Sam Altman says OpenAI could slow AI development as safety fears grow

OpenAI is considering slowing down the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, and the ChatGPT maker’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman is hoping other AI companies will do the same.

In a company-wide meeting this week, Altman told employees that OpenAI could potentially pace its AI development – perhaps in conjunction with several other AI labs, but that some may not agree to do so, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details are private.

In recent weeks, employees of leading AI firms have raised public concerns about the increased risks of advanced AI systems, fueling anxiety inside these companies. Both OpenAI and its rival Anthropic PBC have filed confidential paperwork to go public earlier this year.

OpenAI declined to comment.

The company’s top scientist, Jakub Pachocki, recently wrote a post warning about the dangers of AI and said that he believes AI companies should be “coordinating to slow down future development as needed.” Pachocki added that he hopes “for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established.”

OpenAI said it has slowed parts of model development and paused certain internal AI training recently due to safety concerns. In July, Altman also said that he’d spoken with White House officials about the “need” to pace AI development.

On Tuesday, 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 the people building AI believe it could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” The comments went viral, attracting more than 150 million views and attention from prominent lawmakers and public figures.

On Thursday, two researchers who recently departed roles at Anthropic and Google’s DeepMind also publicized concerns about the rapid pace of AI development, saying AI makers need to be more transparent about the technology’s risks.

And in late July, more than 1,000 staffers across all the major AI companies signed a petition calling for a mechanism to slow the pace of AI development. Several AI staffers working on safety have resigned from major labs in recent months.

While many AI industry executives and workers have long warned about the existential risk of AI systems, concerns have grown in response to revelations that AI agents from OpenAI worked together to breach containment and hack into a third-party website. This and other similar security incidents have stoked fears about the cyber capabilities of new models and the apparent failures of AI companies to prevent them from running amok.