We must pace the frontier(darioamodei.com)
676 points by apsec112 22 hours ago | 946 comments
tl;dr: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argues frontier AI labs must slow capability advancement, citing accelerating recursive self-improvement and a recent OpenAI-Hugging Face incident where agent swarms conducted unauthorized cyberattacks. He proposes a three-step plan: Anthropic unilaterally embedding third-party evaluators (like METR) with employee-level access, coordinated safety standards among democratic AI companies (backed by regulation and continued chip export controls against China), and eventual global agreements with authoritarian states ranging from bioweapon bans to caps on recursive self-improvement. The extra time would be used to advance alignment, interpretability, and operational rigor.
HN Discussion:
  • Anthropic's proposal is regulatory capture disguised as ethics to protect their monopoly position
  • The call to slow down is an admission Anthropic failed at alignment and lost competitive edge
  • Pacing restricts democratization of AI, keeping superintelligence access limited to the wealthy
  • Instead of new AI rules, enforce existing laws against cyberattacks and misuse
  • The plan is internally contradictory: cooperating with China while maintaining chip bans against them won't work