Sam Altman Tells OpenAI Staff Company May Slow Cutting-Edge AI Development, Hopes Rivals Will Follow
· Free Press Journal
OpenAI is considering slowing down the pace of its cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) development, and chief executive Sam Altman is hoping other AI companies will follow suit.
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What Altman told staff?
In a companywide meeting this week, Altman told employees that OpenAI could potentially pace its AI development, possibly in coordination with several other AI labs, though he acknowledged that some companies may not agree to do so, Bloomberg reported. The company has already slowed parts of its model development and paused certain internal AI training in recent months over safety concerns.
A wave of safety concerns inside AI labs
The reported shift comes amid a surge of public unease from within the industry's own ranks. In recent weeks, employees at leading AI firms have raised concerns about the escalating risks of advanced AI systems, fuelling anxiety inside these companies, Bloomberg reported. OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, recently wrote a post warning about the dangers of AI, saying he believes AI companies should be coordinating to slow down future development.
The unease boiled into public view this week when Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher, quit his job and accused both of his former employers, Anthropic and OpenAI, of 'gambling with our lives' by racing toward superintelligent AI.
Coxon said in a social media post that people building AI systems believe the technology could "kill us all by the end of the decade," a comment that went viral, drawing more than 150 million views along with attention from lawmakers and public figures. Separately, two researchers who recently left roles at Anthropic and Google's DeepMind also went public with concerns about the rapid pace of AI development, calling for AI makers to be more transparent.
Antitrust questions loom over coordination
Any formal industry-wide pact to slow development could run into regulatory hurdles. OpenAI has separately asked members of Congress for guidance on whether orchestrating an industry-wide slowdown in AI development would be legal under antitrust law, with sources cautioning that substantive safety coordination between competing AI labs may risk running afoul of those rules.