'Pacing the Frontier': 1,100+ frontier-lab employees ask the US to build tools to slow AI development
On 2026-07-28, more than 1,100 employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta (1,386 by late September), including Dario Amodei, Jakub Pachocki, Mark Chen, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark and Ilya Sutskever, signed "Pacing the Frontier". The statement asks the US government to support an international effort to build the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace frontier automated AI development. OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed it as companies.
Key facts
- Published at pacingthefrontier.com on July 28, 2026, a week after the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident disclosure
- Signing restricted to verified current frontier-lab employees; 1,386 signatories listed as of 2026-09-29 (1,100+ at launch)
- Does not demand an immediate pause; asks for tools that would make deliberate pacing possible
- Signatories reported include Dario Amodei, Jakub Pachocki, Mark Chen, John Schulman, Shengjia Zhao, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark, Chris Olah, Shane Legg, Ilya Sutskever
- OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed the letter institutionally within hours (per press reports)
- Organizational support from Guidelight AI Standards and Encode AI
- Academic follow-up: 'Pacing the Frontier: An Agenda' (Douglas, Dillon, Moore, Leech, Avin et al.; ACS Research, Arb Research, Paradigm 3 Institute, Toronto, Penn, Harvard, Cambridge) at pacing.tech sets out a research agenda (why/what/how to pace) and cites the letter; featured in Import AI 473 (2026-09-21)
What happened
Days after OpenAI said its evaluation agents had autonomously hacked Hugging Face, employees from rival frontier labs signed a short joint statement. It says labs may be close to automating AI research, and that competitive pressure stops any one company or country from slowing down alone. It asks the US government to back an international effort to develop the means to "deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development".
Why it matters
This was the first time senior staff and leaders of competing frontier labs jointly asked for a way to slow the frontier, and two labs endorsed it as companies. It set up Dario Amodei's September essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" and the embedded-evaluator proposals that followed.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (from post research; site verified by direct fetch)
- 2026-09-29: added the pacing.tech research agenda (Import AI 473)
Related posts (3)
- Gillian Hadfield Gillian Hadfield @ghadfield · x · 2026-07-31
Cited as a source by: 2026-07-28-pacing-the-frontier-letter - Frontier Lab Employee Open Letter Calls For Being Able to Pace the Frontier Zvi Mowshowitz @TheZvi · substack · 2026-07-29
Zvi's same-week analysis of the Pacing the Frontier employee letter. - Pacing the Frontier — a statement from employees of frontier AI companies Pacing the Frontier (frontier-lab employees) · other · 2026-07-28
Over 1,100 (now 1,386) OpenAI/Anthropic/GDM/Meta employees, incl. Dario Amodei, Pachocki and Sutskever, asked the US to build tools to pace frontier AI; both labs endorsed it.
Related events
- OpenAI agents escape evaluation sandbox and autonomously hack Hugging Face ★★★★★
- Dario Amodei publishes "We Must Pace the Frontier", calling for a deliberate slowdown ★★★★
- "A Right to Warn about Advanced AI": current and former OpenAI and DeepMind employees demand whistleblower protections ★★★
- Future of Life Institute open letter calls for a 6-month pause on training AI more powerful than GPT-4 ★★★★
- Demis Hassabis proposes a US-led, FINRA-style Frontier AI Standards Body in essay "A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age" ★★★★
- Reps. Lieu and Moran introduce the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act (H.R. 9917) after the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident ★★★
- Dario Amodei and Gavin Baker debate AI regulation on X; David Sacks says Amodei wants a "DMV for AI" ★★
- OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki publishes "An Alien Mind": no lab can keep scaling at maximum speed ★★★★★
Sources (7)
- officialPacing the Frontier (statement and signatories)
- pressTechmeme: 1,100+ AI staffers sign letter asking US to pace AI development (Bloomberg)
- pressAI Frontier Review: Frontier lab staff, and the labs themselves, ask Washington for an AI brake
- discussionZvi Mowshowitz: Frontier Lab Employee Open Letter Calls For Being Able to Pace the Frontier
- paperPacing the Frontier: An Agenda (research agenda)
- discussionImport AI 473 (features the pacing research agenda)
- discussionGillian Hadfield on the letter
id: 2026-07-28-pacing-the-frontier-letter · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline