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Anthropic’s chief executive has urged the artificial intelligence industry to slow the pace of development, warning that AI could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to the world economy within six to 12 months.
Dario Amodei, 43, wrote in an open letter that the technology had been “advancing drastically faster” since the summer and could become capable of taking over the “entire internet”.
“Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” he wrote.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, both declared their support for the essay. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman, 41, posted. Musk, who runs xAI, said: “Dario is right.”
OpenAI pushes its listing into 2027
Altman told Fortune in an interview published yesterday that OpenAI would not float until 2027. Markets had initially expected the company to go public this year, after it submitted the requisite IPO paperwork in June.
“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman said. “I would say not 2026, yeah. We got a lot of stuff to do.”
Business Matters reported in May that Altman had retreated from his earlier warnings about an AI jobs apocalypse, admitting he had been “pretty wrong”.
Three steps and a unilateral commitment
Amodei, a former academic researcher who co-founded Anthropic with his younger sister Daniela in 2021, set out a three-step plan to control the technology. He said it would require “industry-wide” and “global” co-ordination.
The proposals include a requirement that every leading AI company establish a team of “third-party evaluators” to report incidents and verify safety measures. “Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now,” he said.
Amodei, who holds a PhD in biophysics and computational neuroscience from Princeton and is the son of an Italian leather craftsman, wrote: “I have worked on AI for the last 12 years because I believe it could dramatically raise the quality of human life.
“Carefully wielded, AI can be the latest in a long line of technological miracles that have uplifted and ennobled humanity.”
He added: “But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.”
He went on: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
The letter follows a warning from Anthropic on Thursday that it had identified and thwarted “malicious” efforts to use its Claude model for activity that could support the development of biological weapons. The company said in its latest threat intelligence report that such misuse could have “catastrophic consequences”.
In Britain, Business Matters reported in June that Downing Street was lobbying Washington for an exemption from a US ban on foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced models, a restriction the AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, said had cut Britain off from the most advanced AI in the world.
Business Matters also reported on 9 September that Anthropic did not submit its Claude Mythos 5.1 model to the UK AI Security Institute before release, the first time the company had bypassed the British body when launching a model.
Amy Ingham
Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.
