Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk have both agreed with Anthropic’s boss, who wants the entire AI industry to slow down. That is a significant development. Yet no one has offered an explanation for how such a slowdown would be carried out in practice.
The chorus of worry is growing louder. On Saturday, Dario Amodei, head of Anthropic, urged the pace of development to be slowed down. On Sunday, Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who quit Anthropic, told the BBC that staff developing the systems were “genuinely frightened” for the future of humanity. The message is consistent: the technology is moving faster than anyone knows what to do with.
What is missing is the plan.
Amodei’s Three-Point Plan
Amodei laid out a three-part plan: independent oversight of AI models during development, shared rules across the industry, and worldwide controls. The proposal covers a lot of ground. It also leaves plenty of open questions.
Who would enforce a slowdown is the primary issue. Would the AI companies be expected to report their own lack of activity? That would demand a massive amount of trust, which the tech industry has arguably never established.
There is also a real issue with pausing model training. When companies stop developing their AI systems, those systems become easy targets for rivals. The margins might go up, but the technology itself gets frozen in time, studied and copied by Chinese labs. Prices may need to shift too. No one can say for sure how any of this plays out.
Why Nobody Wants to Go First
The contest is more than a matter of technical superiority. The United States is commonly regarded as fearful of falling behind China in the struggle for AI dominance. At the close of Sunday, President Trump expressed his own position on the subject, stating that the US leads China in the AI race and asserting: “Whoever wins AI, wins.”
Nobody wants to be number two in China. Every person I talk to says that even if their own company stops, competitors won’t, and they’ll simply fall behind. That situation reminds me of the height of the push for nuclear disarmament. Back then, the issue was that nobody wanted to go first either.
What a Slowdown Would Mean for the UK
The UK has seen AI gain traction across many fields, including healthcare, where there are plans to expand its use within the NHS to benefit patients. The technology also gave the UK economy a notable lift over the summer, while people are increasingly being urged to adopt it for work, education and daily life.
Driving economic growth is at the heart of the UK’s strategy, and this industry plays a central role in it. “There is no plan B” a former government adviser told me. The question is whether a slowdown could damage the sector’s future prospects here in Britain.
The artificial intelligence sector is consuming vast sums of money and natural resources. It has yet to generate anywhere near equivalent returns. A number of reports indicate that several companies embracing the technology have found it underwhelming.
The Bubble Question
Economists widely speculate that even the current giants are not all likely to survive. Some kind of “levelling” is coming, also known as a bursting bubble. But those firms which do make it could end up becoming the most powerful mega-corporations the world has ever seen, and that comes with its own issues.
Halting its push toward the stock market may look like OpenAI finally accepting responsibility for public safety. Or it could be the move of a company that has realised it might not receive the lucrative payout it needs so long as its entire product remains viewed as lethal.
The Unknowns Ahead
Alexander Voica, from the UK AI company Synthesia, says one of the probably biggest challenges we face today is that nobody can accurately forecast where this technology is headed. “We know that these systems are getting more powerful, but we don’t know where and how they’re going to be used, and we haven’t figured out essentially a way of taking full advantage of their potential.”
“My only concern in rushing to regulate now, where there’s still a lot of open questions, is that it could actually backfire.”
Investor Cash Underlies It All
The founder of Sustainable AI is Sasha Luccioni, according to “I’m not worried about the existential risks of AI, I’m worried about the corporate greed of the companies that are creating it,”.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a leading computer scientist who has advised the UN on AI, argues that the present crisis stems from companies failing to act responsibly. She draws an analogy to a farmer whose bull escapes its enclosure and wreaks havoc, with the farmer then blaming the animal rather than addressing the underlying problem.
“Of course it’s not the bull’s fault — it’s the farmer,” she says. Clearly, the fences weren’t robust enough, and that is exactly what she says we are seeing with AI guardrails right now.
The Risk of Regulating AI Into Oblivion
Some believe there is a more secretive, politically-motivated push for a rules-based clampdown in order to “regulate AI into oblivion.” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at the Conservative-leaning Capital Research Centre think-tank, put it on X this week.
The piece received close to eight million views. It pushes a far-out claim that has no proof behind it, yet it demonstrates that not everyone agrees that regulation can fix things.
The Bottom Line
There is plenty of serious talk calling for a slower pace. Yet those same voices have not reached an agreement on what slowing down would actually look like.
Ed Zitron, CEO of EZ Primary Research, put it bluntly: “Nobody has given a substantive explanation of what ‘slowdown’ means.” He questioned how Amodei’s plan would work in practice, noting that putting a plant from METR, where one of the guys who quit Anthropic went, in every AI company would be difficult to coordinate. “Democratic and global ‘co-ordination’? Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Those who sound the alarm are pleased with the sensation, though the scheme they propose leaves much to be desired.
Key Facts Box
- Dario Amodei, head of Anthropic, urged a slowdown on Saturday
- Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk said they agreed
- Jacob Coxon, ex-Anthropic researcher, told the BBC staff were “genuinely frightened”
- Alexander Voica is from the UK AI company Synthesia
- Sasha Luccioni is founder of Sustainable AI
- Professor Dame Wendy Hall has advised the UN on AI
- Parker Thayer’s post on X was viewed nearly eight million times
The caution lights are on. The sector is investing at a level that fits its aims. The dangers are spoken of without hiding. Yet the way ahead has not been laid out.
The economy slowing down could cause the bubble to break. It could also leave the industry weaker, less able to compete against rivals who continue to push ahead. At present, we know almost nothing about what a ‘slowdown’ actually entails.
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