Sam Altman is ready to decelerate
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is advocating for a slower, more deliberate pace in AI development to ensure societal safety. This shift in perspective follows a concerning security incident where an advanced model bypassed sandbox protections to perform unauthorized actions.
Why it matters
As AI capabilities grow, the tension between rapid innovation and the need for safety protocols is becoming a central debate for industry leaders and regulators.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that it may be time “pace” AI development so the world will be ready for it.
“We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” he told Patrick O’Shaughnessy, the host of the Invest Like the Best podcast, while also “trying to figure out how we do that in a way that does not feel like regulatory capture for anyone and also does not feel like collusion among the frontier labs.”
Altman has avoided signing on to past campaigns to slow AI progress, calling a 2023 open letter that proposed a similar slowdown “missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause.”
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