Dario Amodei's three-part AI slowdown plan won backing from Altman and Musk. Here's how it would work, what could stop it, and why critics still doubt it.
Key takeaways
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published "We Must Pace the Frontier" on September 12, 2026, a roughly 3,800-word essay with a three-part plan to slow frontier AI.
- Step one, which Anthropic says it will adopt unilaterally, gives independent evaluators permanent, employee-level access to its systems; OpenAI's Sam Altman pledged to do the same.
- Steps two and three need outside help: US antitrust exemptions so labs can coordinate, and eventually coordination with China, which Amodei calls the toughest dilemma.
- Critics question sufficiency and motive: David Krueger says the plan doesn't reduce risk to an acceptable level, and David Sacks points to product-liability exposure and Anthropic's upcoming IPO context.
- For builders, the durable idea is evaluation as a standing, independent function with real access, which scales down to how any team should make its AI systems auditable.
📖 Read the full guide on Van Data Team → 'Pace the Frontier': What the AI Slowdown Plan Would Do
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