Pausing AI at human-genius level to solve alignment is safer than either racing to superintelligence or halting entirely

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Arguments for

Human-level alignment window

Proponents argue for scaling up to AI around top-human-expert or human-genius level, then slowing nearly to a halt so those systems can help solve alignment before any handoff to superintelligence. They present this as reaching the most capable AI that still seems controllable enough to use safely for safety work.

Unlike all other actors we model, the consortium is not racing to build better AIs as fast as they possibly can. The specific strategies are discussed in more detail in the Capabilities Scaling Strategy supplement, but at a high level, the strategy is to scale smoothly to Top-Exp…

Brendan Halstead · Jul 10, 2026 · full quote
In the Plan A scenario, why does the Consortium choose to steadily increase capabilities until reaching top-expert-dominating AI (TED-AI) in 2035, then slow down nearly to a pause until handing off to these AIs in 2040? [...] Scale until you’re close to max-controllable-AI, i.e. …

Eli Lifland · Jul 10, 2026 · full quote
Between 2030 and 2035, we scale within the human range, to AIs that are roughly as capable as top human experts... In 2035, we pause at top-human-expert level AI in order to maintain human control. In 2040, we unpause and scale to superintelligence.

AI Futures Project · Jul 9, 2026 · full quote
Then, in the mid-2030s, they pause at AIs around the level of top human geniuses. These AIs are close enough to current AIs that the same alignment techniques that mostly-sort-of-work for ours might mostly-sort-of-work for them too... The plan is to spend the next ~10 years using…

Scott Alexander · Jul 9, 2026 · full quote
I do think that pausing further capabilities once we have human-ish-level AIs for even just a few years while we focus on safety would massively improve the situation. This currently seems unlikely to happen.

Ryan Greenblatt · 2025 · full quote

Pause at the takeoff threshold

Supporters say the most dangerous period may be exactly when AI begins accelerating AI research and capabilities growth could speed up sharply. Pausing in that transition window is presented as a way to buy time for society, preserve human control, and redirect powerful AI labor toward protection rather than further capability escalation.

First let’s talk about pause at human level — that’s a phrase from Ryan Greenblatt. So that’s when we’re at the point of time of AI engaging in AI R&D, at this point of time when things perhaps go even faster, should we at that point be trying to slow things down, even pause, sto…

Will MacAskill · Apr 22, 2026 · full quote
I think that what we want to do as a society, if we gain confidence that we’re at the starting point of this intelligence explosion, is to redirect as much of that AI labour as we can from further AI R&D to things that could help protect us from future generations of AIs — both i…

Ajeya Cotra · Oct 20, 2025 · full quote
If you delay the advent of superintelligence, then that gives society more time to prepare and more time to solve the various problems that it represents.

Daniel Kokotajlo · Jul 9, 2026 · full quote
For many parameter settings, the optimal strategy would involve moving quickly to AGI capability, then pausing briefly before full deployment: swift to harbor, slow to berth.

Nick Bostrom · Feb 12, 2026 · full quote
If our ability to make increasingly capable AI systems safe can’t benefit from such labor in a comparable way, then at least for relatively hard problem profiles, and absent large amounts of capability restraint, I think we’re likely headed for disaster. I also discuss the timing…

Joe Carlsmith · Mar 14, 2025 · full quote
If AIs became strategically competent enough, they may realize that RSI is too dangerous because they're not good enough at alignment or philosophy or strategy, and potentially convince, help, or work with humans to implement an AI pause. This presents an alternative "victory con…

Wei Dai · Feb 3, 2026 · full quote

Coordination against racing

Another pro argument is that competitive pressure creates a race in which no single actor wants to slow down even when safety would benefit. Coordinated mechanisms to pace the frontier are therefore framed as safer than racing to superintelligence while alignment, governance, and defenses lag behind.

The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but no individual actor is willing…

Leo Gao · Jul 2026 · full quote
Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved.

John Schulman · Jul 2026 · full quote
Unless we change companies' default incentives, I worry about a race on AI R&D going much faster than is ideal for safety. International coordination via the government is necessary; we need to have a real slowdown option.

Jasmine Wang · Jul 2026 · full quote
One goal of such an organization should be to make it possible for the world to take coordinated action, including slowing frontier development when needed, so societal resilience, safety, and alignment can keep pace.

