Nathaniel Whittemore

They write, 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.

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.

But they write in the same breath, if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors to catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe.

Without a global coordination mechanism, companies and governments will have to make difficult decisions about safety while under competitive and geopolitical pressures.

They go through and talk about all that would be required for a slowdown or pause, noting that while none of it would be necessarily impossible in principle, pointing to, for example, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, quote, those regimes took decades to build both the infrastructure and the trust.

We don't have that long, they write.

A unilateral pause by one lab by contrast is achievable immediately, but accomplishes much less."

It would change who the frontrunner is, but would not create the wider deliberative process that is currently missing.

In the coming months, we will organize conversations where policymakers, researchers, civil society, and other AI companies can help answer some of the questions this piece raises, especially around full recursive self-improvement and how to create better options for coordination and deliberation.

The window to investigate the questions together is here, and people outside AI companies should be involved in this deliberation.

Now, the responses to this fully run the gamut.

Some in the AI safety community are thrilled.

The AI safety memes account sums up, wholly blank, let's blanking go.

Yet others, like If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies co-author Nate Suarez writes, one big quibble is that they aren't thinking big enough.

The tone reads like, RSI could happen, but don't fret too much, it'll probably be fine, rather than OMFG, we're possibly on the brink of AIs that make smarter AIs.

Society needs to act.

Others, though, find that the whole thing kind of leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

Sean Ralston writes, No way that Anthropic slows or temporarily pauses frontier AI development.

What an insincere and silly sentiment.

If they really feel that way, then let them act that way.