We Must Pace the Frontier

Amodei argues that capability, driven increasingly by AI-accelerated AI research, is outrunning alignment and security, and that the answer is pacing rather than a full pause (which he calls unrealistic). The plan has three steps: (1) unilateral embedded third-party evaluators with employee-level access; (2) common safety standards among frontier firms in democracies, backed by government; (3) verifiable international agreements, up to 'speed limits' on recursive self-improvement, built on capability-triggered checkpoints. He ties pacing to continued chip export controls and anti-distillation work against authoritarian states. Anthropic's Sept 18 Accenture/Faculty embedded-evaluation deal was the first follow-up; Opus 5.5 shipped ten days later, which some press read as a tension. Page fetched 2026-09-29 to confirm title; date from the author's X post and coverage.

• "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."