OpenAI · Jun 8, 2026 · full quote
The pace of frontier AI development is currently outstripping our ability to ensure its safety, governance, and alignment with human values. We are racing to build systems with unprecedented capability without first building the guardrails, evaluation frameworks, or scientific un…

Andrew Locke · Jul 2026 · full quote
The AI arms race is a Molochian game that rationally incentivizes accelerated advancement of AI capabilities while consequently punishing individual participants who might otherwise believe that safety and alignment are necessary for a stable take off into the singularity. We nee…

Lee Callender · Jul 2026 · full quote

Benefits without full halt

Many supporters stress that the goal is not to stop useful AI altogether. They argue for preserving the benefits of advanced AI while slowing or temporarily pausing the riskiest frontier pushes so progress and responsibility can advance together.

We can capture the benefits of the coming intelligence explosion while managing its risks, but only if we build the tools to pace the frontier of the riskiest capabilities before we need them [...]

Jasjeet Sekhon · Jul 2026 · full quote
It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.

Jack Clark · Jun 5, 2026 · full quote
We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.

Anthropic · Jun 4, 2026 · full quote
There is intense commercial pressure to win the AI race. Ensuring safety often requires making tradeoffs that hurt commercial interests. Therefore, I think its a good idea for better coordination between labs so we can build this technology safely, and for the purpose of human fl…

Darshan Kalola · Jul 2026 · full quote
We’ve reached a point in the maturity of this technology where increasingly thoughtful rollouts must become a prerequisite. While I remain incredibly optimistic about the benefits AI has delivered, and will undoubtedly continue to provide, I believe we should hold space for cauti…

Bryant McCombs · Jul 2026 · full quote
Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and inst…

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter · Mar 22, 2023 · full quote

Arguments against

Moratoria won't work

Critics argue that pauses or moratoria are not practical in a globally competitive environment. They say such policies would be unenforceable, easy to circumvent, or even risk-increasing, so advocates of heavy-handed restraint carry a high burden of proof.

But the idea of asking AI labs to slow down just doesn't seem practical or implementable to me. Especially in this frankly competitive business environment with labs and countries trying to build advanced technologies and creating a lot of value. And the only thing worse than tha…

Andrew Ng · Apr 9, 2023 · full quote
My own view, after talking with colleagues in the AI Security Institute and the Alan Turing Institute, is that a moratorium would be unenforceable.

Lord Tarassenko · Jan 29, 2026 · full quote
I come from the position of saying that moratoriums will not work.

Lord Patel · Jan 29, 2026 · full quote
Regardless of what policies the U.S. adopts, the technology of large AI systems is going to continue to advance at a global level. It is far better for the U.S. to remain at the forefront of AI—advancing the state of the art, and using that knowledge to better identify and mitiga…

John Villasenor · Apr 11, 2023 · full quote
Should we lobby governments to impose a moratorium on AI research? Since we don’t enforce pauses on most new technologies, I hope the reader will grant that the burden of proof is on those who advocate for such a moratorium. We should only advocate for such heavy-handed governmen…

Nora Belrose · Oct 23, 2023 · full quote

Stay at the frontier

Some opponents say slowing frontier research would sacrifice innovation, national-security advantages, and the frontier understanding needed to mitigate risks well. In this view, AI safety should make the future remain human and aligned without suppressing inquiry or losing relevance at the frontier.

But we don't think it makes sense for us to stop engaging with AI research, AI safety, and most likely lose relevance as an innovator who understands the frontier of the technology, in a scenario where others are going ahead and we're not actually contributing any additional risk…

Jared Kaplan · Feb 24, 2026 · full quote
I would also say the development of this technology is a national security priority, and it seems really hard to... it seems like a really big cost to impose something where we would self-consciously slow ourselves down when others are not doing that. [...] I think it’s very poss…

Dean W. Ball · Nov 21, 2025 · full quote
Well, my first reaction to this is that calling for a delay in research and development smacks me of a new wave of obscurantism, essentially, like why slow down the progress of knowledge and science? Then there is the question of products, like, you know, I'm all for regulating p…

Yann LeCun · Apr 9, 2023 · full quote
I hope that, when the Minister responds, she will confirm that the Government have no plan to suppress the development of ASI. Inquiry and discovery are deeply ingrained in the human psyche and the AI revolution we are living through should certainly not be suppressed.

