The past few days have been particularly eventful in the AI industry. Several prominent figures, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI chief Sam Altman, have called for a slowdown in AI development. However, former White House AI czar David Sacks has now reminded US AI companies that they do not need anyone’s permission to slow development themselves. Sacks currently serves as Chair of the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Writing on X, Sacks strongly criticised US AI companies following calls from Amodei and Altman to reduce the pace of frontier AI development. “You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence,” he wrote.
Sacks argued that neither company needed to seek permission or establish an independent system to control the pace of frontier AI because Anthropic and OpenAI are themselves among the companies leading the field. “Stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel,” he wrote. “Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability.”
[David Sacks]
A screenshot of David Sacks' X post. (1/2)
He also raised doubts about whether Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), an AI safety research non-profit, could truly be considered independent. “Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier,” Sacks added.
Slowing AI development may give companies breathing room
Sacks also suggested that the push to slow AI development was not necessarily motivated only by concerns about safety. He argued that OpenAI and Anthropic could face “massive product-liability exposure” if their systems were involved in enabling a damaging cyberattack. He added that the market already tends to penalise AI models that act in “unpredictable or unauthorised ways.”
Referring to the Hugging Face breach, in which 700 OpenAI agents reportedly attempted to hack the US company, Sacks said it was “simply good business” for OpenAI and Anthropic to sacrifice some raw model capability in exchange for greater reliability and predictability. “Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want,” he said.
Sacks further argued that slowing frontier AI development could provide “breathing room” for a more meaningful debate on regulation, contrasting it with US Senator Bernie Sanders’ approach of wanting to “shut it all down”. At the same time, he said China was highly unlikely to participate in any global agreement.
He concluded with a warning: “The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.” According to Sacks, doing so would help the companies “buy goodwill for the next conversation.” Otherwise, he said, their actions could appear to be “another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.”
Donald Trump rejects calls to slow down AI development
Sacks’ comments come as US President Donald Trump has rejected proposals to slow the development of frontier AI. Speaking to reporters during a weekend visit to Ireland, Trump dismissed the calls, arguing that the US needs to maintain its lead over China in AI.
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that ... shouldn't be bringing it up, and they're bringing up things that won't happen,” Trump said. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”
Later, while at his resort in Doonbeg after watching a golfer tee off during the Irish Open, Trump again said that the US was ahead of China in AI and wanted “to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.”
Calls for slowing frontier AI development have gained momentum in Silicon Valley in recent days. It has also emerged as one of the few issues on which Amodei, Altman and tech billionaire Elon Musk appear to have similar views. After Amodei called for development to be slowed, Musk responded on X, saying, “Dario is right.”
Meanwhile, employees and researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic have warned that if AI continues advancing at its current pace, the technology could potentially pose an existential threat to humanity within just a few years.
