1,300 AI employees signed a 'pacing' letter, but their motives diverge sharply
chalmermagne · x · 2026-09-18
Alex Chalmers, writing for the Cosmos Institute, critiques the 'Pacing the Frontier' coalition.
- In July, over 1,300 employees from leading AI companies signed an open letter arguing frontier labs may be nearing the point where AI research itself can be automated, asking the US government to back international efforts to develop governance tools for deliberately slowing frontier AI.
- Signatories' motives differ widely: Dario Amodei has since argued for external evaluators embedded at labs, coordination among democracies, and international agreements — endorsed by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Dawn Song champions decentralization, John Schulman mentions a 'possible need' for such a mechanism, and Ilya Sutskever says future AI will require 'unprecedented measures.'
- Chalmers's core point: these concerns aren't mutually exclusive but imply very different pacing mechanisms, and given the potential expansion of state power, the debate over this vaguely defined intervention needs to improve.
Related event: Internal Divisions Cast Doubt on 1,300-Employee Plea to Slow Frontier AI(2 posts)→
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