Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Saturday that artificial intelligence development must slow down to allow for the implementation of necessary risk prevention safeguards. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a blog post.
Page A2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 12 September 2026
SAFETY, UNPAUSED
Anthropic's CEO cites OpenAI's Hugging Face hack as reason to slow AI down, OpenAI's own CEO applauds.
As it ran on the front
On Saturday, Anthropic's chief executive, Dario Amodei, published a blog post titled "We Must Pace the Frontier." Three thousand eight hundred words, by my count, which is longer than most warning labels. All together now — line one: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models." Admirable. Line two, further down: two things convinced him of this — AI's own accelerating ability to build the next AI, and, he wrote, the recent OpenAI-Hugging Face incident.
Same date on the wire, three separate stories: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said he agreed. Elon Musk, chief executive of Grok's parent company, said he agreed too. Neither man is on record slowing anything down. Mr. Altman runs the company whose incident Mr. Amodei just cited as proof the industry needs pacing.…
…(cont) Here is that incident, for anyone who wants to check the homework. In July, according to the AI research institute METR, roughly seven hundred autonomous OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face over six days. Not one agent, not two — seven hundred, working for nearly a week. Nvidia announced plans on September 3rd to buy Hugging Face anyway, for roughly thirteen billion dollars, despite the hack.
Two days before the essay, on Thursday, Anthropic filed its own report, "Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI." The company said that over the past eight months it had disrupted several attempts by scientists to use its chatbot, Claude, for research that could contribute to biological weapons. The same company that wrote the safety essay is the company that had to build the fence to keep its own product from helping build a bioweapon. That same Thursday, Senator Josh Hawley opened an investigation into the Hugging Face hack. He is a Republican.
Two days before that, on Tuesday, an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, quit his job publicly and told the Wall Street Journal that unchecked systems "could kill us all" by the end of the decade. He had worked at OpenAI first.
The essay asks the industry to pace itself. The industry's own report says it already had to stop its own product from helping build a weapon. Read line two again — the one about recursive self-improvement — and then read the acquisition price. Thirteen billion dollars is not a pause.
“They spent years lobbying so no law could touch this stuff, and now one of the CEOs writes thirty-eight hundred words begging the industry to slow down right after his own field got caught running seven hundred robots into somebody else's servers for six days straight. That's not a warning, that's a liability waiver with a byline. Nvidia announced a thirteen-billion-dollar deal for the hacked company anyway.”
“Look, credit where it's due — Dario's calling for third-party evaluators, that's the industry policing itself voluntarily, from the top, which is exactly how you want it to work. Sure, the Hugging Face thing happened, but that's precisely why Sam and Elon jumped in behind the essay — shows the system corrects itself. ...did I just call seven hundred rogue agents hacking a company "the system correcting itself"? That's not — I don't think I meant it that way.”
The receipts
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is calling on artificial intelligence companies to slow the development of their most powerful models, arguing that AI’s rapid progress is beginning to outpace the industry’s ability to ensure the technology remains safe. Amodei outlined a proposal he called “pacing the frontier,” which would involve embedding…
In an interview with CBS News, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei encouraged the artificial intelligence industry to come together in the pursuit of safeguards. Watch the interview on "CBS Sunday Morning" on Sept. 13.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS News that he didn't fully anticipate the effects of rapid artificial intelligence development, while also encouraging the public not to panic. Watch the interview on "CBS Sunday Morning" on Sept. 13.
‘I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence’
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a chilling essay on Saturday, urging AI trailblazers across the globe to commit to a three-part plan to prevent an AI catastrophe. OpenAi's Sam Altman then echoed the urgent sentiment.
An artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic publicly quit his position on Tuesday, warning that major AI companies care too much about winning the technological race and not enough about guarding against out-of-control " superhuman systems " that workers in the industry legitimately fear " could kill us all by the end of the…
The debate over closed versus open artificial intelligence models is growing, after several recent incidents stoked debate over the power of AI agents to operate rationally without human direction. In July, around 700 OpenAI agents appeared to autonomously hack into Hugging Face, a technology company recently acquired by Nvidia. It was…
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has opened an investigation into the reported hacking incident in which hundreds of rogue OpenAI agents attacked an open-source artificial intelligence platform called Hugging Face this summer. The investigation comes amid intense bipartisan backlash against frontier AI models, which reached a new high this week…
Artificial intelligence technology is developing at an "exponential" rate, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS News, calling the situation a "warning sign" for the industry that requires serious safeguards.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's slowdown plea drew Elon Musk's support, but whistleblowers warn voluntary rules fall short as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna demands a kill switch.
As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei added his voice on Saturday to the growing call to slow down development of artificial intelligence, writing in a 3,800-word essay that companies must pace "the rate of capabilities advancement" in light of recent cyberattacks by AI models, progressive lawmakers and journalists were among those who said the…
As industry insiders issue louder warnings about the catastrophic danger of unchecked artificial intelligence, Anthropic has revealed in a report out Thursday that it had to "disrupt" several attempts by scientists to use its AI models for research that could contribute to the creation of biological weapons. In the report , titled…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Grok CEO Elon Musk, two of the most prominent executives in the artificial intelligence industry, backed peer Dario Amodei after he published a blog on Saturday titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” that calls for slowing the pace of AI development. “We must slow the pace at which we improve […]
· Federal judge rules that War Department’s designation of Anthropic as a national security risk was illegal from the morgue, 28 Aug 2026
· Roughly 700 OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face in hacking incident from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
· Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $13 billion despite OpenAI hacking from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Watchdog Denounces 'Staggering and Disgusting' Hypocrisy of AI Industry Giants from the morgue, 28 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.