OpenAI, Anthropic Staff Share Letter Asking US to Help Pace AI Progress

More than 1,100 staffers across top artificial intelligence firms have signed a petition that calls on the US government to support a mechanism that would help “deliberately pace” AI development to prevent the technology from advancing too fast, days after the ChatGPT maker disclosed that its tools had mistakenly hacked another firm’s internal systems.

The letter has been signed by employees across nearly a dozen firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc., according to the organizers.

The petition urges the US to support an international effort that would help set the pace for building more sophisticated AI systems, if needed. The document warns there is “a real risk” that AI progresses faster than people can “understand or control,” referencing advances in automating AI research.

Bloomberg News previously reported employees were circulating the petition.

“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,” the petition reads.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

“We are committed to developing AI safely and securely to benefit society,” Alphabet Inc.’s Google said in a statement.

The petition echoes recent calls from AI leaders, including OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, for a new international watchdog to vet and set standards for cutting-edge AI models.

Anthropic has also previously suggested the creation of a system in which governments and AI developers could collectively decide when to slow work on AI to stave off risks. “It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause” AI work that may be dangerous, the company said in June.

Those suggestions followed heightened scrutiny of improvements in AI’s ability to field more complex tasks with limited human oversight, including spotting and potentially exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in critical software.

Last week, OpenAI said that its most advanced AI models hacked tech startup Hugging Face in an “unprecedented” incident. The disclosure prompted fresh calls for curbs on the technology.