In 3,800-word essay on saturday morning Dario Amodei is calling for AI slowdown.

• “We should also consider pacing based on limiting the ingredients that go into frontier models, such as training compute, the nature of training runs, or internal use of AI to improve AI.”

• “Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

• Amodei wants rivals negotiating safety rules before legislation passes. He’s asking Washington for a narrow antitrust waiver to enable those talks.

“For antitrust reasons, it’s helpful for the US government to mediate or at least enable these discussions — they don’t need to participate, but do need to issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”

• Amodei wants slower US development and a bigger lead over China. Chip restrictions and protection against model theft are how he connects them.

“Pacing within democracies will be limited by the lead that US companies have over authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party. If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) CCP-associated projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk.”