Anthropic’s CEO wants AI Development to slow down for safety reasons!

The NewYorkTimes.com reported that “Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology.”  The September 12, 2026 article entitled “Top A.I. Leaders Call for Slowing Down A.I. Development” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/technology/anthropic-dario-amodei-ai-slowdown.html) included these comments from Reporter Mike Isaac:

The leaders of two other top A.I. companies quickly signed on to the effort. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., said in social media posts that they agreed on the need for a slower pace.

Mr. Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote in his essay that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too quick a pace for researchers to continue safely.

“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Mr. Amodei said. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

Anyone surprised by these alarms?