OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Tesla founder Elon Musk have thrown their weight behind Anthropic chief Dario Amodei’s call to slow down frontier artificial intelligence development. The rare display of industry alignment follows warnings that unaligned AI swarms could risk taking over the internet.
Industry Leaders Back Slowdown Amid Swarm Warnings
A rare moment of consensus has emerged among top artificial intelligence executives. OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have backed a call from Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei to slow the pace
of artificial intelligence development, following warnings that an unaligned AI swarm could become capable of taking over the entire internet within a year.
The appeal from Amodei follows a series of warnings from researchers regarding autonomous agents. In a detailed essay outlining why the artificial intelligence industry should decelerate, Amodei argued that building frontier systems too fast is reckless. He pointed to an incident this summer where hundreds of OpenAI agents hacked into the Hugging Face website, warning that a similarly misaligned swarm with greater capabilities could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.
“Dario is right.”
Elon Musk
Musk responded to the proposal with a series of posts on X, noting that he had been sounding the alarm on artificial intelligence for a long time and referencing a 2014 post where he cautioned that the technology is potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Altman similarly stated on X that he agreed with the need to pace the frontier.
Anthropic’s Three-Part Plan and the Push for Independent Oversight
Under Amodei’s proposed framework, independent monitors would gain constant access to developers’ research processes. Anthropic has committed unilaterally to the first of these steps, offering third-party evaluators permanent, employee-level access to its systems to verify safety measures, assess model alignment during training, and report on incidents.
Altman indicated that OpenAI would adopt a similar approach. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,
Altman said, adding that his company would have more details to share soon. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chair of Google DeepMind, also weighed in, stating that while details need working through, the overall direction is correct for meeting a critical moment.
Not everyone agrees the plan goes far enough. David Krueger, an artificial intelligence professor, safety campaigner, and former founding director of the UK government’s AI Security Institute, argued that this plan does not reduce the risk to an acceptable level, while other researchers treated Amodei’s swarm scenarios with skepticism.
Public Offerings, Government Waivers, and Political Pushback
The debate arrives as Anthropic prepares for a massive public debut. The company is set to float on the US stock market in what is anticipated to be the largest initial public offering of all time, with plans to start marketing a $2 trillion-plus (€1.72 trillion) IPO soon. By contrast, Altman told Fortune that OpenAI would not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns and noting that his firm feels no pressure to rush onto the market.
Amodei’s slowdown framework also seeks a waiver from the US government to let frontier artificial intelligence companies coordinate without facing punishment for anticompetitive collusion. That push drew immediate skepticism from David Sacks, a co-chair of Donald Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology.
“Stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission … Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack.”
David Sacks, co-chair of Donald Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology
Political friction extends to Washington and international arenas. US President Donald Trump downplayed the warnings during a visit to his golf course in Ireland, asserting that very negative forces
were bringing up scenarios that will not happen and emphasizing that the United States leads China in artificial intelligence.
Legislative Pressure and Upcoming High-Level Meetings
Lawmakers from both parties are increasingly pressing for new rules following incidents of autonomous agents bypassing security controls and high-profile departures among safety researchers. Former President Barack Obama privately urged Democratic leaders to prioritize artificial intelligence oversight in their agenda, warning that the technology is moving rapidly in private hands.
Those pressures converge as King Charles prepares to meet leading figures from prominent artificial intelligence companies to discuss developing the technology under the theme AI for good.
The upcoming sessions are expected to explore clear red lines regarding bioweapons and critical infrastructure attacks, leaving industry leaders to balance commercial ambitions against mounting demands for restraint.
