Amodei calls for pacing frontier AI, Trump and Altman push back in opposite directions

A long-form piece Dario Amodei published Saturday morning under the headline "We Must Pace the Frontier" set off a wave of responses from fellow AI CEOs and senior U.S. officials. The Anthropic chief executive argues that frontier-model development should be slowed through three coordinated mechanisms — not halted outright.

Amodei lays out three steps: embed independent external evaluators to verify safety commitments and flag failures; coordinate standards and limits among frontier-model companies in democratic countries; and extend that coordination globally, including authoritarian regimes, "to the extent possible." Anthropic, he says, is committing unilaterally to the first. He stresses that pacing does not mean stopping training runs; it means building in enough time for alignment work, safeguards, and external sign-off.

Sam Altman moved quickly to agree in principle. "Pacing the frontier" had been a central topic in OpenAI's internal discussions over recent weeks, he said. Altman also pledged to bring in independent evaluators and called for a federal framework that would impose uniform safety requirements on frontier models. He flagged two tail risks — future loss of control to AI and excessive concentration of power — and argued the only way through is a "narrow middle path" where the pace is slower than technically possible but not frozen.

Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chair of Google DeepMind, said the direction is right but the details still need work. He pointed to the AI standards-body framework DeepMind published in July as a possible foundation for the kind of inter-company coordination Amodei proposes.

Sharp opposition came from the political and industrial side. Donald Trump posted in all caps that the only "guardrails" needed are a strong, smart president — himself — and accused Amodei and Anthropic of posing as a "perfect little angel" while orchestrating a conspiracy against data centers that benefits only China. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, appeared on stage with Trump and declared that everyone will win the AI race in America. Vice President JD Vance remarked that it strikes him as odd that frontier-model companies are "kin..." — the original text breaks off mid-sentence.