AI leaders call for development slowdown

A growing chorus of artificial intelligence leaders are calling for a slowdown of the technology’s development following a researcher’s ominous warning that AI could soon destroy humanity.

Shortly after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called to slow down AI capability development , several of his competitors, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk, followed suit.

The calls followed a post from 27-year-old AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who claimed researchers at the firms “believe AI could kill all humans” but still push forward in a race to develop superintelligence — a hypothetical AI agent that outperforms all of humanity’s cognitive performance. Coxon resigned from Anthropic before sharing his warnings on social media.

In a lengthy post on X , Altman said the “world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened.”

“Every frontier lab must deliver on this, and there is no reason any of us should come to work if we cannot,” Altman said.

Altman reiterated OpenAI’s support of a federal framework for safety requirements, but also argued the industry does not need to wait for legislation or an antitrust exemption to create “consistent rules” and shared values along the firms.

Altman said pacing development does not mean stopping, but that development “should be slower than it otherwise could be.”

“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” Altman said.

Musk, who originally co-founded OpenAI with Altman, reposted Amodei as well, writing that “Dario is right.”

The comments mark a shift for AI leaders, who have shied away from any commitments to slow down until recently.

Researchers have warned of AI’s potential danger for years, but nothing struck a chord quite like Coxon’s social media thread.

Coxon’s assessment went viral with more than 165 million views and within a few hours, the debate over the long-term implications of artificial intelligence was no longer confined within the technology community.

Coxon is among a camp of what critics dubbed AI “doomers,” who believe the technology will lead to mass extinction if development is not safety-aligned or slowed down.

“These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon wrote on social media. “We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of alignment science, affirmed Coxon’s warning, stating, “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans !”