AI Lab Leaders Back Calls to Slow Frontier Development

Summary

After Dario Amodei published an essay calling for frontier AI development to be paced, Elon Musk reshared it with the message that Amodei was right. Sam Altman publicly agreed and said OpenAI would match Anthropic's access to embedded evaluators. Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis also endorsed the direction of the essay, while saying details still needed to be worked out; he linked the discussion to DeepMind's proposal for an industry-wide frontier-AI standards body. In a Fortune interview on the same day, Altman said a joint slowdown plan with Amodei, Musk, and Hassabis would happen, but he would not pre-announce private discussions. The day before, Reuters had reported that Altman told OpenAI employees the company was open to coordinating a pause with rival labs. Altman also ruled out an OpenAI IPO in 2026, citing safety grounds. The public endorsements and hints of coordination have not resulted in a signed agreement among the labs.