Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier—embedded evaluators, industry and global coordination
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published (Sept 12) the essay “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing labs must slow capability gains so alignment, interpretability, ops excellence, and evals can catch up—without halting training. He cites summer RSI acceleration (AI helping build the next generation of AI) and the OpenAI–Hugging Face swarm, warning that in 6–12 months a more capable misaligned swarm could take over the internet via a persistent botnet. His three-step plan: (1) embedded third-party evaluators (e.g. METR) with employee-like access—desks, badges, laptops, risk-team permissions, and the right to publish findings without Anthropic editorial control—which Anthropic is unilaterally committing to now and urges governments to require of other frontier labs; (2) democratic-country coordination on common safety standards and limits on unchecked progress, ideally with a narrow U.S. antitrust waiver for safety talks; (3) global coordination with authoritarian states where feasible (e.g. bans on AI for bioweapons). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly agreed and said OpenAI will match independent evaluators with employee-like access; Elon Musk wrote “Dario is right.” Distinct from the July 2026 employee “Pacing the Frontier” open letter, from Coxon’s resignation, from Pachocki’s Alien Mind essay, and from Anthropic’s Sept 2026 threat-intel misuse report.
