OpenAI Chief Scientist Warns AI Labs May Need to Slow Down

In brief

• OpenAI’s chief scientist called for voluntary slowdowns until shared safety standards are established.
• Pachocki said monitoring models’ reasoning is becoming less reliable.
• He urged international coordination as AI takes on more of its own development.

OpenAI’s chief scientist Jakub Pachocki has called for voluntary slowdowns in AI development, warning that no lab’s safeguards are adequate to keep building more powerful systems at full speed for much longer.

In his post “An Alien Mind,” published Sunday, Pachocki argued that voluntary company commitments should become mandatory safety standards, enforced by independent auditors, governments or international bodies. He said OpenAI would withhold further scaling when needed but did not announce a new pause.

“Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer,” he wrote. “I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established.”

Pachocki, who joined OpenAI in 2017, also defended developing more powerful AI to secure infrastructure and protect against rogue agents, while warning against using those threats to justify reckless development.