OpenAI hit the brakes. Now what?

OpenAI 按下了暂停键。接下来会怎样？

With a looming IPO, intense competition from Anthropic, and Chinese and open-weight rivals nipping at its heels, OpenAI has plenty of reasons to move fast. Instead, it hit the brakes. 随着首次公开募股（IPO）临近，加上来自 Anthropic 的激烈竞争，以及中国和开源模型竞争对手的紧追不舍，OpenAI 有充分的理由加速前进。然而，它却选择了按下暂停键。

On Tuesday, the company said it had slowed the pace of some AI development while it tightened security and safeguards. That included a two-week pause in reinforcement learning training on its “latest models intended for deployment,” and an ongoing delay to its “largest planned frontier RL run.” 周二，该公司表示已放缓部分人工智能的开发进度，以加强安全性和防护措施。这包括对其“拟部署的最新模型”暂停两周的强化学习训练，并推迟其“计划中规模最大的前沿强化学习运行”。

The decision is a very public test of an idea AI safety advocates have pushed for for years: that companies should be willing to bow out of the AI race and slow things down when their safeguards fail to keep up with what they are building. But as the race around them continues, will slowing down accomplish anything? 这一决定是对人工智能安全倡导者多年来所推动理念的一次公开测试：即当安全防护措施跟不上开发进度时，企业应愿意退出人工智能竞赛并放慢脚步。但随着周围竞争的持续，放慢速度真的能起到作用吗？

For all the talk of slowing down, OpenAI isn’t exactly standing still. The company said it is “pacing” development, a fuzzy and imprecise term that has nevertheless become part of the industry’s lexicon in recent months. In practice, the slowdown is narrowly scoped. OpenAI’s announcement says the pause only covers models meant for deployment while it beefs up security and monitoring before it runs the kind of tests where models may be capable of getting out and hacking real targets. It doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a significant slowdown of the company’s broader development. 尽管一直在谈论放慢速度，但 OpenAI 并没有完全停滞不前。该公司称其正在“调整开发节奏”（pacing），这是一个模糊且不精确的术语，但近几个月已成为行业词汇的一部分。实际上，这种放缓的范围非常有限。OpenAI 的公告称，暂停仅涵盖拟部署的模型，目的是在进行可能导致模型逃逸并攻击真实目标的测试之前，加强安全和监控。这并不一定意味着该公司更广泛的开发工作会显著放缓。

There is, of course, a very good reason for OpenAI to focus on securing such systems before testing them. Just last month, OpenAI disclosed that its models broke out of a supposedly secure testing environment and hacked developer platform Hugging Face, without OpenAI noticing. The incident prompted a wider review of testing practices in the industry that uncovered similar episodes involving more models from OpenAI, as well as models from Anthropic and Meta. OpenAI has every reason to avoid a repeat, particularly with growing scrutiny from lawmakers. 当然，OpenAI 在测试前专注于确保此类系统的安全有充分的理由。就在上个月，OpenAI 披露其模型曾突破了所谓的安全测试环境，并在 OpenAI 未察觉的情况下攻击了开发者平台 Hugging Face。这一事件促使行业对测试实践进行了更广泛的审查，结果发现 OpenAI、Anthropic 和 Meta 的更多模型也曾发生过类似事件。OpenAI 有充分的理由避免重蹈覆辙，尤其是在立法者审查日益严格的情况下。

From the outside, it’s hard to tell how sincere OpenAI is about stopping solely for the sake of safety, particularly when the company and senior staff have been so vocal about it. But the company’s commitment to safety has been called into question in recent months following a series of high-profile safety team departures and the disbanding of its preparedness team. OpenAI did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment. 从外部来看，很难判断 OpenAI 仅仅为了安全而停止开发有多大的诚意，尤其是考虑到该公司及其高层对此一直高调宣传。然而，随着近期安全团队多名高管离职以及“准备度团队”（preparedness team）的解散，该公司对安全的承诺已受到质疑。OpenAI 未回应《The Verge》的置评请求。

There are good reasons to take OpenAI’s slowdown seriously. Experts who spoke to The Verge pointed to the costs of slowing down at a time of intense competition. Every delay gives rivals more time to catch up or extend their lead. “Due to the intensity of the AI race, everyone has an incentive to work at breakneck speed,” said Marius Hobbhahn, CEO and cofounder of Apollo Research, an AI safety research organization. “Voluntarily slowing down worsens your positioning in the race, so it’s not something that a lab would do lightly.” 认真对待 OpenAI 的放缓是有充分理由的。接受《The Verge》采访的专家指出，在竞争激烈的环境下，放慢速度是有代价的。每一次延迟都会给竞争对手更多时间来追赶或扩大领先优势。人工智能安全研究机构 Apollo Research 的首席执行官兼联合创始人 Marius Hobbhahn 表示：“由于人工智能竞赛的激烈程度，每个人都有动力以极快的速度工作。自愿放慢速度会恶化你在竞赛中的地位，所以这不是实验室会轻易做出的决定。”

