Sam Altman may be open to putting the brakes on AI development

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees during a recent all-hands meeting that the company is open to slowing AI development, Bloomberg reports.

Altman expressed hope that rival AI labs will do the same. His stance follows chief scientist Jakub Pachocki’s public warnings advocating voluntary, coordinated slowdowns in cutting-edge AI.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, posting online that AI companies, including OpenAI, are gambling with human lives. His viral X post said, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

In late July, over 1,000 staffers across top AI firms signed a petition demanding a slowdown in technology’s progress.

The news comes as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, with the latter itself calling for a global pause in AI development.

However, whether multi-billion-dollar AI companies will coordinate and slow down advancements remains to be seen.