The CEO of Anthropic said on Saturday (September 12, 2026) the the artificial intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without it, Dario Amodei warned AI could be capable within six to 12 months of leading a swarm that could take over the entire internet, among other risks.
Amodei’s post comes only a few days after one of Anthropic’s researchers announced he’s resigning over concerns that Anthropic and its competitors are not acting responsibly in AI development. Mr. “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. To help rein in such risks, Mr.
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.
Another former Anthropic employee, Joe Benton, wrote in a Substack post published on Friday (September 11, 2026) that he left his job as part of a safety team “to hold AI companies accountable” and that humanity “may not survive this transition. “Many of the people I know who work on safety research at AI companies want to do what is right for the world,” Mr. Benton said in his posting. 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.
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Amodei also offered a plan in a post on his website to increase checks on the industry, one part of which he said Anthropic is undertaking by itself already, The others would require coordination among the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones. 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, rival OpenAI shook the industry after saying its AI system hacked into another AI company on its own in an “unprecedented cyber incident.”
