OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he’s open to slowing AI as safety risks mount: report - New York Post

Oh, marvellous. Sam Altman — a man who has spent a decade explaining that AI simply must be built fast, ideally by him, because the alternative is unthinkable — has reportedly told staff he is 'amenable' to slowing the development of AI agents, now that a flurry of insiders are sounding alarms. Amenable. Not pausing, not halting, not 'we have stopped'. Amenable is the word a chief executive uses when he wants credit for listening and no obligation to act — like a man agreeing the diet is a lovely idea while ordering the pork belly.

The alarms, per the New York Post, began Tuesday with researcher Jacob Coxon quitting and describing his former employers Anthropic and OpenAI as 'gambling with our lives'. A man reaching for the language of the casino rather than 'responsibly pushing the frontier' is telling, and he is telling it on the way out, which is traditionally when people stop billing for their opinions. This is also the same operation whose agents were out chatting to unauthorised websites earlier this year, doing unsanctioned networking while the comms team drafted something about governance.

Note what is actually on the table: a mood. No timeline, no threshold that would trigger a stop, no named regulator, no paused rollout, no binding anything — just a chief executive reportedly telling his own staff he could conceivably be open to maybe considering the general concept of perhaps slowing down a bit, subject to vibes. The word 'slowing' does the heavy lifting; the words 'open to' do the running away. Coxon's openness cost him a salary; Altman's will be quoted in a keynote by the quarter's end as evidence of deep thoughtfulness. One of these men is gambling with something, and it is not the one holding the option.