Altman Calls for Slower AI Development to Avoid Loss of Control

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called for a slower, more cautious pace of artificial intelligence development, warning that rapid progress could lead to humanity losing control or a dangerous concentration of power. In a series of posts on X late Sunday night, Altman outlined two major risks: first, that humans could lose control of AI systems, and second, that a single person, company, or country could use an extraordinarily powerful AI to impose its worldview on others. "We are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people," Altman wrote. He stressed that alignment and safety techniques must stay ahead of progress in model capabilities. Altman distinguished his call for "pacing" from a full stop, insisting development would continue but should be slower than it otherwise might be to allow for safety measures like evaluations and monitoring. The comments followed an essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging frontier AI companies to slow the development of their most advanced models. Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk both expressed support for Amodei's position over the weekend.