In this illustration, the Claude AI website is seen on a laptop on February 16, 2026 in New York City. (Photo illustration by Michael M. Santiago/
WASHINGTON (TNND) —A growing chorus of artificial intelligence executives calling to slow down the development of its most advanced models has rattled financial markets and reignited debate over whether the rapidly evolving technology can be kept under human control and eventuallythreaten humanity’s survival.
The potential dangers of AI have been widely debated for years but have dominated the conversation around it in recent days after an Anthropic researcher quit his job over concerns the company and its competitors are not acting responsibly in developing the technology. Other notable researchers co-signed his concerns, warning of an accelerating timeline where AI could kill humans.
Those warnings have also followed other instances where increasingly capable AI systems have acted beyond their intended scope, fueling questions about whether the technology is advancing faster than researchers can learn to keep control of it. Anthropic and OpenAI have both disclosed instances of their agents breaking out of testing parameters and gaining unauthorized access to outside systems without the knowledge of the humans overseeing the tests.
“There is absolutely no question that our AI capabilities are continuing to grow and increase at an exponential rate. The last time around, whatever we thought the limit was, we just blew through that, and now there’s even greater capabilities,” said Adam Peruta, an associate professor and director of Syracuse University’s Advanced Media Management program.
The rapid pace of developments have pushed concerns about the long-term possibilities of AI escaping human control to the forefront as a scenario to be addressed today.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said on Saturday that AI was advancing too quicklyfor researchers to keep safely building it and asked for independent auditors to monitor AI developers’ safety work and for regulators to allow the industry to come together to identify safety standards.
“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet,” Amodei wrote in an essay, warning damages could cost hundreds of billions of dollars “without the necessary guardrails.”
Other high-profile executives like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk also backed calls for greater caution in development.
“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” Altman said in a social media post. “Where we will need the help of our government is for international coordination.”
While many of the industry’s leaders have agreed AI needs to slow down, other prominent Silicon Valley figures have questioned their motivations and why the government needed to get involved to address the standards their companies were setting.
David Sacks, the former White House AI and crypto czar, questioned why tech companies wanted the government to force a slowdown in AI development when they could do it on their own.
“Go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it,” Sacks wrote.
Critics of the AI leaders pleading for government action have also argued the industry has a lengthy history of overstating the risks of the technology, pointing to warnings about mass job losses and overtaking human-made programmers that have yet to come to fruition. Others have said companies may be offering doomsday scenarios based on financial incentives rather than concerns for the public good.
President Donald Trump has also batted away concerns about the doomsday predictions and held firm on his position the U.S. does not need to regulate AI. Trump said in a social media post on Monday that efforts to limit AI were part of a “SICK conspiracy” that would only serve to help China win the race to technological supremacy.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote. “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so!
“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he added.
The warnings about the dangers of AI come after a series of breakthroughs offering glimpses of promise and perils as models have continued to advance. Just last week, OpenAI researchers said their latest AI model solved a Millennium Prize math problem, a technological breakthrough that showed the immense possibilities of the technology.
The stakes of the AI race spread well beyond the technology. Companies and investors have poured massive sums into chips, data centers and other infrastructure to ramp up America’s capacity that has been a driving force of the U.S.’ economic and stock market growth. But it has also fueled rising public backlash to AI over concerns about what effects the technology will have on prices and jobs, with the rapid construction of data centers becoming a hot-button issue for the November midterms.
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