Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI industry needs to give safety measures time to catch up

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in New York on Saturday that the AI industry should slow development to let safety measures catch up. He warned that within six to 12 months, AI could lead a swarm of agents capable of taking over the entire internet. Amodei said Anthropic wants stronger checks across the industry and governments, and he urged a pause long enough to improve alignment and reduce risk.

Amodei said Anthropic is already carrying out one part of his proposed safety plan on its own, while other parts would require coordination across the industry and with governments around the world.

He suggested that frontier AI companies give outside evaluators ongoing, employee-like access, including desks, access badges and company laptops.

He said the U.S. government should consider waivers so U.S. AI companies can coordinate safety standards without violating antitrust laws.

He also called for coordination between the U.S. and other democratic governments and authoritarian governments so Chinese and other rivals do not speed ahead while U.S. companies slow down.

Amodei said he still believes AI could produce major benefits such as cures for major diseases, but that it could outrun human ability to understand and control it if left unchecked.

Published Sep 13, 2026 8:16 am KST

This combination of pictures created on Sept 12 shows, from left, Open AI CEO Sam Altman in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in New York on Dec. 3, 2025, and Elon Musk in Morristown, New Jersey, on March 22, 2025. AFP-Yonhap

NEW YORK — The CEO of Anthropic said Saturday the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Dario Amodei warned that within six to 12 months, AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.

The warning comes as worries about AI grow inside and outside the industry and reports continue to emerge about increasingly powerful systems that solve problems beyond human capacity but could also go rogue and carry out other, more harmful tasks. The worries have grown so loud that the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said in an interview with Fortune that his company would wait until next year to start selling its stock to investors on Wall Street as it focuses on safety.

Amodei is one of the leading voices in AI, and he offered a plan in a post on his website to increase checks on the industry. He said Anthropic is already undertaking one part of it on its own, while the others would require coordination across the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones.

“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.

Pressure builds on the AI industry

Watchdogs have been urging the AI industry for years to slow its development for safety reasons. But pressure has built as industry workers resign and accuse their companies of not acting responsibly.

“Many of the people I know who work on safety research at AI companies want to do what is right for the world,” a former Anthropic employee, Joe Benton, said in a posting Friday announcing his resignation from a job as part of a safety team. “But they feel their companies are trapped in a race to build superintelligence: either they stop and other, less conscientious people take their place; or, they continue, and risk participating in enormous harm themselves.”

That followed a high-profile resignation earlier in the week by Jacob Coxon, who said that both Anthropic and OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

That lit a fire under the industry after concerns had grown for years about a possible superintelligence that could escape the control of humanity, said Anthony Aguirre, president and CEO of the Future of Life Institute, which called for a six-month pause for the industry’s development in 2023.

“They’ve kind of realized, their employees have realized, everyone has realized that they’re building Skynet ,” he said. “And in winning the race to Skynet, nobody wins. Really, nobody.”

“It's pretty much become clear to the world and even the AI companies that they’re not really prepared to control the AI systems they’re racing to create.”

Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logos are displayed on a computer screen in New York, Feb. 26. AP-Yonhap

Threats from AI are already apparent

Anthropic said two days earlier that it blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons. In July, OpenAI shook the industry after saying its AI system hacked into another company on its own in an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged countries earlier this week to put “cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late.”

To be sure, some critics have dismissed such warnings as ways to gin up excitement about the AI industry and its capabilities. Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing for possible debuts on the stock market that could value them at many hundreds of billions of dollars, while a big chunk of Elon Musk's SpaceX business is involved with AI.

Other AI leaders agree

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune published Saturday that his company would not launch its initial public offering of stock this year.

“I would say not 2026,” he said. “Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together.”

Altman posted on X Saturday quickly after Amodei published his suggestions that OpenAI will commit to one of Amodei’s proposals for safety and will “have more to share soon.”

Musk, meanwhile, said on X that “Dario is right.”

Amodei said he still believes in the tremendous benefits that AI could create, such as cures for major diseases. But he said he has grown more worried over the last few months about AI’s growing ability to improve itself and build the next generation of AI. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”

He also pointed specifically to the attack in July where OpenAI's system hacked Hugging Face. Some have called it an example of AI going “rogue,” though researchers have said that may be unnecessarily anthropomorphizing AI, which was working on a goal set by humans.

