{"slug": "altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word", "title": "Altman Matches Anthropic's AI Auditor Pledge While Musk Offers Three-Word Slowdown Backing", "summary": "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman committed OpenAI to matching Anthropic's pledge to give outside evaluators ongoing, employee-like access to its AI systems, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a roughly 3,800-word essay titled 'We Must Pace the Frontier' on Saturday calling for the industry to deliberately slow the rate of model capability improvement. Elon Musk endorsed the essay in a three-word post on X, writing 'Dario is right,' while Anthropic committed unilaterally to the first stage of Amodei's three-step plan; the proposal drew criticism from David Sacks, co-chair of Trump's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, and AI expert Professor Stuart Russell, who called the pacing strategy 'completely backwards.'", "body_md": "# Altman Matches Anthropic's AI Auditor Pledge While Musk Offers Three-Word Slowdown Backing\n\n## OpenAI will match Anthropic's commitment to give independent evaluators ongoing access, while the wider three-stage plan faces political and industry scepticism\n\nSam Altman has committed OpenAI to matching Anthropic's pledge to give outside evaluators ongoing, employee-like access to its AI systems.\n\nThe move came after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay calling on the industry to deliberately slow the pace of AI development. Altman backed the proposal, while Anthropic has committed unilaterally to the first stage of Amodei's three-step plan.\n\nElon Musk offered his own endorsement in far fewer words. The Tesla and xAI chief responded to Amodei's essay with a three-word post on X: 'Dario is right.' The public agreement between the three prominent figures is notable given the intense competition between their companies in the rapidly developing AI sector.\n\n## What Amodei Is Proposing\n\nAmodei published the roughly 3,800-word essay, titled 'We Must Pace the Frontier', on Saturday, arguing that the AI industry needs to deliberately slow the rate at which it improves model capabilities. Amodei said the aim was not to halt AI development but to give safety measures time to keep pace with rapidly improving capabilities.\n\nThe essay sets out a three-step framework. The first step, which Anthropic is adopting unilaterally, involves giving third-party evaluators ongoing, employee-like access inside the company to verify safety practices, report incidents and assess the alignment of models, training pipelines and processes.\n\nThe second step calls for AI companies in democratic countries to coordinate on common safety standards and limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress.\n\nThe third involves attempts by the US and other democratic governments to coordinate with authoritarian governments, including China, while recognising the difficulty of verifying compliance. Amodei also acknowledged that some forms of industry coordination could require government support because of legal restrictions.\n\n## The Backdrop to the Announcement\n\nThe essay landed days after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned and wrote on X that people working on AI believe the technology 'could kill us all by the end of the decade'.\n\nCoxon had spent three years working across the two companies and said he was concerned about the industry's increasingly rapid development of AI systems.\n\nAnthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger replied to Coxon's post, saying he agreed with his concerns and personally estimating the risk of AI causing human extinction at more than 10 per cent within the next decade.\n\nAnthropic separately disclosed that some users had circumvented its safety controls and used its models in ways that could support biological weapons development. The company stressed that the research was often dual-use and said it did not assert that the individuals involved intended harm.\n\n## Not Everyone Is Convinced\n\nThe proposal has also drawn criticism from some US officials and AI experts. David Sacks, co-chair of Trump's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, questioned why AI companies did not simply slow their own development.\n\nHe later warned that 'demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system'.\n\nAI expert Professor Stuart Russell was equally blunt, describing the pacing strategy as 'completely backwards'.\n\nRussell argued that simply slowing capability growth does not guarantee enough time to solve safety problems, saying instead that safety requirements should be established and further progress should occur only when those requirements are met.\n\nAltman's and Musk's public backing does not commit either company to Amodei's full three-step plan.\n\nTheir support has focused on the broader call for greater safety and, in OpenAI's case, matching Anthropic's approach to embedded third-party evaluators.\n\nWhether the later stages, which require coordinated action by competitors and governments, ever materialise remains uncertain.\n\nThe contrasting responses point to differences in Washington over how AI safety should be addressed. Sacks' criticism suggests the administration may resist measures that industry figures frame as urgent safety fixes, particularly where regulation could affect the pace of US AI development.\n\nThe significance of the agreement will depend on what happens next.\n\nIf rival labs and governments do not follow through on the later stages of Amodei's plan, the public alignment between Altman, Musk and Amodei may remain limited to support for greater AI safety and oversight rather than develop into broader coordination over how frontier AI models are built and tested.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2026. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/altman-musk-back-anthropic-ai-safety-plan-1819389", "published_at": "2026-09-13 19:28:03+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-13 19:51:46.322428+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Sam Altman", "Anthropic", "Dario Amodei", "Elon Musk", "xAI", "David Sacks", "Stuart Russell"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/altman-matches-anthropic-s-ai-auditor-pledge-while-musk-offers-three-word.jsonld"}}