What execs and politicians are saying about slowing down AI development

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sparked a major debate by publishing an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," arguing for slowing the pace of AI development through three key steps: embedding independent safety evaluators, coordinating standards among democratic AI companies, and fostering global government coordination. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis expressed agreement, supporting the idea of independent evaluation and shared safety frameworks, while emphasizing that "pacing" does not mean stopping progress. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also endorsed Amodei's points. In contrast, U.S. political figures largely pushed back against the idea of a slowdown. President Donald Trump dismissed the need for external guardrails, asserting strong presidential control and framing any slowdown as a conspiracy benefiting China. Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed skepticism, with Vance calling the industry's push for regulation a potential "trojan horse" and Johnson stressing the national security imperative to not fall behind China, advocating for industry-government dialogue instead.

(Source：The Verge)