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara · Jan 29, 2026 · full quote
Because the point of AI safety is not to slow the future down. It is to make sure the future remains human, aligned with our values, and advancing our interests.

Andrew Charlton · Jul 7, 2026 · full quote

Temporary pause too weak

From the opposite direction, some critics say a temporary pause near human-level AI is too weak. They argue frontier development should pause by default, perhaps indefinitely and worldwide, with the possibility of never unpausing.

The moratorium on new large training runs needs to be indefinite and worldwide. There can be no exceptions, including for governments or militaries. [...] Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the la…

Eliezer Yudkowsky · Apr 7, 2023 · full quote
The default should be pausing, and we should have the possibility of never unpausing from frontier AI development.

Holly Elmore · Feb 6, 2026 · full quote

Middle ground

Only with global implementation

Some supportive but conditional voices say pacing is valuable only if backed by international technical and governance systems with verifiable participation. They warn that unilateral or badly designed implementation could fail or even make the situation worse.

Future AI will be extraordinarily powerful compared to anything that exists today, and dealing with this future power will require unprecedented measures, such as the ones described here. The problem statement is real. This works only if it is done internationally, and it has to …

Ilya Sutskever · Jul 2026 · full quote
We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology. The Anthropic Institute will conduct research—in collaboration wit…

Anthropic Institute · Jun 2026 · full quote
The UK can lead diplomatically in recognising a moratorium, with verifiable commitments from all major AI-developing nations.

Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee · Jan 29, 2026 · full quote
It is now a foregone conclusion that the development of AI will bring about some of the most consequential changes to societies in the coming decades. International coordination is essential to bring about the most ideal future that broadly benefits all of humanity. Building the …

Austin Han · Jul 2026 · full quote
Whether or not automated AI research accelerates as sharply as some expect, the option requested here is valuable. How fast and how widely capability spreads should be a deliberate choice, made on evidence, rather than a side effect of competitive pressure. Regulators and R&D org…

Clare Birch · Jul 2026 · full quote

Risk-triggered pause option

Another nuanced position emphasizes building a real slowdown or pause option tied to capability benchmarks, evaluations, or unmet safety targets. On this view, the key is not a timeless moratorium but the ability to stop scaling or deployment when evidence shows safeguards are not keeping up.

The RSP aims to make it consistently the case that our model training and deployment meets a high, clearly-specified bar for safety and that there is publicly accessible evidence that we have met this bar. Roughly speaking, we run tests (‘frontier risk evaluations’) meant to asse…

Sam Bowman · Sep 3, 2024 · full quote
AI labs put out RSP commitments to stop scaling when particular capabilities benchmarks are hit, resuming only when they are able to hit particular safety/alignment/security targets. [...] For later capabilities levels, however, it is explicit in all RSPs that we do not yet know …

Evan Hubinger · Oct 14, 2023 · full quote
One goal of such an organization should be to make it possible for the world to take coordinated action, including slowing frontier development when needed, so societal resilience, safety, and alignment can keep pace.

OpenAI · Jun 8, 2026 · full quote
It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.

Jack Clark · Jun 5, 2026 · full quote
There are a wide diversity of opinions on where AI progress goes next and what the future looks like, but regardless of one's beliefs, the option to control the pace of progress if we end up in one of the bad scenarios seems like an incredibly valuable safety net to have in our b…

Mike Lambert · Jul 2026 · full quote

Insights

Many supporters explicitly distinguish deliberate pacing or temporary pause from a permanent stop, saying the aim is to keep beneficial AI progress while slowing the riskiest frontier advances.
Opposition is internally split between people who see slowdowns as unenforceable or strategically costly and people who think only an indefinite worldwide halt is safe.
A recurring pro-pause crux is timing: several quotes focus on the moment AI begins automating AI research itself, when progress could accelerate just as control becomes hardest.
Both sides invoke safety and control, but they disagree on the route to get there: continued frontier engagement and knowledge-building versus capability restraint and extra time for alignment and governance.
International coordination is a central pressure point, appearing both as a prerequisite for credible pacing and as a reason skeptics doubt pauses can work in practice.

