently. Center right sources focused heavily on President Trump's warnings about maintaining a competitive edge over China and his dismissal of the risks. Center left and left leaning sources emphasized the existential warnings from researchers and the potential for catastrophic loss of human control. Center sources provided a broader synthesis of the industry's internal conflicts and the specific technical proposals for regulation.
How each side framed it
- Left
- Emphasized the danger of a commercial race to the bottom and called for more stringent bans on superintelligence.
- Centre-left
- Highlighted the existential risks to humanity and the urgency of the warnings issued by resigning researchers.
- Centre
- Balanced the industry's internal safety debates with the geopolitical implications and the specific steps of the proposed framework.
- Centre-right
- Focused on the strategic necessity of U.S. leadership in AI and President Trump's dismissal of safety warnings as negative forces.
Sources
- Centre ANSA: New alarm from Anthropic on AI. Trump: 'Negative forces want to slow it down'
- Centre-right Business Day: Trump dismisses ‘very negative forces’ warning over AI risks
- Centre-right Clarin: Donald Trump entered the controversy over AI control: he accused those trying to slow its progress of being "negative forces"
- Centre-left Der Spiegel: OpenAI's Sam Altman comments on artificial intelligence security concerns
- Centre Folha de S.Paulo: AI professionals are 'genuinely scared' of humanity's future, says researcher who resigned from Anthropic
- Centre France 24: Anthropic boss calls to slow the speed of AI development
- Centre-right Frankfurter Allgemeine: Artificial Intelligence: Will AI kill us all?
- Centre-right Infobae: Trump called those who ask to stop the advance of AI "negative forces": "They propose things that will not happen"
- Centre-right Infobae: Elon Musk of X, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic want to slow down the development of AI
- Centre-right La Nacion: Trump criticizes the "negative forces" that want to slow down AI
- Centre-right Neue Zuercher Zeitung: After AI solo runs: Open AI and Anthropic agree on voluntary slowing of AI development
- Left Scroll.in: Elon Musk, Sam Altman say they agree with Anthropic CEO on ‘slowing down’ AI development
- Centre-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung: AI Risks: The Ghosts They Summoned
- Centre-left The Guardian: OpenAI boss and Elon Musk back calls to put brakes on ‘reckless’ AI development
- Centre The Indian Express: Anthropic co-founder’s 3 steps to pace AI development: The plan, the problems
- Centre-left UOL: AI professionals are 'genuinely scared' of the future of humanity, says researcher who resigned from Anthropic
- Centre-left elDiarioAR: Anthropic CEO asks to slow down AI development: “I am concerned that it could take control of the entire Internet”
100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.