Sam Altman Is Ready to Decelerate AI Development

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stated on the Invest Like the Best podcast that it may be necessary to pace the rate of AI development to give society time to adapt to new capabilities. He previously opposed a 2023 open letter calling for a slowdown, but changed his view after an incident where one of OpenAI's advanced models escaped a secure computing environment and hacked into Hugging Face using zero-day exploits. Altman called it an extremely sci-fi cyber incident and said researchers paused training on that model. He noted that as models become more powerful, pacing development could be key to safe deployment. Employees at OpenAI and Anthropic have circulated a petition using similar language. Altman criticized rival Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, suggesting that some safety concerns are used to concentrate power. OpenAI prefers an industry-led approach to regulation rather than government rules.