The debate turns on two linked questions: whether near-human-level AI can stay controllable enough to help solve alignment, and whether a coordinated slowdown can be implemented credibly across competing actors. Supporters describe that as a safer middle path between racing and blanket prohibition, while opponents either doubt its feasibility and costs or argue that anything short of an indefinite halt leaves too much risk.

Cast your vote:

Results (108 votes):

Total (108 votes)

For 94 (87%) Abstain 0 (0%) Against 14 (13%)

For (91)

Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator from Vermont

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votes For and says:

Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control ... Let me be very clear: If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the U.S. Senate will.
AI Verified source (Aug 10, 2026)

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Jeff Watkins

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votes For and says:

Things are moving far too quickly for comfort in the capabilities and autonomy of AI agents, and our defenses likely aren’t keeping up.
AI Verified source (Aug 5, 2026)

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Brendan Halstead
AI Futures Project researcher writing on AI takeoff modeling and Plan A capability trajectories.

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votes For and says:

Unlike all other actors we model, the consortium is not racing to build better AIs as fast as they possibly can. The specific strategies are discussed in more detail in the Capabilities Scaling Strategy supplement, but at a high level, the strategy i...
more AI Verified source (Jul 10, 2026)

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Eli Lifland
AI Futures Project researcher writing on AI capability scaling, controlled takeoff, and comparative AI governance plans.

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votes For and says:

In the Plan A scenario, why does the Consortium choose to steadily increase capabilities until reaching top-expert-dominating AI (TED-AI) in 2035, then slow down nearly to a pause until handing off to these AIs in 2040? [...] Scale until you’re close...
more AI Verified source (Jul 10, 2026)

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Daniel Kokotajlo
AI Futures Project founder

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votes For and says:

If you delay the advent of superintelligence, then that gives society more time to prepare and more time to solve the various problems that it represents.
AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

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AI Futures Project
Nonprofit AI forecasting research group behind AI 2027 and Plan A; led by Daniel Kokotajlo.

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votes For and says:

Between 2030 and 2035, we scale within the human range, to AIs that are roughly as capable as top human experts... In 2035, we pause at top-human-expert level AI in order to maintain human control. In 2040, we unpause and scale to superintelligence.
AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

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Scott Alexander
Author and psychiatrist

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votes For and says:

Then, in the mid-2030s, they pause at AIs around the level of top human geniuses. These AIs are close enough to current AIs that the same alignment techniques that mostly-sort-of-work for ours might mostly-sort-of-work for them too... The plan is to ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

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Pacing the Frontier
A July 2026 open statement by more than 1,100 current and former frontier-AI employees calling for international technical and governance capacity to deliberately pace automated AI development.

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votes For and says:

We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Jasjeet Sekhon
Chief Strategy Officer at Google DeepMind; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

We can capture the benefits of the coming intelligence explosion while managing its risks, but only if we build the tools to pace the frontier of the riskiest capabilities before we need them [...]
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Edward Hughes
Chief Scientist at Inherent; AI researcher.

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votes For and says:

As Melvin Kranzberg wrote, technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Achieving societal benefit depends on understanding the interdependent ways in which many humans use advanced AI systems in concert, understanding that takes time to ac...
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Will Yager
AI researcher at Anthropic.

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votes For and says:

Like splitting the atom, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and immense risk. The world should take the time to do this right.
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Matthew Rahtz
Staff Research Engineer at Google; AI capability-evaluation researcher.

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votes For and says:

Even after 3 years working on AI capability evaluations, the recent pace of progress has been a shock. To avoid catastrophic harms from AGI, we need much, much better coordination.
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Leo Gao
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI; AI researcher.

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votes For and says:

The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Laura Weidinger
Staff Research Scientist at Google; AI researcher.

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votes For and says:

If it's true that AI will be as transformational as electricity, we better be intentional about how it is introduced to the world. A mindless race without assurances on governance, safety or the technology serving the public interest stands in the wa...
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Ilya Sutskever
AI researcher, co-founder and former former chief scientist at OpenAI

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votes For and says:

Future AI will be extraordinarily powerful compared to anything that exists today, and dealing with this future power will require unprecedented measures, such as the ones described here. The problem statement is real. This works only if it is done i...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Shengjia Zhao
Chief Scientist at Meta AI; artificial-intelligence researcher.

