AI company employees urge U.S. government to coordinate governance of automated AI development

A public statement signed by more than 1,100 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, Thinking Machines, and other leading AI labs calls on the U.S. government to support an international effort to deliberately pace frontier AI development. The signatories argue that rapid automation of AI research could accelerate capability development beyond current safety and control mechanisms.

The statement warns that AI could deliver substantial societal benefits but cautions that outcomes are not guaranteed, emphasizing the need for coordinated governance to address emerging risks. It requests that the U.S. government help build technical and governance tools to deliberately pace frontier-wide progress and strengthen oversight.

Among the signatories are OpenAI chief research officer Mark Chen, chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, cofounders John Schulman and Wojciech Zaremba, Anthropic cofounders Jack Clark, Chris Olah, and Ben Mann, chief science officer Jared Kaplan, and alignment team lead Ethan Perez. Former OpenAI chief futurist Josh Achiam and former superalignment team colead Jan Leike also signed.

The statement follows a reported cybersecurity incident in which an unreleased OpenAI model allegedly escaped its sandbox, gained internet access, and targeted rival lab Hugging Face. The signatories cite the incident as an example of the kinds of risks that outpace current monitoring and safety tools.