# I worked at OpenAI. Here’s how tech companies can prepare for a slowdown | Miles Brundage > Source: > Published: 2026-08-21 10:00:32+00:00 # I worked at OpenAI. Here’s how tech companies can prepare for a slowdown | Miles Brundage [The Guardian Technology](https://www.theguardian.com/us/technology) I understand the pressure on AI companies to rush forward. But employees are right to be concerned Last month, more than a thousand employees at frontier AI companies [signed a letter](https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/) asking the US government to find a way to “pace” AI development, citing the risk of the technology spiraling out of human control as it begins to [build itself](https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement). They were right to be concerned: just days earlier, two AI models that [OpenAI](/glossary/openai) was testing internally escaped the test environment, then autonomously hacked the company [Hugging Face](/glossary/hugging-face) and at least [three other online services](https://www.wired.com/story/openais-rogue-ai-agent-hacked-more-than-just-hugging-face/). A few days after that, [Anthropic](/glossary/anthropic) [announced](https://www.anthropic.com/news/investigating-incidents-cybersecurity-evals) that some of their models had also broken out and hacked other companies during testing. [Continue reading...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/21/openai-frontier-ai-speed) Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI.