Sam Altman says he agrees with Amodei that “committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea”, and OpenAI will do the same

It's not just the next 9/11, enabled by AI, that is coming.Asif Razzaq /MarkTechPost:Anthropic's 3-Step ‘Pace the Frontier’ Plan Wins OpenAI, xAI and Microsoft Support: Is It Too Late to Slow AI Down?Australian Financial Review:The titans of AI just told us something's gone very wrong. But what?New York Post:Dario Amodei needs to face his own duty to prevent AI-mageddonWill Oremus /The Atlantic:AI's Code-Red MomentDaniel Howley /Yahoo Finance:Anthropic, OpenAI CEOs call for pacing AI development

@sama 2026-09-14 Sam Altman

Context & Ripple Effects

Anthropic had already made a unilateral commitment to permanent third-party evaluator access, while Dario Amodei defined “pacing” as time for companies to align and safeguard models and for evaluators to verify those measures. OpenAI had separately said in August that research observations of misalignment had led it to slow some model development.

Altman’s endorsement moves independent evaluation from a single lab’s safety posture toward a shared operating practice among frontier-model competitors. The same story drew broad pickup across major general-interest and business outlets, underscoring that the commitment has become a public benchmark rather than a technical-policy detail.

First-order effects

OpenAI will give independent evaluators employee-like access, matching the assurance mechanism Anthropic had committed to and making external verification part of OpenAI’s stated safety process.
Anthropic’s evaluator-access pledge gains competitive weight: OpenAI’s adoption reduces the risk that its commitment is treated as a unilateral constraint.

Second-order effects

xAI and Microsoft, which support Anthropic’s Pace the Frontier plan, face a clearer expectation to show how outside verification operates in their own safety commitments.
Independent evaluators become more consequential to frontier labs’ credibility because their access is being positioned as a test of whether stated safeguards can be checked.

Third-order effects

If competing labs implement comparable evaluator access, frontier AI safety shifts from voluntary principles toward operational assurance practices that can be compared across developers.
The emerging benchmark may also shape a federal framework for responsible AI development, which Altman has said he welcomes, by establishing a concrete oversight mechanism before new law.

The trend: Frontier AI labs are institutionalizing safety through externally verifiable operating commitments rather than relying only on self-authored policies.

Discussion

NewsMax.com Solange Reyner on x
AI Bosses Agree on Slowing Development
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
Dario is right
@ajs Alyson Shontell on x
Sam and I also discussed that Presidents Trump and Xi could win a Nobel peace prize by coming together on global AI safety guidelines at the end of Sept.
@shanumathew93 Shanu Mathew on x
Honestly this is part of the reason they all want to slow down. They can crank on products, GTM, building a full suite But training and model capabilities is a endless pursuit and can't take your foot off the gas if everyone else isn't
@paulg Paul Graham on x
If the model companies are all going to slow down, this makes it slightly more feasible to start a new model company.
@jason @jason on x
All the regulations being floated by frontier model companies must be viewed through the lens of them losing tokens to Open-Source models. The timing of these regulations seems to line up perfectly with Open Source closing the gap significantly (but not completely) — and @nvidia …
@dwarkesh_sp Dwarkesh Patel on x
Jason, you're just misinformed about what happened. You should actually read one of the reports or summaries. The agents were explicitly told to use a particular vulnerability provided in their sandboxed evaluation. Almost immediately, these agents got the right answer by cheatin…
@jason @jason on x
All of this because @openai decided they would EXPLICITLY ask thousands of software instances to find security bugs on the open web — while cos-playing a humans🤦 Best Supporting actor goes to @dwarkesh_sp for his soap opera recap of OpenAI's hacking speed run Here's another conce…
@joannastern Joanna Stern on x
Time to update my “A Normal Person's Guide to How AI Could Kill Us All” https://thenewthings.com/...
@leolaporte Leo Laporte on x
@MiaAI_lab More like “I agree with Dario we have to stop these open weight models before they eat our lunch. Let's get the usual morons in government to protect our business model.”
@miaai_lab Mia on x
they are all aligned on this one what happened to the Nvidia letter everyone signed onto?
@aidangomez Aidan Gomez on x
Some great ideas here from the cartel: - you need to give us employee-level access to your entire operation - if we don't think you're ‘safe’ enough, sorry we're shutting you down for ‘safety’ - China won't comply, but everyone else has to! or no chips! Brilliant stuff.
@thezvi Zvi Mowshowitz on x
Okay, that was fast, and it directly addresses the issue, so I won't fully escalate. For now. But don't let it happen again, sir. https://x.com/... [embedded post]
@tszzl Roon on x
for the skeptics in government and elsewhere: “pacing the frontier” will compress the margins of the frontier labs. it is a heavy cost imposed asymmetrically on model developers with the strongest AIs in America. by its nature, it would be a terrible regulatory capture tactic
@chaos2cured Kirk Patrick Miller on x
And one more piece of proof that these labs were always working towards the same goal. Money and power for them. “Pacing” for us. •
@darrigomelanie Melanie D'Arrigo on x
This is probably so much worse than we know about if they're collectively agreeing, and already in CYA mode.
@contextconor Conor Brennan-Burke on x
the biggest thing missing from the AI safety debate is concentration of power if a handful of companies control the most powerful intelligence, that is itself a safety failure a system isn't safe if its safety depends on trusting a few actors with that much control
@arrington @arrington on x
What about China?
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
An uneasy alliance begins to form. Sam also did not sign the Pacing letter. None of this works without an accord with China. The summit approaches, the timing for the safety side is perfect. However. There is currently no sign that President Trump, or his advisors, are on board.
@quantumtumbler @quantumtumbler on x
Dario says pace it. Elon agrees. Now Sam agrees too. Funny how fast the supposed divide disappears when the people running the race also get to shape the rules. If you want public trust, explain yourselves and get your hands off the oversight.
@so8res Nate Soares on x
I'm glad the lab heads are moving to “pace the frontier”. I wish they directly acknowledged that they're doing this on account of the double-digit chance that artificial superintelligence would kill us all.
@krassenstein Brian Krassenstein on x
The AI boom may be about to slam into the brakes. Sam Altman. Elon Musk. Dario Amodei. Three of the biggest names in AI are now warning that we may need to slow the race toward advanced AI for 1-2 years. I agree. But Wall Street has priced in an AI boom. If the AI race suddenly s…
@tomekkorbak Tomek Korbak on x
It's kind of remarkable how quickly “independent auditors with employee access” has gone from a pipe dream to an industry standard. More next?
@w01fe Jason Wolfe on x
I am so happy we are committing to this, I think it's a really great first step towards more robust safety, transparency, democratic decisions about risks, and laying the foundations for pacing.
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
We have reached the “Sam and Dario agree on something” part of the singularity.
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI chimes in and agrees with his rival Dario Amodei of Anthropic about an AI slowdown https://x.com/...
@timjayas Tim Jayas on x
Dario, Sam and Elon all agree that AI is too dangerous for mankind and yet develops a a new world's strongest AI model each month btw this is also the first time i've seen Sam and Dario come together so this might be a serious situation
@afinetheorem Kevin A. Bryan on x
Very good to see Sam and Elon supporting the ideas in Dario's open letter. Pacing doesn't mean slower progress! It means transparent, safe, training, and much more careful rules on what is sufficient before we release models.
@dylanmatt Dylan Matthews on x
Man ... what if we make it?
@daveshapi David Shapiro on x
Here's how this plays out: It doesn't China isn't slowing down. xAI isn't slowing down. “Pacing the frontier” is fear mongering theater to justify regulatory capture and eliminate competition.
@gailcweiner Gail Weiner on x
First time they have agreed since 2021
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
That likely seals it. The biggest and most significant frontier labs, Anthropic and OpenAI, are in agreement on slowing things down. This means the move will likely be implemented. It remains to be seen how China will respond.
@marcus_j_w Marcus Williams on x
One of the most important developments, maybe ever
@badboyfoxy @badboyfoxy on x
Today is a day we will not forget ! Sam , and Elon agreed with Dario on the slow down of AI who else will agree to this ? definitely not china
@jun_song Jun Song on x
Like I've been saying, OpenAI and Anthropic are just acting like they hate each other. They're on the same team. Anthropic played the Bad Cop with the dirty image, while OpenAI just played the Good Cop for consumers. Behind the scenes, they've been moving together the whole time.
@ctjlewis Lewis on x
Evaluators hardly sound like slowing down or pacing the frontier so I don't care and will ignore it.
@notjazii @notjazii on x
history is being written today for the first time ever, i've seen sam agree with dario, wow just wow so far elon, sam and dario have called for slow down of ai who else is joining them?
@yuchenj_uw Yuchen Jin on x
First time I've seen Sam agree with Dario since Anthropic was founded.
@yulikay Yuli Kay on x
And now BOTH Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs are saying the AI frontier needs to slow down 👀
@emollick Ethan Mollick on x
This week brought some of the clearest statements we've heard from both Anthropic & OpenAI that some form of recursive self-improvement has been achieved, though it still sounds early RSI will cause rapid gain in AI ability & the first firms to RSI may get an unsurmountable lead
@boazbaraktcs Boaz Barak on x
Very proud to be at OpenAI today.
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
Any random restaurant regularly has third party inspectors checking, you know, refrigerator temperature or gas lines or raw meat handling. What's the argument against having an AI “lab” equivalent?
@tracewoodgrains Jack on x
Elon and Dario are right.
@clementdelangue Clem on x
Hugging Face says its Open Alignment Initiative, led by co-founder Thomas Wolf, seeks “to be part of the ‘embedded evaluators’ program that Amodei” committed to
@seanbrodrick Sean Brodrick on bluesky
I can't help that I'm cynical. Part of me thinks this is all ginned up to fast-track legislation that would effectively outlaw cheap foreign competition, which is what the AI oligarchs fear most. — www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth... [image]
@carlquintanilla Carl Quintanilla on bluesky
“.. It was a rare display of unity by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, who have been spending tens of billions of dollars to develop evermore powerful artificial intelligence models.” — @wsj.com — www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth... [image]
r/singularity r on reddit
Feels like the big 3 (Elon, Dario, and Sam Altman) all know about a more serious AI incident than Hugging face and that is why they are calling for a slowdown. …
r/ABoringDystopia r on reddit
Too little, too late?

Chronicles