Questions mount over what an AI 'slowdown' would look like

There has been no shortage of warnings from AI's top bosses regarding existential threats over the years.

Key points

• On Sunday President Trump created his own views clear, claiming the US was ahead of China in the AI race and declaring: "Whoever wins AI, wins."
• "Nobody has given a substantive explanation of what 'slowdown' means, " remarked Ed Zitron, CEO of EZ Primary Research.
• As Professor Hall puts it: "Would you invest in a company that says it's going to bring about human extinction?"
• America is widely understood to be terrified of losing the race to build the most powerful AI to China.
• Putting a plant from METR, where one of the guys who quit Anthropic went, in every AI firm?

I attended the world's first AI safety summit in Bletchley Park in November 2023 where the focus was on the most serious threats imaginable, posed by the most powerful AI models.

At the time, plenty of thought this was in the realm of sci-fi and the real threats were comparatively far more mundane: job losses, cheating in exams. Three years afterwards, numerous of those same voices don't seem to be so sure.

On Saturday head of AI firm Anthropic, Dario Amodei, called on the pace of development to be slowed down – the bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk noted they agreed with him.

Meanwhile AI researcher Jacob Coxon – who quit Anthropic – informed the BBC on Sunday staff who were developing the systems were "genuinely frightened" for the future of humanity.

They all add up to a chorus of serious voices urging a slowdown, but although it might sound like a quick fix, it is far from an straightforward solution. AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBC.

China isn't renowned for wanting to come second. Everyone I speak to notes that even if their business pauses, others will not and they will just obtain left behind. It reminds me of the height of the campaign for nuclear disarmament. The difficulty then too was that nobody wanted to go first.

There is additionally the question of how on earth a slowdown would be enforced. Who would police it? Would we be relying on the AI firms to be transparent concerning what they are doing, and more importantly what they are choosing not to do? That would require an epic level of trust. It arguably the tech sector has never earned.

Although Amodei in his post proposed a three-point plan that included independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation, some observers question how this would work in practice.

"Putting a plant from METR, where one of the guys who quit Anthropic went, in every AI firm? Democratic and global 'co-ordination'? Doesn't mean anything to me."

Zitron remarked stopping training AI models would leave them vulnerable to Chinese rivals.

Their margins might improve but their products will be captured in amber and distilled by Chinese labs. They may have to change pricing. I truly don't know how it all works.

"This could burst the bubble. But right now we are particularly thin on what a 'slowdown' means."

In the UK, we have heard regarding aims to roll out the tech more widely within the NHS to improve patient care, and how AI offered the UK economy a much-needed boost over the summer. We are all being encouraged to employ it more and more at work, in education and in our personal lives.

Notably, the industry is a key part of the UK's strategy to drive economic expansion. "There is no plan B" a former administration adviser informed me, so could a slowdown wreck future prospects here in Britain?

For context, the AI industry is burning through enormous amounts of funds and natural resources and so far, is not creating almost as much revenue. There are multiple reports suggesting a number of firms adopting the technology are disappointed by it.

Economists widely speculate that even the current giants are not all probable to survive and that some kind of "levelling" is coming – additionally known as a bursting bubble. But those firms which do create it could end up becoming the most powerful mega-corporations the world has ever seen, and that comes with its own matters.

OpenAI choosing to halt its march to the stock market could be seen as an epiphany-like moment of taking responsibility for public safety – but it could additionally be the move of a business which has realised it might not obtain the lucrative payout it needs while its entire product is perceived to be lethal.

"One of the probably the biggest challenges that we have right now is that no one can predict with certainty how this technology is going to evolve, " notes Alexander Voicu from the UK AI business Synthesia.

"We know that these systems are getting more powerful, but we don't know where and how they're going to be applied, and we haven't figured out essentially a way of taking full advantage of their potential. My only concern in rushing to regulate now, where there's still a lot of open questions, is that it could actually backfire."

We additionally can't deny the fact that underpinning this entire tech revolution is an ocean of investor cash.

"I'm not worried about the existential risks of AI, I'm worried about the corporate greed of the companies that are creating it, " notes Sasha Luccioni, the founder of Sustainable AI.

Leading computer scientist Professor dame Wendy Hall. This person has advised the UN regarding AI, states the current crisis is all regarding the businesses not behaving responsibly enough.

She likens the current situation to a farmer having a bull in a field which escapes and causes destruction – and the farmer blames the bull.

"Of course it's not the bull's fault – it's the farmer, " she notes. Clearly, the fences weren't robust enough, and that is exactly what she notes we are seeing with AI guardrails right now.

But if those guardrails become too restrictive, could this spell the end of AI?

Some believe there is a more secretive, politically-motivated push for a rules-based clampdown so as to "regulate AI into oblivion" as Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at the Conservative-leaning Capital Research Centre think-tank, put it on X this week.

His post was viewed almost eight million times. It is an extreme and unproven view but it demonstrates that not everybody is on board with the idea of regulation saving the day.

Whatever the reality, the storm at present engulfing the AI industry could already have caused reputational damage to the firms at present in pole position forever.

In short, questions mount over what an AI ' slowdown' would look like is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.