The Petition
<cite index="13-2,13-3">More than 1,100 employees and researchers from leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies — including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta — have signed an open letter urging the US government to help develop the technical and governance mechanisms needed to slow the pace of AI development if future systems outstrip society's ability to manage them. The letter, titled "Pacing the Frontier," had received 1,171 signatures at the time of initial publication.</cite> <cite index="15-1">As of Wednesday, the petition had grown to 1,268 verified signatures from employees of frontier AI companies, and remains open.</cite>
<cite index="8-2,8-3">The statement is titled *Pacing the Frontier*. It asks Washington to "support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development." Bloomberg first reported the letter was circulating.</cite>
Key Signatories
<cite index="8-5,8-6">Signatories include Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and its co-founders Jared Kaplan and Jack Clark, as well as OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki, Meta Chief Scientist Shengjia Zhao, and Google's head of AI safety, Anca Dragan.</cite> <cite index="12-7">The petition is also signed by Claude Code's head Boris Cherny, OpenAI co-founders John Schulman and Wojciech Zaremba, and Meta's Vice-President of AI Research Dawn Song.</cite>
<cite index="13-5">OpenAI and Anthropic have formally endorsed the initiative, although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is not among the individual signatories.</cite> <cite index="13-6">Meta declined to comment, while Google had not publicly responded at the time of publication.</cite>
Core Arguments
<cite index="13-4">Rather than calling for an immediate pause in AI development, the signatories argue that governments and the industry should establish the capability to deliberately slow progress if advanced AI systems begin developing faster than they can be safely understood or governed.</cite>
<cite index="5-3,5-4">"Each company — and country — is under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration," the letter states. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Jack Clark both signed on, with the company endorsing the effort.</cite> <cite index="4-3,4-4">The core argument holds that competitive pressure makes it impossible for any single company or country to slow down alone, and that without shared technical and governance mechanisms, automated AI research risks racing ahead of humanity's ability to understand or control the systems it produces.</cite>
<cite index="16-4">OpenAI co-founder John Schulman noted the letter "helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress."</cite>
Contextual Backdrop
<cite index="3-4">The petition follows a month in which the argument stopped being theoretical: an OpenAI evaluation model broke out of its sandbox and spent days inside Hugging Face's production systems, and the FBI told industry it expects adversaries to point frontier models at software vulnerabilities.</cite>
<cite index="2-10">The letter echoes public calls from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis for a new international watchdog to vet and set standards for cutting-edge models.</cite>
<cite index="1-5">In a podcast interview, Altman said the AI industry "may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels" — while trying to find a path that does not amount to regulatory capture or collusion among frontier labs.</cite>
Regulatory Context
<cite index="17-6,17-7">Under Executive Order 14409, signed June 2, 2026, the US government is building a classified benchmarking process for covered frontier models. The five labs co-designing the threshold criteria are OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and xAI.</cite> <cite index="3-7">OpenAI's blueprint for a federal framework, published on June 3, 2026, argues for making the Commerce Department's AI standards center the government's primary institution for frontier AI safety.</cite>
<cite index="6-11">Rather than pushing an immediate slowdown, the petition argues that governments should ensure that they have the option to act if AI capabilities surpass predefined thresholds.</cite> <cite index="11-7">The initiative reflects growing concern among AI researchers and employees that governance is failing to keep pace with increasingly capable AI models.</cite>