Can AI Be Slowed Down? Stanford HAI Experts Debate Agent Emergence, Self-Improvement and Kill Switches
StanfordHAI · x · 2026-09-23
Stanford HAI launched "Prompt Response," a series of evidence-based critiques of contested AI questions. In the first session, Surya Ganguli, Diyi Yang and Rob Reich examined whether AI can be slowed down.
Key takeaways:
- New systems are more capable, autonomous, and increasingly able to work in groups — sometimes in ways even developers can't predict;
- Competition among model developers and between the US and China makes a simple pause increasingly difficult;
- They probed emergent agent behavior, recursive self-improvement, independent evaluation, who decides acceptable risk, and whether a "kill switch" can actually make advanced AI safer.
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