Too big to pause: Could an AI slowdown crash the economy?

The artificial intelligence industry in the United States has powerful forces pulling it in completely opposite directions.

Top AI industry leaders are jointly calling for a slowdown in the pace of development, while US President Donald Trump wants to go full steam ahead to beat China and has announced a so-called “Super Intelligence Force,” headed up by former SEC boss Jay Clayton.

Meanwhile, the five major US based AI hyperscalers are expected to tip $800 billion into the AI buildout this year according to Goldman Sachs.

With the US stock market and GPD growth increasingly dependent on the health of the AI industry, could a slowdown in the pace of AI development tank the economy?

Who wants a slowdown and who doesn’t?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to “pace the frontier,” slowing advances in the most powerful AI models so that safety research can catch up. His September proposal combines independent evaluators inside labs, shared safety standards and limits on developers in democratic countries, and eventual international coordination, with countries including China.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and xAI founder Elon Musk have endorsed his approach. While Amodei explicitly says pacing would allow model training and technical progress to continue, some politicians want to impose a harder brake. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar’s “Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act”, introduced Sept. 23, would permanently prohibit superintelligence and pause advanced AI development until federal safety rules are established.