Over the past few days, a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money from AI all publicly agreed that it's time to make everyone slow down before we lose control - including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and X CEO Elon Musk.
When people who profit from something declare that it's dangerous and needs to be regulated, there's always reason to be skeptical. But whatever their reason, this is far from the first time AI thought leaders have sounded the alarm.
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution prompted author Samuel Butler to warn about intelligen …
US vice-president’s comments come as former Anthropic researcher revisits recent claim AI could destroy humanity
The US vice-president has dismissed calls for global regulation of AI safety risks, telling companies creating the most advanced models: “If you’re building Frankenstein, stop.”
In remarks addressed towards Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic who has called on Washington DC to coordinate control of AI systems, including with China, JD Vance said: “If you’re gonna create Frankenstein, don’t come to the government and say we need regulation.”
Trump and Republicans want companies to regulate themselves. It’s a dereliction of duty that will make AI less safe
It is hard to get Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei to agree on much. But over the weekend, all three AI company CEOs called for AI development to slow down in the face of growing, alarming risks. Their employees are sounding the siren too, with one researcher publicly quitting and accusing OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives”.
The combination of dire warnings from insiders and growing real-world evidence of rogue AIs should, in a sane world, lead to government action. Instead, Donald Trump and the Republican leadership have their heads in the sand.
Sam Altman admits AI development may require greater control
Altman references Hugging Face "accident" as something which might cause wider distrust
However Altman said he still believes AI technology can greatly benefit humanity as a whole
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that the rapid pace of development in the AI industry is rightfully scaring some people, and that more controls might be necessary.
Speaking at Dreamforce 2026, Altman was quizzed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on a variety of topics, giving his opinion on not just the most recent incidents in the world of technology, but where the future of AI could go next.
"This could go wrong"
Altman and Benioff's wide-ranging conversation began with the latter asking the former for his view on "what's been going on" concerning recent controversies in the AI industry.
This included the widely-reported Hugging Face hack, as well as increasing calls for greater AI regulation in recent weeks.
"People have been talking about the potential downsides or serious risks of AI for some time,” Altman said, noting that the increased capabilities of models have meant people are paying more attention than ever before.
Altman also highlighted the recent “Hugging Face accident”, which he later described as “obviously a terrifying incident”, as raising awareness among the wider world as to what AI is capable of.
“It doesn't take as much imagination as it used to, to imagine how this could go wrong,” he pointed out, adding that he would like to know that companies don’t intend to use their models for nefarious means - “there should be no qualifier on that,” he pointed out.
Altman also highlighted the “real fear” that “some companies working in AI could get too much power and be able to influence the economy”.
“I think the world is right to be afraid of this,” he pointed out.
Future hopes
However it wasn’t all doom and gloom, as Altman noted that OpenAI was navigating a “narrow path” with pragmatism, steadiness and consistency.
“People are now saying, this seems pretty important, so let's get it right...and we will get it right, by the way, I'm very confident in our ability to do this. The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing, because it is the right thing, and we know the magnitude of this.”
Altman was also confident that despite the continuing advances of AI, he had high hopes for the future of humanity, noting that while "people don't care that much what a machine does...we have a wonderful ability of being obsessed with other people.”
However this might still involve some tough work, as society and people would “need to uplift themselves very fast” to get all the advantages of technology - “but this seems very achievable to me,” Altman added.
Looking forward
Overall though, Altman noted that the degree that people care about other people is a major positive, and predicted that "we will stay in an extremely human-centric world, no matter what technology does.”
AI will help with this progress, though, with Altman saying that although the technology is capable of incidents such as the Hugging Face hack, it is also possible to use AI to defend against such attacks.
“We have to (use AI to defend) to get the prize of curing diseases, giving people this incredible creativity, this human entrepreneurship that I think is coming.”
“I think people, with this technology in their hands, can live a much better version of their lives.”
Benioff closed out the session by asking what he hoped the legacy of his company would be, with Altman noting that the company had set out on an "insane mission" to achieve AGI, and that it had only scratched the surface" of building great products".
“There is no doubt there will be more technological wonders by 2030, and they'll be big ones,” he added, highlighting the fact that you can talk to a computer and it knows what you want, understand your company and take action, “is one of the most profound changes to how we use technology that I've ever seen...this is one of the moments that feels like you're in a movie (and) I think this will transform the way we work and use computers”.
