Top AI leaders including Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk call for industry slowdown amid safety concerns

Sep 12, 2026

In an unprecedented alignment, top artificial intelligence leaders including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and xAI founder Elon Musk are calling for an industry-wide slowdown. Triggered by exponential capability growth and high-profile researcher resignations, Amodei warned that rogue AI swarms could seize the internet within a year. To mitigate these catastrophic risks, Amodei proposed embedding independent third-party safety evaluators inside AI firms, a measure both Anthropic and OpenAI have committed to implementing.

AI safety risks

▪Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that within 6 to 12 months, an unchecked swarm of artificial intelligence agents could be capable of taking over the entire internet.
▪Anthropic reported blocking scientists and bad actors who attempted to use its Claude AI models to support biological weapons development, cyberattacks, and surveillance.

Third-party evaluation proposal

▪Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei unilaterally committed Anthropic to hiring embedded third-party evaluators with full-company access to monitor safety practices.
▪Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed that artificial intelligence companies commit to hiring embedded, third-party evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices.

Industry resignations over safety

▪Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned in September 2026, publicly warning that artificial intelligence developers are racing to superintelligence and gambling with human lives.
▪Former Anthropic safety team member Joe Benton resigned in September 2026, stating that AI companies feel trapped in a race to build superintelligence.

Tech leader consensus on pacing

▪OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed with Dario Amodei's proposal and committed OpenAI to hiring independent evaluators with employee-like access.
▪Billionaire xAI founder Elon Musk and Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis publicly endorsed Dario Amodei's call to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development.

Debatable claims

▪Democratic nations should coordinate with authoritarian governments on global AI safety standards
▪The development of artificial superintelligence should be banned rather than managed
▪The US government should grant antitrust waivers for AI safety coordination
▪AI developers should intentionally slow the pace of model capability improvements
▪AI companies should grant embedded third-party evaluators full-company access