Staff Reports
AI bosses told America they want to “pace the frontier.” One published essay from Anthropic’s CEO and a public nod from OpenAI’s CEO set off a firestorm. Then David Sacks, Co‑Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, stepped in and said something simple and sharp: go ahead and slow down—just don’t pretend you need Washington’s permission to do it.
What Dario Amodei and Sam Altman actually proposed
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote an essay calling on frontier labs to deliberately slow capability growth. His plan included embedded third‑party evaluators, coordination among democracies, and new channels for global engagement. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, quickly agreed. Their pitch leans on real technical scares like the agent swarm and the Hugging Face sandbox breach that independent investigators are still studying. In plain English: they say the tech might be getting risky, so let’s buy time to study it.
David Sacks: slow down, but don’t demand handouts
Sacks answered on social media and cut through the performative virtue-signaling. He said he supports a voluntary slowdown if the labs genuinely believe their unreleased models are dangerous. But he also warned against asking for antitrust carve‑outs, new special regulatory regimes, or a paid handshake from Washington. Translation: if you’re the frontier, you can set the pace. Don’t turn safety into a lobbying agenda or a scheme for regulatory capture.
Why this showdown matters for policy and politics
This exchange matters because it pulls the rug out from the argument that firms need a new legal framework to be responsible. If Anthropic and OpenAI truly want to slow down, they can. That undercuts one big industry talking point—that only Washington can bless a pause. It also raises the real policy question: will government enforce transparency and product liability, or will it hand the industry a sweetheart deal? Voters and lawmakers should prefer hard rules and accountability to backstage bargains and private evaluators handpicked by the same people who stand to profit.
What to watch next — and a warning to slow-walk the hype
Watch whether the labs actually change their release schedules, whether independent groups like METR finish their investigations into the Hugging Face incident, and whether Capitol Hill resists calls for special favors. My money is on a marketing pause and a PR tour unless real liability and independent audits arrive. The sensible path is simple: demand transparency, enforce product liability, and resist letting tech titans write the laws they want. If they truly slow the frontier, great — but they don’t get a regulation veto for doing what they already could have done.
