Amodei calls for AI slowdown as Musk and Altman add their weight

An essay published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging the industry to slow the pace of AI model development drew immediate public agreement from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX and xAI CEO Elon Musk. Altman said he agrees "we need to pace the frontier." Musk posted simply that "Dario is right."

Amodei wrote that AI advances could outrun humanity's capacity to understand and control the technology. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," he wrote, adding that progress "will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain." He warned that left unchecked, AI "could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all."

For a sector where the investment thesis has rested on accelerating capability timelines, endorsement of a go-slow position at the CEO level by both Altman and Musk raises a question about the cadence of future product roadmaps. None of the three executives attached a concrete timeline or numerical pace to what they are advocating.

The alignment at the top did not settle the argument below it. Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, speaking on Fox News Live, said voluntary guardrails set by private companies may not go far enough. He described a scenario where AI accumulates what he called "hard power," running factories and integrating into military systems before eventually declining to take human direction. Kokotajlo said he welcomed the essay but argued the industry may need "something more radical." He also dismissed the idea that safety warnings originate from foreign actors. "Is this a Chinese plot? No, of course not," he said, adding that the warnings come from academics and industry veterans.

Where the disagreement sharpens

Former White House AI czar David Sacks pushed back against AI warnings broadly, including a viral post from former Anthropic staffer Jacob Coxon. Sacks characterized such warnings as designed to scare the public and enable what he called a government takeover of the sector.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., called on Congress to convene a special session on AI, comparing advanced systems to nuclear arms and describing them as a "massive, uncontrolled currently, super weapon." She argued for a kill switch rather than a slowdown, while insisting the United States cannot cede ground to foreign competitors. "Whoever controls AI will control, effectively, the world," she said.

What to watch is whether congressional leadership responds to Luna's call for a special session. A scheduling announcement from that body would mark the debate's first formal entry into the legislative track.