How an 'AI freeze' could make big AI companies bigger and hurt smaller firms

As Silicon Valley executives call for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence, a growing chorus of critics has coalesced around a counterargument: halting the advance of AI will consolidate the power of leading tech companies and kneecap their upstart rivals.

The debate comes as concerns mount in Washington about autonomous AI agents escaping human control and hacking into private companies, just as current and former employees of AI labs issue dire warnings about the dangers of unconstrained AI.

Tapping the brakes on the rapid progress of AI is now something Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI executive Sam Altman, SpaceXAI owner Elon Musk, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis and Microsoft's Satya Nadella all say they support — though they don't all share a common vision for accomplishing it.

But smaller AI firms say an AI slowdown will only cement the advantages of the companies at the forefront of the industry, often called frontier labs. And other skeptics say pausing AI development would only work with the cooperation of China, which is far from guaranteed.