OpenAI's Sam Altman and Tesla's Elon Musk have both backed Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei's call to slow AI development, days after a former Anthropic researcher's warning about human extinction went viral. Amodei wants independent monitors given permanent access to frontier labs, but Trump adviser David Sacks has questioned whether the motive is purely altruistic.
Altman and Musk back Amodei's slowdown call
Anthropic's Amodei laid out a three-part plan in a Saturday essay, starting with giving independent monitors constant access to developers' research processes. He warned a swarm of AI agents could become capable of taking over the entire internet within a year, and separately said a swarm similarly misaligned to incidents seen this summer could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage with a persistent botnet.
Musk responded on X that Amodei was right and said he had been warning about AI dangers for years. Altman went further, committing OpenAI to matching Anthropic's approach. According to The Guardian: "I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier". Altman also said OpenAI would not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns, after Anthropic began preparing for an IPO that could value the company at more than $2tn.
Warnings from inside Anthropic
The slowdown appeal followed Jacob Coxon's resignation from Anthropic on September 8, after which he told the BBC that AI staff were frightened about the pace of progress and that there is a strong chance humanity could die in the immediate future without a slowdown. Coxon, who worked at OpenAI before joining Anthropic, said a slowdown would need coordination with China to avoid an international race.
He appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on September 13, arguing the danger lies in what could emerge over the next six to twelve months as capabilities keep scaling. Anthropic's alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, has echoed the concern, putting the probability of AI causing human extinction within a decade at more than 10%.
Skeptics question the motive
Not everyone accepts the alarm at face value. Trump adviser David Sacks said AI firms face massive product-liability exposure if their systems enable a damaging cyberattack, suggesting the coordination request is not purely altruistic. Nvidia's Jensen Huang, discussing Coxon's comments at a Goldman Sachs conference, dismissed them as untrue, while Hugging Face's Clement Delangue compared asking Coxon about extinction risk to asking an air-conditioning technician about climate change.
Grindr chief executive George Arison suggested the warnings serve to justify AI valuations by claiming the technology will take over every industry and every job. The debate now sits alongside Anthropic's pending IPO and OpenAI's delayed one.
Sources: The Guardian, BBC News, Crypto Briefing
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