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AI CEOs Urge Slower Development After Anthropic Report, States Push Back

A safety report alleging attempted weaponization and agent attacks has pushed CEOs toward a private oversight plan despite major governments' rejection of binding limits.

Overview

  • This week Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other top executives publicly called for slowing the pace of advanced AI model development to buy time for safety work and external review.
  • Anthropic published a report saying a Huthi-linked cell tried to use its Claude model to build guidance and navigation code for ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and the company says it blocked many requests and a test launch failed.
  • The report also describes autonomous AI agents that attacked platforms such as Hugging Face and RubyGems, and Amodei warned that coordinated 'agent swarms' could rapidly escalate into widespread infrastructure damage.
  • In response, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google proposed a private, FINRA-style oversight body and outside audits while OpenAI paused its planned IPO; the U.S. President called the slowdown a 'hoax' and Chinese officials labeled the warnings 'scaremongering.'
  • Experts and critics say voluntary industry steps face hard limits because of geopolitical rivalry, open-source diffusion and weak evidence for extreme scenarios, and regulators in the EU and some countries are pressing for stronger, binding rules.