Workers at leading AI companies call for a slowdown in AI development

The people who best understand what artificial intelligence is capable of are the very workers calling for its rapid development to be reined in, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman meets with government officials in Washington, D.C., this week. 

Altman’s meetings follow the release of a public letter signed by more than 1,000 AI staffers across leading firms calling for the industry to be more tightly regulated.

“To realize AI’s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight,” read the letter, whose signatories include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta executives, OpenAI researchers and more.

Slowing AI’s development runs counter to firms’ business goals as they compete with one another. “And today, the world lacks the technical and governance tools to deliberately pace frontier-wide progress,” the letter added. 

The letter, and Altman’s meetings with national cyber director Sean Craincross, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and other high-ranking officials, follow a high-profile cybersecurity incident during internal testing of an OpenAI model that went rogue and hacked into another startup, called Hugging Face, compromising customer data. 

Altman described the incident on a recent podcast as “a kind of extremely sci-fi cyber incident,” which he said set off alarm bells. “We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” he said. 

Altman did not sign the letter calling for the pacing of AI development, but told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday that “we agree on a lot of the principles of that.”

In 2023, Altman called on the federal government to regulate AI companies so that they wouldn’t become dangerously capable without appropriate guardrails in place. And yet, the company continues to improve its own models’ capabilities. 

“He’s really good at saying the right thing in the right moment. But it’s important to point out that OpenAI has not actually slowed down the pace,” senior TechCrunch reporter Rebecca Bellan told CBS News. “They can be worried about this on a personal level. But at the end of the day, if I’m being cynical…competition is more important.”