Altman tells OpenAI staff he'd slow frontier development

Sam Altman told OpenAI staff in a company-wide meeting that the company is open to slowing its pace of frontier AI development, per Reuters. He raised the idea of pacing development together with several other labs, and acknowledged some may not agree to it.

Slowing down alone cedes ground to rivals still racing ahead. Staying on record as willing to slow down also gives OpenAI cover if a competitor's model causes harm later.

OpenAI says it has already scaled back parts of model development and paused certain internal training runs for safety reasons. Reuters and Bloomberg didn't specify which runs, when, or whether the idea has been raised with any other lab directly.

The remarks came in an internal, company-wide meeting, not a public policy announcement or statement coordinated with other labs.

On r/singularity, the post drew 176 comments, with most reading Altman's remarks as positioning rather than a real shift in policy.