Dossier · Ongoing
Pacing the Frontier
From the July employee letter to Amodei's essay and Altman's agreement in September 2026: the push for a paced AI development speed, tracked over time.
In July 2026, more than 1,200 employees of leading AI companies signed an open letter asking the US government to back international tools for steering the pace of AI development – without any commitment from the companies themselves. In September 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, himself a co-signer of that letter, went a step further in his own essay: he announced an immediate, unilateral commitment from Anthropic and called on the industry to pace development jointly.
This dossier tracks how the demand evolved from a request to the state into concrete corporate commitments – and whether the fast agreement from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla founder Elon Musk turns into binding rules.