Facing a public uproar over Anthropic researchers’ repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could kill all of humanity by 2030, the AI company’s CEO Dario Amodei issued a proposal at the weekend to slow down the technology’s advancement to ensure public safety. In a rare display of unity, the heads of the largest US artificial intelligence companies all agreed immediately. The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis and xAI owner Elon Musk posted support for Amodei’s proposal for slowing AI development, titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” with Altman stating he would match Amodei’s commitment to embedding outside evaluators within his company to verify safety practices.
The AI CEOs’ warnings and promises open up a host of questions about how AI might be regulated, what risks it poses and whether the industry will actually slow down the fevered race to advance its technology. While lawmakers and the tech industry consider how to address growing fear and distrust of AI, many of the hurdles impeding comprehensive AI regulation remain the same as before last week’s apocalyptic declarations from a young Anthropic researcher. The US federal government is committed to a global AI arms race.
Previous proposed AI legislation has wilted under intense, well-financed corporate lobbying. AI startups face the enormous pressures to release new, more powerful products ahead of upcoming trillion-dollar public offerings. Amodei’s pacing proposal has drawn heavy skepticism from critics and researchers who allege that AI firms are attempting to preempt more stringent government regulation and retain the status quo of power within the industry.
Anthropic and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amodei’s proposal focuses on three main pillars. First, a commitment to outside evaluators given employee-level access to monitor risk.
Second, agreements between democratic states on AI safety standards. Finally, global coordination with authoritarian governments such as China on security issues. Amodei and others in the industry have made similar calls for global coordination in the past, even before the industry’s recent warnings over models becoming too advanced and gaining autonomy.
The AI industry, especially the factions within it that focus on whether the technology is aligned with humanity’s interests, has also long warned about its existential threats. Rahm Emanuel, former congressman and chief of staff to Barack Obama, tweeted, “I can tell you when the last time a CEO or an industry at large asked to be regulated: never. That’s what makes Dario’s letter so striking – it’s an admission that we’re driving down a dark, winding road on wet pavement with the headlights off.
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