Today's Edition
(REUTERS)
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the rate at which they advance model capabilities amid mounting fears of misuse of artificial intelligence, outlining a three-step framework intended to pace development and create more time to manage its risks.
"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain," Amodei wrote in a lengthy essay shared on X on Saturday.
Amodei's three-step plan calls for embedded independent evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices, coordination among frontier AI firms to set safety standards and limit unchecked AI development, and international cooperation to manage AI risks.
Both Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in posts on X that they agree with Amodei.
"Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same," Altman said, adding that more information would be shared soon.
Amodei made his essay public after San Francisco-based Anthropic released a threat intelligence report on Thursday. Amodei pointed to AI's growing ability to improve itself, highlighting long-held concerns about it outpacing human ability to control operation along with the recent incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face as his primary reasons to put the brakes on model advances.
Anthropic has positioned itself as the more safety-conscious frontier lab.
Amodei said he is not calling for halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring that companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm these steps.
As part of his proposed framework, Amodei said Anthropic would install permanent third-party reviewers inside frontier AI companies, with access to relevant tools and internal risk-assessment processes.
"I believe all frontier labs should partner with government to formalize the idea of permanent embedded evaluators to better prevent and document internal alignment incidents like those that have occurred in the last few months, and to implement regulation focused on keeping capabilities in balance with safety," Amodei wrote.
