Ex-DeepMind safety researchers warn AI must not outrun safety controls

The person who helped build some of the most powerful AI systems on Earth is now saying the industry needs to pump the brakes. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, publicly endorsed slowing down frontier AI development in September 2026 to give safety research a chance to catch up with rapidly advancing capabilities. His comments align with a growing chorus of alarm from inside the labs themselves, where researchers are not just raising concerns but walking out the door. The case for slowing down Hassabis’s position echoes an essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who argued that AI capability gains are at risk of outrunning the control mechanisms meant to keep them in check. Back in July 2026, Hassabis proposed the creation of a US-led, industry-funded standards body designed to conduct pre-release testing of frontier models. The focus areas: cybersecurity vulnerabilities, biological threat potential, and agentic behavior, meaning AI systems that can act autonomously in the world with minimal human supervision. Safety researchers are voting with their feet Bilal Chughtai, a former AGI safety researcher at DeepMind, resigned in July 2026. By mid-September, he was ...