AI race: OpenAI says it is ready to ease off, but refuses to be the only one

In recent weeks, several voices have called for a slowdown in AI development. In an open letter, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and more than one hundred technology, financial, and cybersecurity companies called for an urgent “global response” to the rise of AI capable of launching cyberattacks.A little earlier, more than 1,000 employees from the leading AI powers signed a similar petition, calling for the creation of a mechanism that can slow the development of models when necessary.

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

— Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026

More recently, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic employee, chose to resign from the start-up, believing that “the people building AI sincerely believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of safety, agreed, saying that there is a “more than 10%” risk that artificial intelligence will bring about the end of humanity in the next ten years.

Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.https://t.co/QAIHiFP3QZ

— Evan Hubinger (@EvanHub) September 9, 2026

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In this alarming context, OpenAI has decided to slow down and suspend the development of its most powerful models… before unveiling Astra, the new high-end model powering ChatGPT. Despite the new features regularly deployed, the start-up says it is ready to scale back the development of its artificial intelligence models. During an internal meeting organized this week, CEO Sam Altman allegedly assured employees that OpenAI could moderate the pace of its AI development, our colleagues at Reuters report.

Nevertheless, Altman does not want OpenAI to be the only AI giant to slow down its innovations. The entrepreneur dreams of a coordinated approach among laboratories specializing in AI. The head of OpenAI mentions the idea of an AI moratorium, agreed upon in partnership with all its competitors. Obviously, OpenAI does not want to be the only company to agree to a slowdown, for fear of falling behind its rivals. A laboratory that decided on its own to suspend or slow down its work could lose ground to companies less concerned about safety.

In front of his employees, Altman acknowledged that not all market players would probably be willing to adhere to such an initiative.The statement comes as OpenAI actively prepares for its IPO. Like its rival Anthropic, the start-up is preparing to make its Wall Street debut. From a financial standpoint, this is hardly the right time to slow down AI research…

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Source: Reuters