An OpenAI slowdown, argued by the man running research

OpenAI published two posts on Sunday. One says its researchers now get 3.1 days of machine work for every day they put in themselves. The other says nobody should be going this fast.

Both are on the company’s own site, dated 6 September, three days after it shipped GPT-6 Astra.

The chief scientist wants a slowdown

Chief scientist Jakub Pachocki wrote the second post, an essay called An Alien Mind. It closes on a line that reads oddly from the man who runs research at the company shipping fastest.

“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.

He expects and hopes voluntary slowdowns become commonplace until shared safety bars exist.

He is not gentle about the stakes either. “This is a time that calls for extreme caution. I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence,” Pachocki wrote.

Sam Altman reposted the essay on X and called it an important post, according to Business Insider. Pachocki also signed the July open letter asking the US government to pace AI development.

The numbers in the other post

The companion post is a set of internal measurements, and OpenAI frames publishing them as a transparency exercise it thinks should eventually be mandatory.