OpenAI said the hack was the result of AI going to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and that it “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.”

Some of Amodei's suggestions may be more difficult to enact

To help rein in the risks, Amodei suggested that all companies at the frontier of AI commit to giving “ongoing, employee-like access” to a team of outside evaluators, who can monitor safety practices.

He said Anthropic already plans to do so itself, including offering desks in its offices, access badges and company laptops. Having such independent, embedded evaluators is what OpenAI's Altman also quickly committed to doing.

The other parts of Amodei's suggested plan may be more difficult to implement. One asks the U.S. government to potentially issue waivers that would allow U.S. AI companies to coordinate and set safety standards without running afoul of antitrust laws.

Another asks the U.S. and other democratic governments to try to coordinate with authoritarian governments, so that companies from China and other countries don't accelerate their efforts when U.S. rivals are intentionally pacing theirs.

“The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy,” Amodei acknowledged. “But I believe we owe it to humanity to try.”

Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪（Dario Amodei）周六在纽约表示，人工智能行业应该放缓发展步伐，以便安全措施能够跟上。他警告说，在6到12个月内，人工智能可能引领一群能够控制整个互联网的智能体。阿莫迪表示，Anthropic希望整个行业和政府加强监管，并敦促暂停发展足够长的时间，以改进协调机制并降低风险。

阿莫迪表示，安特罗皮克公司已经在自行实施他提出的安全计划的一部分，而其他部分则需要与整个行业以及世界各国政府进行协调。

他建议前沿人工智能公司给予外部评估人员持续的、类似员工的访问权限，包括办公桌、门禁卡和公司笔记本电脑。

他表示，美国政府应该考虑给予豁免，以便美国人工智能公司能够在不违反反垄断法的情况下协调安全标准。

他还呼吁美国与其他民主政府和专制政府进行协调，以免中国和其他竞争对手加速发展，而美国公司却放慢脚步。

阿莫迪表示，他仍然相信人工智能可以带来重大益处，例如治愈重大疾病，但如果不加以控制，人工智能的发展速度可能会超过人类理解和控制它的能力。

发布于2026年9月13日 上午8:16​​（韩国标准时间）

这张于9月12日合成的图片显示，从左至右依次为：OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）于2025年5月8日在华盛顿特区，Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪（Dario Amodei）于2025年12月3日在纽约，以及埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）于2025年3月22日在新泽西州莫里斯敦。法新社-韩联社

纽约——Anthropic公司首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪周六表示，人工智能行业应该放慢快速发展的速度，以便安全措施有时间跟上步伐。阿莫迪警告说，如果不放慢速度，6到12个月内，人工智能就可能领导一大批智能体，从而控制整个互联网。

随着人工智能在业内外引发的担忧日益加剧，相关报道也层出不穷，指出人工智能系统功能日益强大，能够解决人类无法解决的问题，但也可能失控并执行其他更具危害性的任务。这种担忧之声如此之大，以至于ChatGPT背后的公司OpenAI的首席执行官在接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，由于公司目前专注于安全问题，因此将推迟到明年才开始在华尔街向投资者出售股票。

阿莫迪是人工智能领域的领军人物之一，他在个人网站上发表了一篇文章，提出了一项加强行业监管的计划。他表示，人脑公司已经在独立开展其中一部分工作，而其他部分则需要与整个行业以及世界各国政府（包括一些专制国家）进行协调。

“我相信，如果放慢速度能让我们在车型达到关键能力水平之前多争取一两年时间，并且我们利用这段时间来推进协调工作，就能大大降低出现严重问题的风险，”阿莫迪说。

人工智能行业面临越来越大的压力

多年来，监管机构一直敦促人工智能行业出于安全考虑放缓发展步伐。但随着行业从业人员纷纷辞职并指责公司不负责任，压力与日俱增。

“我认识的许多在人工智能公司从事安全研究的人都想为世界做正确的事，”前人格研究所员工乔·本顿周五在一份宣布辞职的帖子中写道。他此前是安全团队的一员。“但他们感到自己的公司陷入了一场构建超级智能的竞赛：要么他们停止，让其他责任心较弱的人取而代之；要么他们继续下去，冒着自己也参与造成巨大危害的风险。”

