Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the AI industry to “slow the pace” of frontier development amid mounting safety concerns — a call quickly echoed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk. The proposal comes as reports of out-of-control AI systems mount and researchers sound the alarm over risks to humanity. The Atlantic Council asked six of its experts to weigh in on what a coordinated slowdown would mean for U.S.-China competition and global AI governance. Here’s what they had to say.
“The call to ‘pace the frontier’ of AI development and the rapid alignment among AI leaders who are in competition with one another is nothing short of historic.” – Graham Brookie, Vice President for Technology Programs and Strategy, Atlantic Council
“We’ve found ourselves in a predicament: Increasingly powerful AI tools are being developed at a pace that doesn’t match governance mechanisms, industry incentives are misaligned, and government has limited capacity (and appetite) to encourage pacing or establish safety standards for these AI models.” – Safa Shahwan Edwards, Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Atlantic Council Technology Programs
“Given this political environment, a major breakthrough on AI safety is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, a path exists for narrow, but meaningful, cooperation.” – Kenton Thibaut, Senior Resident China Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council Technology Programs
“Pacing capabilities is therefore an incomplete answer to the challenge of alignment research parity. Any credible slowdown commitment needs a matching, quantified commitment on the safety-research side.” – Trisha Ray, Associate Director and Resident Fellow, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council Technology Programs
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“We don’t know how this will play out in practice. But Anthropic’s commitment to using embedded evaluators is tangible, newsworthy, and promising, especially if the rest of the industry follows suit.” – Emerson Brooking, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council Technology Programs
“Voluntary commitments can be useful signals, but they are no substitute for independent oversight, measurable thresholds, and consequences when those thresholds are crossed. Without those elements, ‘slowing down’ risks remaining an aspiration rather than a constraint.” Konstantinos Komaitis Resident Senior Fellow, Democracy + Tech Initiative, Atlantic Council Technology Programs
