Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Calls for Pacing AI Development for Safety
On 12 September 2026 Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published a roughly 3,900-word essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing the AI industry must deliberately slow the rate at which models gain capability. We read the essay in full and set out the three-step plan, the unilateral commitment Anthropic is making to embedded third-party evaluators with desks, badges and publication rights, the six-to-twelve-month botnet warning that drove the headlines, the China constraint that caps how far pacing can go, and the regulatory-capture criticism the proposal has drawn.