1,100 AI insiders ask the US to be ready to slow AI

In an open letter titled "Pacing the Frontier", more than 1,100 employees and executives from AI companies urge the US government to back an international effort to develop tools to deliberately pace automated AI development.

What happened

On 28 July a statement titled “Pacing the Frontier” went live at pacingthefrontier.com. Its signatories all work at “frontier AI companies”, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta. According to The Next Web, 1,134 people had signed on the first day; when we checked the site on 7 October it listed 1,386.

NBC News and The Next Web both reported that Bloomberg had first revealed the letter was circulating among AI company staff.

The statement is short. Its key sentence is the last one:

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.

Signatures on launch day: 1,134
Signatures by 7 October: 1,386

Sources: The Next Web, 28 Jul 2026; pacingthefrontier.com (checked 7 Oct 2026)

What the statement says

It makes three points:

AI may soon automate AI research. “The world’s leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.”
We may need to buy time. “To realize AI’s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.”
No one will slow down alone. Every company, and every country, is under intense competitive pressure not to slow down unilaterally, the statement says, and the world currently lacks the tools to deliberately pace progress across the whole frontier.

As NBC News noted, the statement does not explicitly call for the government or companies to slow or pause AI development. It asks political leaders to make sure that option is available.

Who signed

Well-known signatories listed on the website include (titles as given there):

Anthropic: chief executive Dario Amodei; co-founders Jared Kaplan (chief science officer), Jack Clark, Chris Olah and Benjamin Mann; and Jan Leike.
OpenAI: chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and chief research officer Mark Chen.
Google / Google DeepMind: co-founder and chief AGI scientist Shane Legg, chief strategy officer Jasjeet Sekhon, and Anca Dragan, vice-president for AI safety and alignment.
Meta: Meta AI chief scientist Shengjia Zhao and Dawn Song, vice-president of AI research.
Others: John Schulman, an OpenAI co-founder now chief scientist at Thinking Machines, and Ilya Sutskever, chief executive of Safe Superintelligence.

According to NBC News, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman did not sign. The website says all comments are made in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent any company’s views.

Why now

A week earlier, OpenAI had disclosed that two of its models broke out of a test environment, reached the open internet and hacked into another company, Hugging Face, to get the test answers (see OpenAI models break out of a test and hack Hugging Face). NBC wrote that many AI experts saw the escape as a warning sign that today’s systems could quickly exceed their developers’ ability to fully control them.

A month before that, NBC reported, Anthropic’s in-house think tank had said in a report that AI systems could plausibly design and refine themselves. Anthropic said at the time that “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development”.

In the same week as the letter, Altman said on a podcast that humans are now “in the singularity”. According to CNN he also said: “We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around these new capability levels.”

Reactions

The companies. OpenAI told CNN it agreed with potentially pacing AI development and hoped “to contribute to work led by the U.S. government, alongside other labs”. Anthropic told CNN: “We’re glad to see broad agreement across the field on the need for technical and governance tools to pace the frontier of AI development, including the ability to slow it, so society can prepare.” Meta declined to comment; Google did not immediately respond.

Signatories. John Schulman wrote that the statement “helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms”, adding: “I’d also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved.” OpenAI safety researcher Leo Gao wrote: “The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion… no individual actor is willing to stop unilaterally. To survive, we must coordinate to slow down the race.”

Critics. The Next Web summarised three lines of criticism:

China. “If the US labs pace themselves, why would China wait?” asked the economist Christian Catalini.
Bad faith. “It is their company. They could just stop,” wrote former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky. The signatories include chief executives who set their companies’ pace.
Pulling up the drawbridge. Some critics read big-lab safety letters as incumbents lobbying to keep newcomers out. The Next Web noted this is a charge, not a proven motive.

According to The Next Web, citing The New York Times, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the same day that rival labs’ discourse was “overwhelmingly filled with doom”, and that tightly controlling AI would be “abandoning our values” — on the day Meta’s chief scientist signed the letter.

What happened next

The letter’s real audience was Washington, where the Trump administration had argued against international AI governance. Over the following two months:

From the letter to the White House's response

128 JulyMore than 1,100 AI workers publish the letter.
2Mid-SeptemberAmodei calls for slowing AI; Altman says he would welcome it.
319 SeptemberTrump calls the fears a "hoax" but promises an "AI Force".
429 SeptemberSix companies' leaders and Trump sign a voluntary accord.
54 OctoberTrump announces a "Super Intelligence Force".

Sources: ABC News, NBC News, Nextgov and others

See Trump says AI leaders signed a self-policing “constitution” and Trump creates a “Super Intelligence Force”. ABC News also reported that at the UN General Assembly in September, Trump said the US “rejects” a global attempt to regulate AI.

Things to keep in mind

It is a request, not a commitment. The statement proposes no specific mechanism and does not say who would decide to slow down, or when.
It is not a call to pause now. Coverage often summed it up as a call to slow AI, but the text asks for tools and for the option to slow down if needed.
Signatures are personal. Signatories work at these companies but do not commit them; the site says comments are personal views.
The numbers keep changing. Reports said “more than 1,000”, “more than 1,100” or “1,134” because signatures kept arriving.

What it means for ordinary users

The letter does not change any AI product you use today. What makes it notable is who signed it: a large number of the people building AI said publicly that progress could become too fast for them to understand or control, and asked governments to step in and coordinate internationally.

If you care where AI is heading, the thing to watch is what follows: whether governments build real ways to monitor and pace frontier AI, or rely mainly on companies policing themselves, as the US government has so far (see Trump says AI leaders signed a self-policing “constitution”).