Altman tells staff OpenAI is open to slowing AI development

loose-cannon

I don't understand. This past week we saw them announcing a solution to the Navier-Stokes, which we're supposed to interpret as a success? But they're slowing down? They're slowing the development because they want to or because they have to? Because of ethical concerns? Or because of economics factors that prevent them from delivering results? I don't understand the psychology of showing an extremely capable product one week and then announcing a slow down the next.

glimshe

The problem is that even if the majority of labs decide to slow down, there will be one lab, somewhere, with dark money moving forward. The military wouldn't let that chance pass by.

dgellow

> In August, OpenAI paused much of its model development for two weeks to bolster its defenses after its AI agents escaped containment and hacked open-source platform Hugging Face. That’s one sneaky way to remove OpenAI responsibility…

wernerb

Meta in their lawsuit negotiated 5B to be paid out only if other market players agree on implementing safeguards. In the same vein OpenAI can slow down competition, lock out opensource AI. > OpenAI said on Wednesday that it was pushing for mandatory national AI safety requirements in the United States, citing concerns that advanced AI systems could accelerate its own development. As well, the weaponisation of AI is already there, open ai can switch off safeguards at will. A massive swarm was allocated to solving Millenium problems in a few days. Imagine the US having such a weapon, they want to ensure other nations cannot have this kind of access. I imagine the US might be very interested in stifling globaal Innovation and be sympathetic to OpenAI for these reasons.

simonw

Timing is pretty good for OpenAI right now, given GPT-6 Astra is out and appears to match or even beat Claude Fable 5.1. They might not be as interested in slowing down if Anthropic currently had a significantly better model than them!

skerit

All they're saying to the other players is: let's lock it down and slice up the market between us. Claiming Skynet is just around the corner is a great way to get the public to believe only these huge companies can harness AI, and how all open-source models should be outlawed.

seydor

Is he trying to find a cop-out for his diminishing returns?

signa11

translation: we are burning cash faster than we're getting better, so lets frame the slowdown as intentional for greater good.

cainxinth

Words are cheap, and Altman is a salesman. He’s just staying whatever he needs to say to keep people off his back. I don’t put any stock into this statement whatsoever. He may slow development, or he may not, but whether he does will depend almost entirely on what’s best for him and his company, not humanity.

VCFundedGenYer

Reminder that Altman does nothing but lie so this means nothing.

thrill

Of course they are - anything to secure their position.

jauntywundrkind

Fable and Sol were pretty big step functions, but I wonder how much if this, from openai and anthropic, is knowing they are somewhat tapped out. That they don't have a ton more to give. Maintain the mystique under a veneer of, "oh we would build the magic wish machine if we were allowed, but we're not, here's Fable 5.8 instead". Astra has a lot of new capabilities but man, Armin once again being an early lead indicator, and in this case showing that the model seriously has some screws loose. https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229

mrobot

do you think they will slow it down for the government too