OpenAI and Anthropic staff petition US for AI pace

Employees from leading artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Anthropic are circulating a petition urging the U.S. government to support an international effort to deliberately pace the development of advanced AI systems, warning of a "real risk" that the technology could outpace human understanding and control. The petition, which is also being shared with staff at Google DeepMind, calls for the development of technical and governance tools to manage the speed of automated AI research.

This internal employee action coincides with reported policy cooperation between the two companies and the federal government. According to reports, OpenAI and Anthropic are working with the Trump administration to shape a voluntary federal review system for frontier AI models with advanced cybersecurity or national security capabilities. This process, directed by an executive order issued on June 2, would allow developers to provide government agencies with access to such models for up to 30 days before their release to other trusted partners. Federal agencies face a deadline of Aug. 1 to define which systems qualify for this review.

The employee petition argues that current regulatory...