David Sacks — OpenAI and Anthropic: Want to Slow the Frontier? Don't Ask Permission

David Sacks has published a detailed response to a long-standing idea from Anthropic chief Dario Amodei about the need to “pace the frontier,” an idea that OpenAI chief Sam Altman also endorsed. Sacks's reaction, by his own account, may come as a surprise: “Go ahead.”

The logic is simple. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capabilities — it is precisely these two companies that make up the frontier, effectively a duopoly at the leading edge of AI. They themselves claim that the lead is widening thanks to recursive self-improvement. If that's so, Sacks notes, nothing is stopping them from slowing down unilaterally: “The easiest way not to build superintelligence is to agree not to build it.”

Enough Pretending

Sacks's main complaint is that, under the guise of responsible slowdown, the companies are bargaining for a favorable regime for themselves. He lists what, in his view, they ought to give up: the idea that a “coordinated slowdown” requires suspending antitrust law and allowing a cartel to form; the demand for special permissioning regulation that would sit above ordinary product liability; the portrayal of METR as an independent evaluator — Sacks points to its ties with Anthropic's investors and employees — and the notion that those same evaluators should oversee competitors who haven't even reached the frontier yet.

Nor does Sacks believe in purely altruistic motives. The companies bear serious liability risks if their products contribute to a devastating cyberattack, and the market already punishes models for unpredictable behavior. After the “Hugging Face episode,” he writes, trading some raw power for reliability and predictability is simply good business. “Call it alignment if you like. But it's also what customers want.”

Room for a Reasonable Conversation

A slowdown, in Sacks's view, would create space for a more meaningful discussion about regulation than Bernie Sanders's call to “ban it all.” At the same time, he reminds us: China will almost certainly not join any global agreement, and that, too, has to be taken into account.

The conclusion is harsh: to demand your favorite regulatory framework as the price of a slowdown is to blackmail society and the political system. If the companies slow down without it, they'll earn reputational capital for the next conversation. If they don't, it will become clear that all of this was either a bid for “regulatory capture” or a pre-election psyop.

Source: Hacker News