David Sacks criticizes ‘Pace The Frontier’ initiative as regulatory capture

David Sacks, the White House’s top AI advisor, is calling out the biggest names in artificial intelligence for what he sees as a cynical play dressed up in safety clothing. On September 13, Sacks publicly criticized OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for backing a movement called “Pace The Frontier,” a coordinated push to slow the development of advanced AI systems. What ‘Pace The Frontier’ actually proposes The initiative launched on July 28 as an open letter signed by over 1,134 individuals from major AI organizations, including employees at Google DeepMind, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. By mid-September, that number had swelled past 1,300 signatories. The letter didn’t demand an immediate halt to AI research. Instead, it called on governments to support tools enabling coordinated international policymaking aimed at slowing the pace of frontier AI development. The movement emerged from growing safety concerns in the AI industry, particularly after incidents that raised alarms about the autonomy and unpredictability of advanced AI systems. Product liability risks, including those highlighted by episodes involving platforms like Hugging Face, added urgency to the c...