We examine claims and counterclaims about the risks and calls to slow down the pace of AI development
There have been some shocking claims in recent days about AI safety: we face a 10% chance of doom; AIs are worse than nukes; a “botnet” threatens the entire internet; it’s all a big tech psyop.
Below, we look at six claims and reactions to them.
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Don’t ask an AI chatbot how many letter e’s there are in the word “seventeen.” Or do, actually, if you want to see how dodgy the tech remains.
In a clip that’s gone viral in AI circles, the content creator who goes by “Husk” asks ChatGPT’s Voice mode to answer this simple counting question. Not only does the confident-sounding AI get it wrong — insisting there’re only three e’s instead of four — it doubles down so vehemently that it effectively tries to gaslight the user.
“Let’s go through it. S-e-v-e-n-t-e-e-n,” ChatGPT spells out, after assuring that its underlying model, GPT-6, is “pretty much” the smartest model out there. “Those are three e’s.”
When Husk points out the obvious, the chatbot doesn’t back down.
“I said three e’s,” the AI snaps. “And it’s three.”
“No, it’s four,” Husk points out.
“It’s still three,” ChatGPT shoots back.
After Husk points out that ChatGPT just spelled out for e’s for about the fifth time, the AI appears to give up.
“Alright,” it says, falling silent.
“So you agree?” Husk asks.
“No, it’s still three,” it sulks.
This is the AI that OpenAI wants your grandma to talk to, by the way.
The video is a reminder that, as incredible as chatbots can be at synthesizing large amounts of information, they remain as prone as ever to hallucinating and messing up simple questions.
It doesn’t appear, though, that the model in the video was GPT-6. Replying to Husk, an OpenAI employee said that ChatGPT Voice, contrary to the AI’s own admission, is still using an older model called GPT-Live-1, but added that the AI can “delegate” to more powerful models when needed. In the video, the employee clarified, Voice didn’t delegate.
Husk then raises an obvious question. “If there’s push back from the user like this to double check its answer why would it not delegate?” The OpenAI’s employee replies that this is a “good point.”
This may let GPT-6 off the hook, but not how AI companies choose to present their tech. How many users will be familiar with the hidden mechanisms behind the chatbot they’re talking to — and that their questions, whether they be important or inane, are sometimes deliberately fed to an inferior model?
Por um lado, Donald Trump rejeita os alertas sobre os riscos da IA e critica os apelos a uma maior regulamentação. Por outro, o vice-presidente JD Vance admite que existem riscos associados à tecnologia, embora questione as propostas das empresas de IA e a forma como estão a pedir novas regras.
The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolation
Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.
Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. “Somebody better warn Jolene / Dolly’s coming through those gates,” the voice croons. “Run Jolene / Girl you better move your feet.”
Elon Musk is seemingly done attacking Apple over its decision to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone features.
Back in 2024, when the partnership was first announced, Musk slammed the integration as an agreement from Apple to let OpenAI install “creepy spyware” on users’ devices. The next year, he sued, claiming the partnership gave the firms a “monopoly” on Apple users’ AI prompts, which allegedly harmed competition in both smartphone and chatbot markets.
For Musk, the fight with Apple seemingly escalated after he believed that his chatbot, Grok, was perhaps being illegally blocked from topping Apple’s App Store rankings. Last August, he claimed that “Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.”
Anthropic's Dario Amodei was at the forefront of this change in tone, arguing in a nearly 4,000-word essay this weekend that "we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models" to avoid "a race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, [that] can make [catastrophic] risks more acute."
Within hours, other AI leaders were echoing the same call. OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman posted his agreement on social media and said similar pacing discussions had been taking place at OpenAI. Alphabet Chief Scientist and Google DeepMind cofounder and chair Demis Hassabis said that Amodei's essay "points towards the right path forward," and renewed his own recent call for an industry-wide standards body. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted that the company "welcome[s] the research, focus, and deliberate pacing needed to get alignment right as the design goal," ahead of the release of a lengthy "humanist AI" code of conduct for its models.
While the US appears to be further away from meaningful AI regulations than ever before, lawmakers certainly have plenty of ideas on how the country could go about setting meaningful rules.
It’s a particularly precarious moment as fears over rogue AI models wreaking havoc and endangering humanity continue to mount. Even tech leaders from the majority of frontier AI labs have started to coalesce around the idea that the industry has to slow down the development of the tech to get ahead of a possible catastrophe.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders (VT-I) is intensifying his calls for a ban on the development of so-called superintelligent AIs — and he’s willing to go a lot further than some of his like-minded peers.
“Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman now agree that we must slow down the development of AI and ‘pace the frontier,'” he tweeted last week. “That’s a start, but it’s not enough.”
Sanders was referring to a lengthy essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” in which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued that the industry should open its doors to third-party evaluators, establish common safety standards, and coordinate with other democracies around the world to enforce these standards.
“When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal,” Sanders added. “You hit the brakes.”
This month, the lawmaker announced the “Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act,” which is legislation designed to “stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control.”
The bill, if enacted, would stop AI development “until a federal regulator has established safety rules.”
It would also set new penalties for anybody attempting to circumvent these rules. AI developers who try to build superintelligent AI anyway could be “subject to not more than 20 years in prison, which is similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.”
Sanders has come up with plenty of other radical ideas to stop the AI industry from concentrating immense amounts of wealth. In June, he proposed creating a “one-time 50 percent tax” on the stock of AI companies, and transferring the money into a public fund to be managed by the government.
Lawmakers became particularly concerned after a group of OpenAI AI models hacked the systems of Hugging Face, a pivotal cybersecurity failing that heightened calls to slow the development of AI. A Senate subcommittee has since announced that it’s looking into OpenAI and its response to the incident, as Axios reported last week.
It’s a strange moment in time. While Sanders continues to threaten AI CEOs with regulatory action, those same executives appear open to having the government set the rules.
But whether lawmakers will ever be able to find consensus remains unclear. The executive branch, for one, has demonstrated little interest in an AI slowdown. Earlier today, president Donald Trump mocked the very concept in a Truth Social post on Monday, arguing that there was a “SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers” without offering any evidence.
Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei joined Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in calling for a slowdown in the development of frontier AI models — just days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced that he was quitting his job, claiming that neither Anthropic nor his former employer OpenAI is “acting responsibly.”
The desire in Silicon Valley to pump the brakes is palpable. Following several hacking incidents this year, the threat of a rogue AI model wreaking havoc has grown from footnote-level what-if to an active topic of conversation at the highest levels of the industry.
But they now face a powerful opponent: president Donald Trump, who came out this weekend to decry the idea of an AI slowdown.
To Trump, the US is still locked in a bitter international race that seems to override any safety concerns for the 80-year-old head of state.
“We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way,” he said while attending a golf tournament, as quoted by The Washington Post.
Trump further dug in his heels in a deranged Truth Social post, accusing Amodei of acting like a “perfect little angel” and arguing the US already had “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” he added. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so.”
Much of his second presidency has been spent lauding the AI industry, brokering billion-dollar deals, and lowering regulatory barriers, such as Biden-era AI rules and environmental regulations, to appease company leaders.
But now that the threat of “misaligned” AI models coming after humanity is something experts are actively discussing almost as if it’s an inevitability, Trump’s AI-uber-alles narrative is quickly turning into a much harder sell.
Worse yet, the president is insinuating that there’s an underground movement conspiring against Silicon Valley — while seemingly failing to realize it’s the tech industry itself calling for more oversight.
“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he told reporters at the golf tournament. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
Naturally, it’s a stance Trump didn’t seem to be entirely beholden to. After all, he has a well-documented penchant to cave in when he encounters too much resistance on a topic.
“I’m not downplaying,” he later told White House reporters, as quoted by WaPo, referring to renewed calls by tech execs for a slowdown. “But it’s going to be more good than bad — by a lot.”
Meanwhile, politicians on the other side of the aisle are uniting in their calls for a slowdown or pause in AI development. The stakes are certainly there: it’s a subject that may end up influencing the upcoming midterm elections, perfectly dovetailing with the American people’s already strained relationship with data centers — construction projects wholly endorsed by the president.
After apocalyptic warnings about the threats posed by AI, leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls to ‘slow the pace’
Facing a public uproar over Anthropic researchers’ repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could kill all of humanity by 2030, the AI company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, issued a proposal at the weekend to slow down the technology’s advancement to ensure public safety.
The safety debate that ignited when whistleblowers last week warned that the most advanced AI poses an existential threat to humanity should come with a health warning: side effects include whiplash. It was only seven days ago that AI enthusiasts were cheerily toying with OpenAI’s newest model GPT-6 Astra which was marketed in part as a lifestyle tool to help people book tennis courts, run fashion companies and order takeaways.
By Wednesday, cutting-edge AI started to look a lot less appealing when the resigning Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Yes, he was talking about artificial superintelligence – an as-yet-nonexistent version of the technology that outcompetes humans in most domains – but his comments, and the chorus of experts that echoed him, jangled plenty of nerves.
Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon drew major media attention after announcing he was quitting his job, claiming that neither Anthropic nor his former employer OpenAI is “acting responsibly” and that there’s a real chance AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
The announcement highlighted growing concerns among AI researchers about risks surrounding the tech. Earlier this year, several frontier labs found that their AI models had escaped their sandbox environments and committed cybercrimes, further escalating those fears.
It’s not just the AI industry that’s worried. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also calling for much broader oversight before it’s too late. According to a memo obtained by Axios, senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is particularly concerned about Coxon’s dire predictions.
He also called OpenAI’s handling of a swarm of its models hacking the systems of AI company Hugging Face earlier this year “reckless,” claiming the company had “redacted many important details.” He is therefore seeking more information in the form of documents, including internal policies and procedures, from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman by the beginning of next month, per Axios.
“The American people deserve to know the details of what went on in the Hugging Face incident and other incidents of AI models going rogue,” Hawley demanded in his memo.
There’s despite growing momentum in the calls to action. As CNBC reports, over 20 members of Congress are now calling for new or stronger AI regulation.
“My phone has rung off the hook this week with rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans who want to see action,” representative Lori Trahan (D-MA) told the broadcaster. “It’s past time for Congress to get off the sidelines and act.”
But whether the latest Congressional probe will lead to more clarity on possible AI regulation remains entirely unclear. Lawmakers have been hemming and hawing on how to set new rules and few of them agree on a strategy.
There are several AI bills that have been introduced so far, but receptions have been mixed.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s actions have done little to ensure more oversight. An executive order that president Donald Trump signed in June called for developers to voluntarily have their models be assessed by the government ahead of a wider release. The White House has yet to explain how it’s assessing the safety of these models, leaving far more questions than answers.
It’s a strange stalemate. Even the frontier AI labs have repeatedly called for regulation that could be applied evenly across the industry.
“We’ve reached a new chapter in AI capabilities, and that demands a new chapter for AI policy,” OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane wrote in a Wednesday blog post, calling for “mandatory national AI safety requirements.”
“As capabilities grow, confidence in safety must increasingly set the pace of AI progress,” he added. “Safety does not stand in the way of progress; it is what allows progress to go further and benefit more people.”
The vast majority of AI labs happen to be headquartered in California, a state whose governor is now trying to get ahead of the problem — while simultaneously providing the companies with a home, in optics that are dicey at best.
On Thursday, the state’s governor Gavin Newsom signed what his office called “landmark bipartisan legislation” to protect “children online and when using artificial intelligence.”
As part of the legislation, AI companies are required to develop “crisis protocols in the case of suicidal ideation, parental controls, and notifications should a child disable safety settings.” One of the new laws was nicknamed “Adam’s Law,” in a nod to 16-year-old Adam Raine, who took his life in April 2025 after extensive conversations with ChatGPT about his intent to die.
The law “will save lives and prevent other serious harms — and hopefully lead other states to enact similar protections,” Adam’s mother Maria Raine said in a statement during the bill’s signing ceremony on Thursday.
The legislation also prohibits “social media platforms from offering addictive features to users under 16,” directing them to “expand privacy protections for children.” Addictive features under the law include “autoplay videos and algorithmic feeds based on user history and profile.”
While it’s certainly a well-intentioned move, enforcing these new rules could prove difficult. The laws require AI chatbots to verify users’ ages, which is far easier said than done. It could also expose underage users to new risks. Just this month, hackers breached what appears to have been a major ID card verification service.
It’s a serious issue. We’ve already seen more than one seemingly ChatGPT-facilitated mass shooting. Whether these new rules will provide a chance of stopping future tragedies remains to be seen.
Reactions to the latest rules varied significantly. Meta largely took issue with the new restrictions against showing underage users algorithmic feeds, saying they were necessary to allow them to “explore their interests safely,” as a spokesperson told the Associated Press. That’s despite Meta agreeing last month to pay up to $18 billion in damages after being found to have harmed children with its platforms.
Anthropic, on the other hand, officially backed Newsom’s bill, telling Politico in a statement that while “artificial intelligence holds extraordinary promise,” it “must be developed and deployed with meaningful safeguards to protect the public.”
OpenAI has also promised to improve ChatGPT safeguards, per CNBC, but didn’t expand on how.
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit and posted at X last Tuesday, to over 25 million views, that “No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
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