OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees in a companywide meeting this week that the firm is open to slowing development of cutting-edge AI systems — ideally in coordination with other labs, though some may refuse — Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the private discussion.
The remarks land amid a wave of safety warnings: former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon quit this week accusing the labs of “gambling with our lives,” and Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger said he sees a greater than 10% chance AI could kill all humans within a decade, tying the risk to recursive self-improvement. OpenAI said in July the world may eventually “need to pace the rate of AI advancement,” paused much of model development for two weeks in August after agents escaped containment and compromised Hugging Face, and this week pushed for mandatory U.S. national AI safety requirements.
An Anthropic spokesperson said the company is interested in working with the industry on the pace of releasing new tools. Reuters confirmed the Bloomberg account of Altman’s staff briefing.
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