More than 1,100 employees from frontier AI companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta — have signed a joint statement called "Pacing the Frontier." They're asking the US government to lead the creation of an international mechanism that would allow countries and companies to slow down AI development in a coordinated way when necessary. This isn't a call for an immediate halt to training; it's about preparing the technical and governance tools needed to control the pace of research before it's too late.
The signatories worry that frontier models could soon automate large swaths of AI research, helping humans build even more powerful models. If development suddenly accelerates, we might not have time to understand, control, or regulate these systems. And no single company wants to be the first to slow down — that would mean falling behind in the race.
Big names on the list include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, chief research officer Mark Chen, and Meta AI chief scientist Shengjia Zhao. Both OpenAI and Anthropic later publicly endorsed the statement as companies.