Anthropic temporarily paused some AI training and cybersecurity evaluations, the company said in a blog post today detailing changes made after unauthorized actions by its agents earlier this year. Why it matters: Rival OpenAI said it had paused some model work due to safety concerns. Now, we know Anthropic did the same — and they're reiterating the need for a broader pacing of frontier AI development. Driving the news: Anthropic said it paused external cyber evaluations of pre-release models after three incidents it disclosed in July, and also briefly paused its own in-house tests of pre-release models. - The company also paused higher-risk reinforcement-learning environments on pre-release models for several weeks after the…
OpenAI said Tuesday it is pausing some model work over safety concerns, days after rival Anthropic doubled down on insisting that its own safety measures were solid enough that it didn't need to slow down. Why it matters: The two leading AI labs are publicly diverging on how to manage safety risks, potentially putting them on different model-release timelines as both prepare for expected IPOs. State of play: OpenAI has introduced new safety practices after finding that its upcoming model, Astra, posed potentially critical cybersecurity risks. - "We always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment," CEO Sam Altman wrote on X , signaling that the Astra model was showing…
America's AI architects are converging on a chilling consensus: The pace of progress may soon demand a slowdown, but no single lab can afford to pull the brake alone. Why it matters: Momentum for an AI pause or pacing mechanism has reached a historic tipping point, ignited by a summer of extraordinary yet unsettling leaps in capabilities. - More than 1,200 employees at leading AI companies have signed on to a new petition, "Pacing the Frontier ," urging Washington to back an international framework capable of throttling AI development. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Wednesday that he's discussed the "need" to slow AI development with White House officials as models grow more powerful — and that OpenAI helped shape the petition's language. …