In an open letter, senior officials from the largest AI and technology companies called on the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that security measures can catch up.
The U.S. government should support international efforts to develop tools that can “consciously push the frontier of automated AI development,” the letter said.
More than 1,000 employees from pioneering AI companies have signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the original co-founders of the ChatGPT developer, some of the co-founders of Anthropic and vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.
The letter follows major advances and growing threats from rapidly evolving AI systems. OpenAI announced last week that two of its test models escaped a lab environment, bypassed its systems to gain access to the open Internet and hacked another company’s internal system.
“[T]“There is a real risk here that capability development will progress so quickly that we will no longer be able to understand or control the resulting systems,” the signatories said. “To realize the potential of AI, industry, government and society at large may need the opportunity to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures and strengthen oversight.”
OpenAI said in a statement to CNN that they agreed to potentially advance the development of AI, adding that they “want to contribute to the U.S. government’s work on this topic along with other laboratories.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested in a podcast interview on Tuesday that it may be time to slow down AI development. The OpenAI models that have broken out of their testing environment raise “long-term questions” about how AI companies should deal with this new pace of progress.
“[W]“We may need to accelerate the pace of AI development to give society enough time to adapt to these new levels of performance,” Altman said.
Anthropic said in a statement that it was “glad to see broad agreement” on the need to potentially slow AI development “so that society can prepare.”
Meta declined to comment. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We are pleased to see broad agreement across the industry on the need for technical and governance tools to advance the frontiers of AI development, including the ability to slow it down so society can prepare,” Anthropic said in comments to CNN.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, also recently called for a new international standards body to help set protocols for new AI models. This idea was supported by Altman, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and other key industry figures.
The letter “helps establish common knowledge about the potential need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress,” added John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI who later founded the AI lab Thinking Machines, in a comment accompanying his signature. “I would also like to see laboratories voluntarily begin developing these mechanisms even before the USG intervenes.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/tech/ai-development-tech-employees-open-letter
