AI leaders call for slowdown, but no one agrees what that would mean

Concerns are mounting within the artificial intelligence industry over the pace of its development. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei recently called for AI progress to slow down, a view echoed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Meanwhile, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon revealed that many staff working on these systems are genuinely frightened about humanity's future.

However, experts warn that actually implementing a slowdown is far more complicated than it sounds. The United States is widely seen as anxious about losing the AI race to China — President Trump recently stated the US currently leads China in this field, stressing that whoever wins AI dominance wins overall. Industry observers note that no single company wants to be the first to pull back, fearing it would simply fall behind competitors.

An unclear solution

Although Amodei proposed a three-point plan involving independent monitoring, industry-wide rules and global regulation, critics such as researcher Ed Zitron argue that no one has given a clear explanation of what a "slowdown" would actually mean in practice or how it could be enforced.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that the AI industry consumes enormous financial and natural resources, while many companies adopting the technology report disappointing results. Economists predict that not all of today's AI giants will survive an expected market "levelling," or bursting of the bubble.

Experts, including Professor Dame Wendy Hall, argue that the current crisis stems from companies not behaving responsibly enough, rather than from the technology itself. At the same time, some warn that overly strict regulation could stifle innovation while significant uncertainty remains about how the technology will evolve.