Altman says OpenAI now sets safety protocols before major training runs, and 'pacing' does not mean 'stopping'

Sam Altman on Sunday expanded on his endorsement of Dario Amodei's call to pace AI development. In a post on X, the OpenAI chief wrote that 'no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,' and added that 'when we talk about pacing, we do not mean stopping.' According to The Decoder, OpenAI now sets explicit safety protocols before training runs that could bring major capability jumps, and Altman hopes other companies 'will learn from our approaches and propose their own.' He wants a uniform nationwide safety framework but says the industry should not wait for lawmakers. Altman said progress will 'continue to be' rapid, just not as fast as it could. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella welcomed 'deliberate pacing' and 'embedded evaluators' the day after Amodei's essay, which MarkTechPost says had passed 67 million views on X by September 13. Elon Musk's endorsement was three words: 'Dario is right.' The Information reports that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have discussed self-regulation through an independent oversight body for months, and that smaller player Cohere worries this could become a cartel. The Register's Simon Sharwood argues the weekend's agreement among Amodei, Altman, Nadella, and Musk amounts to the leading labs setting their own terms for regulatory capture. The Associated Press notes Amodei warned that without a slowdown, AI could within six to 12 months be capable of leading an agent swarm that takes over the entire internet.