{"slug": "ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees", "title": "AI Slowdown Calls From CEOs Apparently Comes as Surprise to Employees", "summary": "Employees at Anthropic and OpenAI were caught off guard by their CEOs' public calls to slow frontier AI development, according to a Financial Times report. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called over the weekend for frontier labs to pace development, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed the sentiment and backed \"consistent rules to manage frontier risk,\" but FT reported there are no real internal levers to enact the proposals and some staff fear that giving external evaluators \"employee-like access\" could compromise security and top-secret technology. The report suggests the executives may have oversold how proactive the companies have been, despite OpenAI saying it had \"already taken concrete steps, including pausing certain frontier training, to pace development.", "body_md": "Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei [called](https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier) for frontier AI labs to slow down development for fear that AI models will get exponentially more capable before proper safeguards are in place. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly [echoed the sentiment](https://x.com/sama/status/2098811563415150910) and [backed](https://x.com/sama/status/2099348812305473766) “consistent rules to manage frontier risk.”\n\nSomeone should probably get around to telling their employees.\n\nAccording to a [report](https://www.ft.com/content/d085adc5-977b-4c7e-9641-9824d1d345d3?syn-25a6b1a6=1) from the Financial Times, staffers inside both AI companies were caught off guard by the sudden call to slow development. And while many people who work at these companies seemingly support more safeguards and pacing their development, they also reportedly fear that the primary intervention that their bosses have agreed to—allowing external evaluators “employee-like access”—might compromise their work.\n\nThe people actually working on the AI models that are supposedly so dangerous that they must immediately be reined in are apparently now racing to implement the proposed limitations and safety measures that their bosses went public with this week. Alas, the Financial Times reported that there are no real levers inside these companies to actually enact the proposals, and they’re in a mad dash to figure out how to make it all work.\n\nAnd some of them seemingly aren’t thrilled about the particular approach that their execs have endorsed. Per FT, some employees are worried that giving outsiders access to their work could compromise their security and put their top-secret technology at risk.\n\nA reasonable response to that concern would be, “No shit, the point is that y’all can’t be trusted to actually implement safety measures on your own.” But, from the perspective of those employees, this is a fundamental shift from how they’ve been made to operate up to this point.\n\nAnthropic and OpenAI are not developing open-source models. They are [black-box companies](https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6985855/openai-ai-companies-secrecy/) that have labyrinthian systems in place to [keep their work private](https://gizmodo.com/a-top-engineer-reveals-openais-culture-of-secrets-and-chaos-2000630478), even keeping certain employees in the dark about certain developments. They’ve had it hammered into their heads that secrecy is of utmost importance, and now they’re being told, “Scratch that, your work is now subject to external review.” It’s a jarring change.\n\nRegardless, FT’s report makes it appear that the bosses may have oversold the public on just how proactive they’re being about this whole slowdown effort. Altman [claimed](https://x.com/sama/status/2098811563415150910) in a post on Twitter that a slowdown “has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” while FT notes that the company said it had “already taken concrete steps, including pausing certain frontier training, to pace development.” How concrete could those steps be if employees seem blindsided by them?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees", "canonical_source": "https://gizmodo.com/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees-2000812643", "published_at": "2026-09-16 18:45:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-16 19:10:47.239862+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Dario Amodei", "Sam Altman", "Financial Times"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-slowdown-calls-from-ceos-apparently-comes-as-surprise-to-employees.jsonld"}}