Boss of AI firm Anthropic calls for slowdown in development for safety reasons

Diplomacy / 11 September 2026 Brics leaders gather for summit in New Delhi 11 September 2026 Middle East / 11 September 2026 Yemen’s Houthi-led forces take control of strategic Red Sea port 11 September 2026 United States / 11 September 2026 US marks 25th anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attack 11 September 2026 Latin America / 11 September 2026 First Lady Flores of Venezuela seeks home detention as heart condition worsens 11 September 2026 Iran War / 11 September 2026 UN chief warns against escalation in tensions in the Gulf 11 September 2026 Latin America / 11 September 2026 Brazil’s Supreme Court cancels session as political crisis deepens 11 September 2026 Central Africa / 11 September 2026 Congo’s Ebola outbreak is spreading, warns Africa’s top health body 11 September 2026 THE boss of leader US artificial-intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has called for a slowdown in the development of new systems to give safety measures time to catch up.

If the industry doesn’t slam on the brakes, chief executive Dario Amodei warned in a post on his website, within six to 12 months, AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.

Watchdogs have been urging the AI sector for years to slow its development for safety reasons, but pressure has been building recently as industry workers resign and accuse their companies of not acting responsibly.

Mr Amodei offered a plan to increase checks on the industry, some of which would require co-ordination across the broad industry and with governments around the world.

“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,” he said.

Concerns have grown for years about a possible superintelligence that could escape the control of humanity, said Future of Life Institute president and chief executive Anthony Aguirre, who called for a six-month pause for the industry’s development in 2023.

“It’s pretty much become clear to the world and even the AI companies that they’re not really prepared to control the AI systems they’re racing to create,” he said.

Anthropic said two days before that it had blocked efforts to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk urged countries earlier this week to put “cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late.”

Big Tech / 21 August 2026 Ministers must ‘get a grip’ and block AI data centres from receiving special planning permissions, Green Party says 21 August 2026 Big Tech / 23 July 2026 The billionaire behind Trump’s surveillance state 23 July 2026 The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN

Features / 4 April 2026 AI: the threat to humanity 4 April 2026 In the second and final part of his article MIKE SCOTT posits that if we don’t control AI while we’ve got the chance, we could be signing the death warrant for our children and grandchildren