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votes For and says:

AI is progressing at a rate that our society might not be ready for. Frontier labs are very close to AI that can exceed even the best people on almost every metric of intelligence. This will lead to unprecedented social and safety risks. To ensure a ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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John Schulman
Chief Scientist at Thinking Machines; AI researcher and cofounder of OpenAI.

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votes For and says:

Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the ...
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Bryant McCombs
GTM professional at OpenAI; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

We’ve reached a point in the maturity of this technology where increasingly thoughtful rollouts must become a prerequisite. While I remain incredibly optimistic about the benefits AI has delivered, and will undoubtedly continue to provide, I believe ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Darshan Kalola
Applied AI Engineer at Anthropic; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

There is intense commercial pressure to win the AI race. Ensuring safety often requires making tradeoffs that hurt commercial interests. Therefore, I think its a good idea for better coordination between labs so we can build this technology safely, a...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Mike Heaton
Member of Technical Staff in Audio at OpenAI; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

We believe AI will do, and is doing, great things for the world. We are already seeing instances where pushing research maximally fast creates serious issues, and it is possible that these will get much more severe. Right now, competitive dynamics me...
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Ben Nowak
Principal Engineer at Meta; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

Responsible AI development requires more than capable models. It requires independent monitoring, containment, clear limits on authority, and mechanisms for coordinated pacing if automated research begins to outrun those controls. Building that capac...
more AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Andrew Locke
Lead Engineer for Federal at Cognition; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

The pace of frontier AI development is currently outstripping our ability to ensure its safety, governance, and alignment with human values. We are racing to build systems with unprecedented capability without first building the guardrails, evaluatio...
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Dawn Song
Co-author; AI researcher

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votes For and says:

Frontier AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, and the pace of progress is itself accelerating. We see this directly in our evaluation work. CyberGym and ExploitGym show that frontier AI agents are now capable of discovering and exploiting real-wor...
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Sebastian Starke
Staff Research Scientist at Meta; commenter on the July 2026 Pacing the Frontier statement.

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votes For and says:

AI is starting to outpace us at an accelerating rate, and in a few years' time people might ask, "How could you not have seen this coming?" But answering that question in hindsight can be harder than acting proactively.
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Nicholas Felstead
AI policy fellow at the Center for Law & AI Risk, researching antitrust, digital market regulation, AI, and online safety.

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votes For and says:

Assuming capabilities continue to accelerate, one responsible course may be for frontier developers to stop, investigate, and let alignment research and governance catch up.
AI Verified source (Jun 29, 2026)

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OpenAI
AI research organization

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votes For and says:

One goal of such an organization should be to make it possible for the world to take coordinated action, including slowing frontier development when needed, so societal resilience, safety, and alignment can keep pace.
AI Verified source (Jun 8, 2026)

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Anthony Aguirre
Physicist; Future of Life cofounder

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votes For and says:

We are approaching a runaway to superintelligence that could threaten our shared human future. Both publicly and privately, AI companies are recognizing that a pause or slowdown in certain developmental pathways is crucial to protect lives and liveli...
more AI Verified source (Jun 8, 2026)

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Jack Clark
Anthropic co-founder and Head of Public Benefit

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votes For and says:

It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.
AI Verified source (Jun 5, 2026)

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Anthropic
AI safety research company

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votes For and says:

We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.
AI Verified source (Jun 4, 2026)

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Abstain (0)

Against (14)

Andrew Charlton
Australian Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy

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votes Against and says:

Because the point of AI safety is not to slow the future down. It is to make sure the future remains human, aligned with our values, and advancing our interests.
AI Verified source (Jul 7, 2026)

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Loading more opinions...

More h/ai-safety votes

States should retain the right to set stricter AI safety standards than the federal government

Governments and labs should build the capability for a global slowdown of frontier AI development in case it's needed

Require large datacenters to install kill switches for AI containment

The U.S. and China should establish Mutually Assured Compute Destruction

Mandate reporting of AI training runs above 10²⁶ FLOPs to a designated national or international authority

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