Pacing the Frontier JULY 2026 Pacing the Frontier A statement from 1,378 employees of frontier AI companies SIGNATORIESCOMMENTS Statement AI could help create a dramatically better future, but that outcome is not guaranteed. The world's leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems. To realize AI's potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight. But each company—and country—is under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration. And today, the world lacks the technical and governance tools to deliberately pace frontier-wide progress. Building on work already underway to monitor frontier model releases: We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.” - 1,378 employees of frontier AI companies "Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved." John Schulman "AI is progressing at a rate that our society might not be ready for. Frontier labs are very close to AI that can exceed even the best people on almost every metric of intelligence. This will lead to unprecedented social and safety risks. To ensure a positive future we need to develop AI in a way that is driven by responsibility and thoughtfulness." Shengjia Zhao "Future AI will be extraordinarily powerful compared to anything that exists today, and dealing with this future power will require unprecedented measures, such as the ones described here. The problem statement is real. This works only if it is done internationally, and it has to be done well: a bad implementation can make things worse." Ilya Sutskever "We have found a way to turn energy into compute, and compute into intelligence. The benefits will be enormous, from curing diseases to understanding the cosmos. We can capture the benefits of the coming intelligence explosion while managing its risks, but only if we build the tools to pace the frontier of the riskiest capabilities before we need them, so we protect people and keep the social…"Show more Jasjeet Sekhon "Frontier AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, and the pace of progress is itself accelerating. We see this directly in our evaluation work. CyberGym and ExploitGym show that frontier AI agents are now capable of discovering and exploiting real-world software vulnerabilities, which without appropriate safeguards, could enable cyberattacks at scale. Many researchers also consider recursive…"Show more Dawn Song "If it's true that AI will be as transformational as electricity, we better be intentional about how it is introduced to the world. A mindless race without assurances on governance, safety or the technology serving the public interest stands in the way of such intentionality." Laura Weidinger "I have worked in AI for a decade. Every few months in the last years, I have found myself surprised again and again at how rapidly the technology advances, no matter how often I update my predictions. AI may end up progressing far more quickly than societies and states can adapt. Thus, many prominent leaders in AI have publicly supported the ability to slow down, including DeepMind CEO Demis…"Show more Stephanie Chan Signatories(20/1,378)Signatories John Schulman Chief Scientist, Thinking Machines Jakub Pachocki Chief Scientist, OpenAI Jared Kaplan Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, Anthropic Shengjia Zhao Chief Scientist, Meta AI Shane Legg Co-Founder & Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind Ilya Sutskever CEO, Safe Superintelligence Inc. Mark Chen Chief Research Officer, OpenAI Jasjeet Sekhon Chief Strategy Officer, Google DeepMind Dario Amodei CEO, Anthropic Jack Clark Co-Founder and Head of Public Benefit, Anthropic Anca Dragan VP, AI Safety & Alignment, Google Wojciech Zaremba Head of AI Resilience, OpenAI Foundation Dawn Song VP, AI Research, Meta Chris Olah Co-Founder & Interpretability Research Lead, Anthropic Laura Weidinger Staff Research Scientist, Google Benjamin Mann Co-Founder, Anthropic Stephanie Chan Staff Research Scientist, Google Julian Schrittwieser Anthropic Summer Yue Director of Alignment and Risk, Meta Jan Leike Anthropic SHOW MORE PersonalComments(9/100)Personal Comments All comments are made in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent any company’s views. "The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but no individual actor is willing to stop unilaterally. To survive, we must coordinate to slow down the race." Leo Gao Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI "Even after 3 years working on AI capability evaluations, the recent pace of progress has been a shock. To avoid catastrophic harms from AGI, we need much, much better coordination." Matthew Rahtz Staff Research Engineer, Google "As a foreign national, I see a US-supported effort as existential, not only for the liberties of the free world but for the prosperity of all." Christian Ryan Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic "Like splitting the atom, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and immense risk. The world should take the time to do this right." Will Yager Anthropic "At the current pace, every couple of weeks there will be new models which significantly increase the consequences of model misuse and misalignment. I worry that efforts to mitigate these risks may fail to keep up with the pace of development, and that margins for error will become increasingly small under international competitive pressures. In the near future, we may urgently want to enact an…"Show more Micah Carroll Misalignment Preparedness, OpenAI "AI is progressing at a rate that our society might not be ready for. Frontier labs are very close to AI that can exceed even the best people on almost every metric of intelligence. This will lead to unprecedented social and safety risks. To ensure a positive future we need to develop AI in a way that is driven by responsibility and thoughtfulness." Shengjia Zhao Chief Scientist, Meta AI "Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved." John Schulman Chief Scientist, Thinking Machines "In the span of four years, we have gone from people having their first experience of an Al that could understand language, to Al that is performing superhuman feats of software engineering, making frontier math breakthroughs, and accelerating scientific research. Progress has shown no signs of slowing down and by default it is in the interest of individual corporations and countries to push the…"Show more Shantanu Jain Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI "As Melvin Kranzberg wrote, technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Achieving societal benefit depends on understanding the interdependent ways in which many humans use advanced AI systems in concert, understanding that takes time to acquire. Pacing progress towards automated AI research allows us the time to build understanding of societal-scale changes, yielding not only an…"Show more Edward Hughes Chief Scientist, Inherent "The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but no individual actor is willing to stop unilaterally. To survive, we must coordinate to slow down the race." Leo Gao Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI "As a foreign national, I see a US-supported effort as existential, not only for the liberties of the free world but for the prosperity of all." Christian Ryan Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic "At the current pace, every couple of weeks there will be new models which significantly increase the consequences of model misuse and misalignment. I worry that efforts to mitigate these risks may fail to keep up with the pace of development, and that margins for error will become increasingly small under international competitive pressures. In the near future, we may urgently want to enact an…"Show more Micah Carroll Misalignment Preparedness, OpenAI "Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved." John Schulman Chief Scientist, Thinking Machines "As Melvin Kranzberg wrote, technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Achieving societal benefit depends on understanding the interdependent ways in which many humans use advanced AI systems in concert, understanding that takes time to acquire. Pacing progress towards automated AI research allows us the time to build understanding of societal-scale changes, yielding not only an…"Show more Edward Hughes Chief Scientist, Inherent "Even after 3 years working on AI capability evaluations, the recent pace of progress has been a shock. To avoid catastrophic harms from AGI, we need much, much better coordination." Matthew Rahtz Staff Research Engineer, Google "Like splitting the atom, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and immense risk. The world should take the time to do this right." Will Yager Anthropic "AI is progressing at a rate that our society might not be ready for. Frontier labs are very close to AI that can exceed even the best people on almost every metric of intelligence. This will lead to unprecedented social and safety risks. To ensure a positive future we need to develop AI in a way that is driven by responsibility and thoughtfulness." Shengjia Zhao Chief Scientist, Meta AI "In the span of four years, we have gone from people having their first experience of an Al that could understand language, to Al that is performing superhuman feats of software engineering, making frontier math breakthroughs, and accelerating scientific research. Progress has shown no signs of slowing down and by default it is in the interest of individual corporations and countries to push the…"Show more Shantanu Jain Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI "The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but no individual actor is willing to stop unilaterally. To survive, we must coordinate to slow down the race." Leo Gao Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI "Like splitting the atom, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and immense risk. The world should take the time to do this right." Will Yager Anthropic "Signed because this statement helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress. I'd also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved." John Schulman Chief Scientist, Thinking Machines "Even after 3 years working on AI capability evaluations, the recent pace of prog…