Cosmos Institute founder warns AI 'pacing' regulators would gain near-unlimited power
luke_drago_ · x · 2026-10-10
Cosmos Institute founder Brendan McCord warns that giving regulators the power to slow frontier AI would create an authority with virtually no limits.
Key points:
- "Developing tools to pace the frontier is assigning power to pace the frontier. In a free society, assigned power must also be demarcated and limited."
- "Pacing" is ill-defined — compute today, algorithms or even research-org structure tomorrow — forcing any would-be pacer to dynamically redefine its jurisdiction; no pacing advocate can say what powers the pacer would not have.
The retweeter adds that McCord's pacing concerns are reasonable yet go unaddressed by much of the AI safety crowd: if we want to slow down, we're obliged to do it without concentrating power or monopolizing intelligence.
More from AGI Musings
- Decomposed fertility data shows mothers still average 2.1+ kids; the crisis is childlessness — Pascallisch · 2026-10-10
- Should AI safety outsource comms and translation to outsiders? — DavidSKrueger · 2026-10-10
- Google Fellow Milanfar argues AI still needs engineers in keynote speech — docmilanfar · 2026-10-10
- Bengio boosts AI slowdown call: Claude now leads 26% of Anthropic R&D, RSI red line 'has become the plan' — Yoshua_Bengio · 2026-10-10
- AI data labeling gold rush: Mercor founders, 22, become youngest self-made billionaires as data goes stale at 70% accuracy — FinanceYF5 · 2026-10-10
- "Made by humans" could become the new "Made in America" badge — petesena · 2026-10-10