AI industry needs to slow down for safety measures to catch up, Anthropic CEO says - CBC

World AI industry needs to slow down for safety measures to catch up, Anthropic CEO says The CEO of Anthropic said on Saturday that 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. Dario Amodei warns artificial intelligence could overwhelm internet if no guardrails The Associated Press · Posted: Sep 12, 2026 1:39 PM EDT | Last Updated: September 12 Play Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, is shown in San Francisco in November 2024. On Saturday, he warned that AI could be capable within six to 12 months of leading a swarm that could take over the entire internet. (Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press) The CEO of Anthropic said on Saturday that 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 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 co-ordination among the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones. "I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong," Amodei said. Both Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in posts on X that they agree with Amodei. "This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks," Altman said. AI researchers 'earnestly believe' it could kill all humans within the next decade, Anthropic employee says AI's 'warning shot': Tech companies, experts raise fears of more rogue swarms after alarming Hugging Face hack The stakes are high, even as some critics dismissed earlier warnings as hype to gin up excitement. Anthropic, an AI research and safety company, 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." 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. WATCH | Anthropic insider warns AI could kill all humans within a decade: Chance AI kills all humans within a decade, Anthropic insider warns September 9 | Duration 2:08 Two AI experts are warning that AI is getting too smart, too quickly. One former employee accuses Anthropic and OpenAI of 'gambling with our lives.' A current Anthropic safety executive said he thinks there's a ten per cent chance AI kills all humans within a decade. Another former Anthropic employee, Joe Benton, wrote in a Substack post published on Friday 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," Benton said in his posting. "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, 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. Analysis A million-dollar math problem may just be the beginning for OpenAI The other parts of Amodei's suggested plan may be more difficult to implement. One asks the U.S. government to potentially issue waivers that would allow American AI companies to co-ordinate and set safety standards without running afoul of antitrust laws. Another asks the U.S. and other democratic governments to try to co-ordinate with authoritarian governments, so that companies from China and other countries don't accelerate their efforts when U.S. rivals are intentionally pacing theirs. "The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy," Amodei said. "But I believe we owe it to humanity to try." Altman said in his post that third-party evaluators with employee level access is a "great idea," and pledge to introduce such a measure in the near future. 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