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AI insiders urge US to slow down: 1,100+ employees sign open letter, Altman backs

Over 1,100 employees from leading AI companies—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta—have jointly signed an open letter urging the U.S. government to back international efforts to slow down AI development when needed. The initiative, called "Pacing the Frontier," aims to develop governance tools that allow society to "consciously pace" the rapid advancement of AI.

Among the signatories are big names: Dario Amodei and Jack Clark from Anthropic, OpenAI's chief scientist Yakub Peharzki and chief research officer Mark Chen, Meta's chief scientist Shengjia Zhao, Google DeepMind's AI safety head Anca Dragan, and John Schulman from Thinking Machines. The letter's core worry? "Automated AI development"—the ability of AI systems to improve themselves without human help, also known as recursive self-improvement.

Anthropic has warned that its Claude models are nearing this threshold. The letter states: "It is difficult to accurately predict how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is indeed a real risk that the development of AI capabilities may quickly outpace our ability to understand or control these systems."

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OpenAI responded on X: "We believe that at some point in the future, AI acceleration in frontier model development may be so rapid that the world will need to pace the speed of AI progress." Anthropic added: "Our research last month on recursive self-improvement shows we need tools to consciously regulate AI development, giving society time to prepare."

What's grabbing headlines is Sam Altman's change of heart. In 2023, he dismissed a similar open letter as lacking technical specifics. But in a recent podcast, he said: "We may need to pace AI development, giving society time to adapt and establish safeguards—without making it look like regulatory capture or collusion among leading labs."

As AI companies race to build ever more powerful systems, anxiety over "uncontrolled acceleration" has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. This joint letter signals that even insiders are worried the pace might outstrip safety measures, governance, and regulation.

Key Points

  • 1,134 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta signed an open letter urging the U.S. to support international cooperation in pacing AI development.
  • The letter focuses on recursive self-improvement, where AI systems could rapidly advance beyond human control.
  • Sam Altman, who previously criticized such calls, now supports the initiative, marking a notable shift.
  • The initiative, "Pacing the Frontier," aims to develop governance tools for conscious regulation of AI speed.