{"id":716418,"date":"2026-07-29T01:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/716418\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T01:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:38:11","slug":"employees-at-the-worlds-biggest-ai-companies-are-calling-for-a-slowdown-in-ai-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/716418\/","title":{"rendered":"Employees at the world\u2019s biggest AI companies are calling for a slowdown in AI development"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that safety and security measures can catch up in an open letter.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US government should support an international effort to develop tools that can \u201cdeliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,\u201d according to the letter.\n <\/p>\n

\n More than 1,000 employees from frontier AI companies signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the ChatGPT developer\u2019s original cofounders, some of Anthropic\u2019s cofoundersand vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.\n <\/p>\n

\n The letter comes on the heels of major advancements and burgeoning threats from rapidly developing AI systems. OpenAI disclosed<\/a> last week that two of its test models escaped a lab environment, bypassed its systems to gain access to the open internet and hacked a different company\u2019s internal system.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201c[T]here is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems,\u201d the signees said. \u201cTo realize AI\u2019s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n OpenAI said in a statement to CNN they agree with potentially pacing the development of AI, adding they \u201chope to contribute to work led by the U.S. government, alongside other labs\u201d on the topic.\n <\/p>\n

\n OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested it may be time to slow down AI development in a podcast interview Tuesday. The OpenAI models that broke out of their test environment are fueling \u201clong term questions\u201d about how AI companies should address this new rate of progress.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201c[W]e may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around these new capability levels,\u201d Altman said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Anthropic said in a statement they are \u201cglad to see broad agreement\u201d on the need to potentially slow AI development \u201cso society can prepare.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Meta declined to comment. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re glad to see broad agreement across the field on the need for technical and governance tools to pace the frontier of AI development, including the ability to slow it, so society can prepare,\u201d Anthropic said in a comment to CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis also recently called for a new international standards body<\/a> to help set protocols for new AI models, an idea endorsed by Altman, SpaceX\u2019s Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other major industry figures.\n <\/p>\n

\n The letter \u201chelps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress,\u201d John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder who went on to start the AI lab Thinking Machines, added in a comment on his signature. \u201cI\u2019d also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved. \u201c\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-716418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}