The big AI 'slowdown' battle explained 5 things you need to know about Trump's AI regulation battle with OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and even Elon Musk

Date:
Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:15:45 +0000

Description:
Could AI get to the stage where it can end humanity? Big tech bosses think
so, but the White House disagrees.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Even for a topic as hot as artificial intelligence, talk of AI has ratcheted up to yet another level
this week: on the one hand we've got the CEOs of the biggest companies in AI calling for a slowdown on the technology, and on the other you've got the President of the United States advocating for the exact opposite.

If you're wondering why there are renewed calls for AI regulation, whether or not AI has the capability to kill everyone on the planet, and how this might impact the technology going forward, we're here to explain it in a straightforward way for you. Many experts are now insisting that we're at a point in AI development where 'pacing the frontier' slowing down the cutting-edge of development is the safest and wisest move. Latest Videos
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However, not everyone agrees , with opposing perspectives suggesting that AI doomerism is purely a marketing stunt and a distraction. 1. Why are AI bosses asking for a slowdown? (Image credit: Getty Images / Bloomberg) In a rare
show of unity, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have all called for a slowdown in AI development in recent
days, arguing that better safeguards and guardrails need to be put in place around the technology before models are allowed to progress much further. You may like Why are US AI giants calling for Pacing The Frontier, and why is China calling it a Cold War tactic? We ask the experts 'Whoever wins AI, wins!' Trump warns 'traitors and leakers' to 'beware' claims AI only needs him Anthropic CEO calls for slowing down AI development and warns that AI agents could take over the entire internet

"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," wrote Amodei in a blog post , a stance which Altman and Musk later agreed with. According to Amodei, whose company develops Claude, AI is now advancing "drastically faster" than ever before in part because it can now upgrade itself and that rate of progress, together with the recent incident where AI agents hacked the Hugging Face platform , have convinced Amodei that action needs to be taken.

The Anthropic CEO wants to see third-party evaluators embedded in the biggest AI companies, as well as coordinated safety standards across the industry,
and between countries something that might be challenging to achieve, considering that Chinese authorities have described calls for a slowdown as "fearmongering" and a "Cold War" move intended to keep the US ahead of China in AI development. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox
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us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. 2. Could AI one day kill us all? I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing
straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.
More thoughts below. September 9, 2026 The top-level CEOs haven't been the only ones warning about the dangers of AI in recent days. Anthropic AI developer Jacob Coxon very publicly quit his job over fears about the safety of the technology he was working on, saying that "people building AI
earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade".

This isn't a new idea, as Stephen Hawking was saying the same over a decade ago. What's changed is how powerful AI has become: it can now, in theory, improve itself and spread itself across the internet in a way that escapes human control, potentially hacking into essential infrastructure and
outpacing any defensive measures.

Imagine the internet, cell networks, payment platforms, and GPS suddenly not working, for anyone things would likely deteriorate pretty quickly. The
other AI doom scenario that's often talked about is bad actors using AI to launch biological or nuclear weapons. What to read next 'Dr. Frankenstein is telling us the monster is escaping': US lawmakers desperately want to set up AI guardrails before midterm elections OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is worried about AI being controlled by just a few powerful players Googles AI chief warns of growing AGI risks

AI isn't that advanced yet, but it might be soon, and some experts think there's a greater than 10% chance of it happening in the next few years. 3. How could regulation help? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wants more regulation of AI (Image credit: Getty Images / Bloomberg) Those in the AI industry are now actively asking governments for help in reining in the technology, believing that any slowing of the pace in AI development is going to require
state-level coordination. That regulation might include oversight bodies, 'kill switches' to shut down AI, and limits on how and when new AI models can be released.

While there's a lot of momentum behind the idea that regulation is necessary, there's little agreement about how to go about it. AI safety legislation efforts have stalled in both the US and the UK, amidst arguments about how tight any restrictions should be and who should be in charge of them.

One sticking point is over the potential harms of AI regulation. Would, for example, a limit on data center expansion end up hurting economic growth and smaller AI businesses, as well as companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI? If regulation is going to happen, it's going to take a while. 4. Why is Trump calling AI concerns a hoax? Donald Trump would prefer not to see AI development slowing down (Image credit: Getty Images) One of the reasons that serious AI regulation seems unlikely in the short term is that US President Donald Trump has loudly rejected calls for a slowing down of AI development, saying that "whoever wins AI, wins!" and calling AI safety fears a "hoax" concocted by the bosses at Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX.

The President's point of view is that the guardrails that are already in
place essentially AI model oversight by the US government are enough to
keep AI from doing any harm. Trump will also be concerned about ceding ground to China, and the economic hit that may result in slower AI advances.

There's a huge amount of money invested in AI right now, from the companies themselves to the infrastructure that they rely on to run everything. If it takes longer to see returns on those investments and OpenAI chief Sam Altman has already said his company's IPO is being pushed back over safety fears then that could have significant economic impacts. 5. What could happen to
our AI apps? (Image credit: OpenAI) Assuming you're not using ChatGPT to develop bioweapons or hack into government mainframes, none of this noise around AI will affect the apps you use day-to-day at the moment. If you do
try and do something malevolent with a chatbot , like writing computer viruses, you'll see there are many safety protocols in place to stop you.

What the AI companies are concerned about is keeping it that way. If they manage to coordinate some kind of slowing down and regulation, then you might see apps like Claude or Gemini updated less often. At the moment, new AI models are appearing on a regular basis , but that won't necessarily continue to be the case.

One possibility is that agentic AI, which is AI that's able to carry out
tasks and program itself, becomes more tightly controlled even as other aspects of the technology improve.

What's certain is that this discussion is a long way from being over, and
that those who know best say that we're at a "crunch time for humanity". Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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