Should frontier AI development slow down? Here’s what tech industry leaders say

Following Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s essay calling for leading AI companies to slow down the development of AI models due to safety concerns, several prominent Silicon Valley figures have weighed in – and not all of them are seeing eye to eye on what should come next.

Amodei on Saturday, September 12, published an essay titled ‘We Must Pace the Frontier’ in which he argued that AI was advancing too quickly for researchers to continue building it safely. He pointed to two key warning signs: early indications of self-improving AI and the recent OpenAI-Hugging Face incident.

Amodei also laid out a three-step plan to put the slowdown into action, including allowing third-party evaluators to assess frontier AI models with access comparable to that of employees.

In a rare show of support, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis, and several others said they agreed on the need for a slower pace. However, tech industry leaders such as David Sacks and AI commentators were quick to question Amodei’s motivations.

Essentially, the call for a slowdown of frontier-level AI progress has exposed a deep divide between those who believe governments should police AI and others who believe regulatory intervention would crush competition. Here is who said what, and where they stand.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

“I agree with Dario [Amodei] that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,” Altman wrote on X on Saturday.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the Express Adda at New Delhi on February 20, 2026. Photo: Abhinav Saha

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Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX

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Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

Nadella also announced a ‘Code of Conduct’ for Microsoft’s MAI models developed in-house.

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