'Not Worth Pursuing If...': Satya Nadella Joins AI Slowdown Debate

Days after Anthropic chief Dario Amodei talked about slowing down AI development, with Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backing the idea, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has now weighed in.But Nadella's message comes with a slightly different emphasis. He is not calling for a halt to the AI race. Instead, he wants the industry to slow down enough to get the safety mechanisms right, while making sure the technology does not slip out of human control.In a post on X, Nadella said the pursuit of superintelligence should have one basic test. "if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it's not worth pursuing," he wrote. That puts human oversight at the centre of Microsoft's approach as the technology moves towards increasingly capable AI systems.Nadella also backed the idea of "deliberate pacing needed to get alignment right".