Slow down AI development

As the frontier models become more capable, these risks have come more sharply into focus. Models being developed will allow hacking on a level we never thought possible. And they will soon be in the hands of adversaries who see the world very differently from us. At the same tim…

Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer. I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established. And I believe tha…

It is very important to build capacity for a coordinated slowdown of AI development. A runaway race to AGI is not safe: it creates incentives to cut corners on safety, and carries a substantial risk for model capabilities to outpace development of adequate alignment, control, and…

I dedicated my career to AGI safety and alignment because I believe highly capable AI can go very well or very badly for humanity. We can test whether an AI behaves well. We cannot yet test whether it will keep behaving well when it matters. Until that changes, we need the option…

The scale of the danger really could cripple civilization or cause extinction, and the possibility of this alone is reason enough to pursue pausing frontier AI development.

I agree with Dario and am glad to see the support from leaders of the other frontier labs. The world needs a plan, developed in a global, public process. If we can slow down the growth of AI, we'll have more time to ensure the benefits outweigh the harm, and leave everyone better…

The pause would be used to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with AI advances.

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.

What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.

I have worked in AI for a decade. Every few months in the last years, I have found myself surprised again and again at how rapidly the technology advances, no matter how often I update my predictions. AI may end up progressing far more quickly than societies and states can adapt.…

Individual firms may prefer a slower and safer race, but competitive pressure makes it difficult for any one company to slow down on its own.

I think it's inherently valuable to build international governance mechanisms to enable responsible deployment and avoid a possible race to the bottom. All labs and countries moving as fast as possible out of fear of what other actors will do seems like an easy way to incentivize…

I worry my company is contributing to AI race dynamics that make catastrophic or existential risks from AI much more likely. The proposal here for pacing the frontier seems like a highly reasonable effort to reduce these risks.

It feels like all the AI labs are constrained by competition to minimize their work on catastrophic risks, even though most industry leaders have an uncomfortably high probability that things could go terribly wrong. This is a technology that doesn't have an off switch you can ju…

This is where UN and more generally international cooperation can step in to make sure that there is international pressure to progress at a safe pace so we can actually capture the AI benefits that the increasing capabilities are bringing, and not succumb to this loss of control…

We can't do this unless everyone does. It needs to be global. Right now we have no way to do that. We need to build a way for us to all slow down.

Governments should develop common ways to measure this progress, preserve meaningful human control, and establish shared safety bars for when and how development should slow or stop. If we cannot meet certain safety bars without slowing down capability growth, we should prioritiz…

Frontier AI development should move at the pace of our ability to keep it safe, not just what’s technically possible. The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident earlier this year proved that to keep AI safe, we need visibility into what’s happening within leading AI companies. As developer…

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.

Plan A is predicated on the ability to enforce an international deal to slow down AI progress without relying on trust. We are confident that verification measures can make this possible, by providing sufficient assurance to both the US and China that defection by the other would…

International AI safety treaties, modeled on nuclear arms control, should mandate capability transparency, establish shared safety research hubs, and define joint crisis protocols to pause development if dangerous emergent behaviors are detected.

Serious harms from advanced AI systems have already begun to materialise. [...] As risks from advanced AI do not respect boundaries, this is a global challenge that requires co-ordinated solutions at international level. [...] The UK can lead diplomatically in recognising a morat…

AI doomers say if we build AI we might die. But they have it backwards. [...] AI is helping us solve these. Slowing progress doesn’t keep us safer, it guarantees more preventable deaths.

I’m not in favor of a six-month pause because it will simply benefit China. What I am in favor of is getting everybody together to discuss what are the appropriate guardrails. So, I’m in favor of letting the industry try to get its act together. This is a case where you don’t rus…

The Technology Secretary rejected calls to pause the development of artificial intelligence, describing such a move as “a double betrayal” of British talent and British interests.

Pausing frontier AI development will not solve the problems its supporters claim it will solve. If anything, it risks making several of them worse.

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…

This would be practically impossible, because the economic and national security stakes are simply too high for any superpower to willingly hit the brakes now. [...] Tracking decentralized computing resources, private data centers and algorithmic research globally is far more dif…

The frontier of intelligence is advancing rapidly. That is not a reason to pause its further development or to constrain it with new global governance structures.

We cannot slow down the development of AI. But we will not leave its outcomes to chance. We will work hard to secure a different deal, between the companies that prosper here and the workers whose effort makes that prosperity possible. Where companies benefit from operating and g…

But we didn’t pause development and permanently mandate that they couldn’t go faster than horses. Eventually—after trial and error—we developed better and safer cars, as well as road safety laws to prevent accidents, and legal provisions like driver’s licences to ensure a minimum…

I have been arguing for tech and AI regulation for years. It seems like something almost everyone agrees on, but no one can figure out how to broadly implement it. Instead, we get piecemeal bits from local municipalities and Executive Orders. Slowdowns or pauses are not necessari…

I disagree. A slowdown would politicize AI development... and could induce a talent drain. [...] The risk is that the delay could be extended indefinitely.

What is the point of a six-month moratorium? To me, that letter is a piece of hysteria.

The analysis urges the United States and China to work toward five goals: Establishing an “AI red phone” for urgent safety concerns. Defining “genuine security threat” from frontier AI that would impel steps to pace the frontier in the future. Announcing a working group and date …

The condition would be not time, but capabilities. Pause until you can do X, Y, Z. And if I’m right and you cannot, it’s impossible, then it becomes a permanent ban. But if you’re right, and it’s possible, so as soon as you have those safety capabilities, go ahead. If we create …

I’m not that into slowing down right now. [...] Where the pause needs to happen is right around when you’re getting close to human-level intelligence.

I don't know what form such tools should take, nor whether automated AI R&D is the right or only thing that the U.S. government should develop increased capacity to understand and possibly pace, but this is worth serious consideration; however I hope such governance tools will no…

But even in settings that assume significant idealization, the fact that pauses can incur ongoing background existential risk means that very high absolute standards here can lead us astray: the decision to pause or unpause needs to remain attentive to marginal costs and benefits…

First, [companies] could voluntarily invite rigorous, independent auditing of their safety and security practices. [...] If an AI slowdown is needed, auditing would also reassure each company that their competitors are playing by the rules. [...] Third, they could invest in the t…

Overall, I’m sympathetic to Plan A. The basic logic of the plan is sound: we will need to slow down AI progress at some point; this is a concrete plan for doing that. [...] But currently I lean towards starting with software scaling.

Much more clarity will be needed on what is meant by the “ability to deliberately pace the frontier of AI development”, but I am supportive of international cooperation to define this.

An off switch refers to building the necessary technical, legal, and institutional infrastructure to make it possible for humanity to shut down unsafe AI systems and AI projects. It will also make it possible to verify that there is no dangerous AI development globally, if humani…

I believe that attempting to deliberately pace AI development will be extremely difficult, and could do more harm than good if done without proper care. However, I am signing this statement because, if an attempt at pacing does occur, it would be better for it to have been method…

Governments must assume their responsibilities. It is the first responsibility of any government to protect its citizens – including from the threats of artificial intelligence. National action is essential. But global coordination is also indispensable. Because AI does not stop …

The question that the noble Lord posed was: do we therefore go for a moratorium? That would be highly desirable, but I do not think that it will be possible in the short term.

If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing. But if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could lea…

If I could put a pause on AI or really advanced AI, superintelligence, I would. It doesn’t seem that is realistic.

While I don't believe the pace of current AI capabilities development is *yet* dangerous, it's important to have the option to slow down in case we need it. Further, accelerating AI R&D over the next couple years could make the pace of progress dangerous. I've seen how the relent…