Altman: 'We have paused some frontier RL training'

Sam Altman's X post on Aug 18, 2026, the same day as OpenAI's official pause tweet and the blog "Pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities". He says OpenAI paused some frontier RL training so it can meet appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for "the new level of capabilities in front of us", that model progress is now extremely rapid, and that OpenAI always said it would act if capabilities outstripped safety. Press (cybernews, Storyboard18, The Tribune) also quote him saying the whole field will need shared safety standards but OpenAI will act unilaterally meanwhile. He separately told TIME "I think it is a good time to slow down." Verified via the X syndication endpoint (sama, 2026-08-18T18:53Z).

We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment.

We care very deeply about AI safety. We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime.

We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress. We are optimistic about the alignment work we are doing, and we remain committed to making frontier capabilities widely available.

https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/

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Archived 2026-09-29 via fxtwitter (unofficial).