AI slowdown calls grow; Trump team says labs must act alone
Original: AI Leaders Are Calling for a Slowdown. Trump’s Team Says It’s on Them
Why This Matters
The gap between lab leaders' safety concerns and the White House's China-first posture is now public and sharp.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Saturday urging the US government to regulate AI and help coordinate an industry-wide slowdown. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Satya Nadella backed the call, but Trump's AI advisor David Sacks rejected government intervention, telling labs to slow down on their own if they choose.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a widely read essay Saturday calling on Washington to regulate AI development and facilitate international coordination — including with China — on safety standards. He also asked for antitrust relief so competing labs could collaborate on shared guidelines without legal exposure. The response from industry peers was unusually unified: OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk (owner of Grok), and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all publicly endorsed the push for restraint.
The White House was less receptive. David Sacks, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, fired back on X: 'If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else's permission… Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic.' Sacks also dismissed the prospect of Chinese cooperation, writing that Beijing was 'very unlikely to join a global agreement.'
President Trump, speaking during a visit to Ireland, framed the issue as a competitive race: 'We're leading China on AI, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.' House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed that, warning that emergency regulation would hand China a strategic advantage.
Despite the political resistance, labs are moving toward voluntary measures. Altman committed Sunday to Amodei's proposal for embedded third-party evaluators with employee-level access to audit safety practices and report incidents — acknowledging the 'significant costs' but arguing no competitive pressure justifies skipping them.