AI sector heavyweights back calls for change in pace – how we got herepublished at 11:57 BST
Discussions around the development of artificial intelligence – and concerns that it could pose a risk to society – are not new.
But comments made by a former employee of Anthropic – the AI firm behind Claude – last week have catalysed the conversation.
Here’s how it has played out so far:
Last Wednesday, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon wrote on social media that he had quit the company, and accused both Anthropic and OpenAi – where he previously worked – of ignoring the dangers posed by AI.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he wrote. “No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
On Saturday, the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei published an essay on “why the AI industry should slow down”, with a three-part plan for doing so.
He added: “I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”
His argument has been backed over the weekend by other heavyweights in the AI sector, including OpenAI head Sam Altman and Elon Musk – who developed the Grok generative AI under his SpaceX company.
On Monday, tech stocks fell following the calls from industry bosses to slow down the pace of AI development.