Sam Altman calls for pacing AI development but promises rapid progress will continue

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Sam Altman is publicly advocating for measured AI development while simultaneously promising OpenAI's pace of progress won't slow dramatically. He is calling for a uniform, nationwide safety framework for advanced AI in the U.S., arguing the industry should not wait for legislators to act — but that international coordination ultimately requires U.S. government support. Behind the scenes, OpenAI has implemented safety protocols that must be completed before any training run likely to produce major capability improvements. Altman is openly encouraging other labs to adopt similar practices. The Information reports that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have held months-long discussions about voluntary self-regulation through an independent oversight body. Weekend statements from Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Demis Hassabis (former DeepMind), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Elon Musk all backed controlled development pacing — signaling unusual cross-industry alignment. Not everyone is on board: Cohere and smaller players have raised concerns that joint big-lab self-regulation could function as a competitive moat rather than a genuine safety mechanism. Altman's framing is deliberate: 'pacing' is not 'stopping.' He explicitly distances the initiative from competitive self-handicapping, positioning it as alignment and monitoring keeping pace with capabilities. Whether the proposed independent oversight body materialises depends heavily on whether the U.S. government engages — a precondition Altman acknowledges but does not control.