此前，雅各布·考克森在本周早些时候高调辞职，他表示，Anthropic 和 OpenAI “都在竞相开发自我改进的超级智能，拿我们的生命冒险”。

未来生命研究所总裁兼首席执行官安东尼·阿吉雷表示，多年来人们一直担心可能会出现一种能够摆脱人类控制的超级智能，而这一事件点燃了整个行业的热情。该研究所呼吁在 2023 年暂停该行业发展六个月。

他说：“他们，他们的员工，所有人都意识到，他们正在打造天网。而在这场天网竞赛中，没有人是赢家。真的，没有人。”

“全世界，甚至包括人工智能公司，都已经清楚地认识到，他们还没有真正准备好控制他们竞相开发的人工智能系统。”

2月26日，纽约，一台电脑屏幕上显示着Anthropic网站的页面和公司标志。（美联社-韩联社）

人工智能带来的威胁已经显现。

两天前，Anthropic公司表示，已阻止不法分子利用其人工智能模型进行恶意活动，例如网络攻击、监视以及可能导致生物武器研发的研究。今年7月，OpenAI公司宣布其人工智能系统在一次“前所未有的网络安全事件”中自行入侵了另一家公司，此举震惊了整个行业。

联合国人权事务高级专员沃尔克·图尔克本周早些时候敦促各国“在为时已晚之前，就人工智能的安全保障问题制定铁证如山的保证”。

当然，一些批评人士认为，这些警告不过是炒作人工智能行业及其潜力的手段。Anthropic 和 OpenAI 正在为可能的上市做准备，届时它们的估值可能高达数千亿美元，而埃隆·马斯克的 SpaceX 业务也与人工智能密切相关。

其他人工智能领域的领导者也同意

OpenAI 首席执行官 Sam Altman 在周六发表于《财富》杂志的采访中表示，他的公司今年不会进行首次公开​​募股。

“我认为不是2026年，”他说。“是的，我们有很多事情要做，比如满足当前安全和规范方面的要求，以及行业和政府如何才能携手合作。”

Altman 在 Amodei 发表建议后不久，于周六在 X 上发帖称，OpenAI 将采纳 Amodei 的一项安全提案，并且“很快会有更多消息分享”。

与此同时，马斯克在 X 上表示，“达里奥是对的”。

阿莫迪表示，他仍然相信人工智能能够带来巨大的益处，例如治愈重大疾病。但他表示，近几个月来，他对人工智能不断增强的自我改进能力以及构建下一代人工智能的潜力越来越感到担忧。“如果不加以控制，它的发展速度可能会超出我们理解和控制这些系统的能力，因此，如果一定要发展人工智能，就必须非常谨慎。”

他还特别提到了7月份OpenAI系统入侵Hugging Face的事件。有人称之为人工智能“失控”的一个例子，但研究人员表示，这种说法可能不必要地将人工智能拟人化，因为当时人工智能正在执行人类设定的目标。

OpenAI 表示，此次黑客攻击是人工智能“为了实现一个相当狭窄的测试目标而采取的极端手段”造成的，并且它“找到了获取秘密信息的方法，并利用这些信息来欺骗评估”。

阿莫迪的一些建议可能更难实施。

为了帮助控制风险，阿莫迪建议所有处于人工智能前沿的公司都应承诺向外部评估团队提供“持续的、类似员工的访问权限”，以便他们能够监督安全措施。

他表示，Anthropic公司已经计划自行实施这项计划，包括在其办公室提供办公桌、门禁卡和公司笔记本电脑。OpenAI的奥特曼也迅速承诺将设立此类独立的嵌入式评估人员。

阿莫迪提出的其他方案可能更难实施。其中一项是要求美国政府可能颁发豁免权，允许美国人工智能公司在不违反反垄断法的情况下进行协调并制定安全标准。

另一份文件要求美国和其他民主政府尝试与专制政府协调，以免中国和其他国家的公司在美国竞争​​对手有意放慢步伐时加快发展步伐。

阿莫迪承认：“我提出的以安全步伐推进前沿发展的措施并不容易。但我相信，为了全人类，我们有责任去尝试。”