The convergence of three of AI’s most influential figures—OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Tesla and xAI’s Elon Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei—around the need to decelerate has injected new weight into the safety debate. According to reports, Altman and Musk have backed Amodei’s appeal to slow the development pace of their most advanced, and most lucrative, models.
Amodei’s own essay, published on Saturday, laid out three strategies. First, he proposed ‘embedded evaluators’ from third-party organisations such as METR—independent monitors embedded inside company offices with badges, desks and access comparable to internal risk teams. He said Anthropic is “unilaterally committing” to this approach and called on governments to require other frontier companies to match it.
Second, he called for leading AI companies within democratic countries to coordinate on “common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress.” Third, he urged global regulation.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
The CEO said two factors convinced him it was time for caution: the OpenAI-HuggingFace breach, and the fact that “AI has been advancing drastically faster” in recent months, particularly in its ability to build the next generation of AI.
Amodei’s intervention followed the resignation of Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon, who warned that leading AI companies are “gambling with our lives,” a claim echoed by others at the company. Two employees from Anthropic’s safety team have resigned in the past two weeks, saying the race to build machines smarter than humans may mean humanity does not survive. The company previously reported it had disrupted attempts to use its AI model to support biological weapons development.
US President Donald Trump has so far rejected such fears, but has not detailed any policy response.