The AI Race: Everyone Wants to Slow Down
14 September 2026
A light-hearted take on three AI CEOs telling the world they want to slow down on AI development.
Dario Amodei published an essay on pacing frontier AI. Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly backed him. Headlines ran with a clean story: AI safety first, AI race second.
Nobody actually signed anything.
There is no joint pact, no shared timeline, no way to enforce any of it.
Just three companies saying the right words at a moment when at least one of them is heading toward a public listing, and all three are under more scrutiny than ever before.
Slowing down is a good message right before an IPO roadshow.
It reads well on a slide, it reads well in a headline, and it costs nothing until someone actually has to give something up.
References
- Dario Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier
- Axios: Anthropic and pacing frontier AI
- CNBC: Amodei proposes slowing the pace of advancing AI capabilities