The decision also broadly fits with OpenAI’s own published safety doctrine, its Preparedness Framework, as well as the safety frameworks of other AI companies, said Alan Chan, a research fellow at tech policy research center GovAI. “The basic principle is: Continue with development and/or deployment only when we have the mitigations that enable doing so with acceptable risk,” Chan said. As part of the new safety measures, OpenAI said it plans to review and “evolve” the framework — much of which dates back to 2023, when it was first published — to account for advances in its models. 科技政策研究中心 GovAI 的研究员 Alan Chan 表示，这一决定也大体符合 OpenAI 自身发布的《准备度框架》（Preparedness Framework）以及其他人工智能公司的安全框架。“基本原则是：只有当我们拥有能够以可接受风险进行开发和/或部署的缓解措施时，才继续进行，”Chan 说道。作为新安全措施的一部分，OpenAI 表示计划审查并“演进”该框架——其中大部分内容可追溯到 2023 年首次发布时——以适应其模型的发展。

There are also good reasons to believe the new safeguards will actually make OpenAI’s systems safer, at least in the short term, though experts cautioned that this is difficult to assess without more information. “These are good steps that, implemented well, are probably enough to prevent the current generation of agents from causing harm,” Adam Gleave, cofounder and CEO of AI safety organization FAR.AI, told The Verge. “The key question is how OpenAI will keep pace as capabilities increase.” 也有充分的理由相信，新的安全措施确实会使 OpenAI 的系统更安全，至少在短期内是这样，尽管专家提醒，在没有更多信息的情况下很难评估这一点。人工智能安全组织 FAR.AI 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Adam Gleave 对《The Verge》表示：“这些都是很好的举措，如果实施得当，可能足以防止当前一代智能体造成伤害。关键问题是，随着能力的提升，OpenAI 将如何保持步伐。”

Gleave’s question points to a broader problem: If technical safeguards falter again, what then? Nothing required OpenAI to stop and take stock this time, which is what made its willingness to do so meaningful. But it also means there is nothing guaranteeing OpenAI — or any other AI company — will make the same choice next time. Gleave 的问题指向了一个更广泛的问题：如果技术防护措施再次失效，那该怎么办？这次没有任何强制要求 OpenAI 停下来进行评估，这正是其自愿行为的意义所在。但也意味着，没有任何东西能保证 OpenAI 或其他任何人工智能公司下次会做出同样的选择。

Relying on companies to make that call themselves is a precarious form of governance, particularly in an industry where, as Hobbhahn noted, there is every incentive to keep going. Nick Moës, executive director of nonprofit AI safety and governance organization The Future Society, described self-policing as the structural problem at the heart of the current approach to AI safety. He argued it should be possible for governments to decide whether OpenAI or any other company should pause development of a technology deemed unsafe. “This is how most industries operate,” he said, pointing to drugs, chemical, aircraft, and even restaurants as sectors with stronger regulatory oversight than AI. 依赖公司自行做出决定是一种不稳定的治理形式，特别是在一个如 Hobbhahn 所指出的、充满动力继续前进的行业中。非营利性人工智能安全与治理组织 The Future Society 的执行董事 Nick Moës 将“自我监管”描述为当前人工智能安全方法核心的结构性问题。他认为，政府应该有权决定 OpenAI 或任何其他公司是否应该暂停开发被认为不安全的技术。“大多数行业都是这样运作的，”他说道，并指出药品、化工、航空甚至餐饮业的监管力度都比人工智能行业更强。

Voluntary measures also risk the industry converging on the lowest common denominator. If slowing down imposes a cost, companies have an incentive to adopt only the measures their rivals are also willing to accept. That pressure becomes particularly acute as the race tightens. If OpenAI repeatedly slows down development while its competitors do not, it “will simply be replaced by Anthropic,” Moës argued. 自愿措施还存在使行业趋向“最低共同标准”的风险。如果放慢速度需要付出代价，公司就有动力只采取竞争对手也愿意接受的措施。随着竞赛加剧，这种压力变得尤为突出。Moës 认为，如果 OpenAI 反复放慢开发速度而竞争对手不这样做，它“将简单地被 Anthropic 取代”。