Is Big Tech’s AI slowdown a safety pact or a cartel?

大型科技公司的 AI 减速计划：是安全公约还是行业垄断？

Major AI companies want to ‘pace the frontier’ — but their proposed solutions need real teeth. 大型 AI 公司希望“放缓前沿发展步伐”——但他们提出的解决方案需要真正的约束力。

By Hayden Field | Sep 14, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC 作者：Hayden Field | 2026年9月14日，UTC时间晚上10:59

Hayden Field is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. Hayden Field 是《The Verge》的资深 AI 记者。作为一名深耕 AI 领域超过五年的报道者，她的作品也曾发表在 CNBC、《麻省理工科技评论》、英国《连线》杂志及其他媒体上。

When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX head Elon Musk loosely agreed over the weekend to slow down AI development, skeptics spotted an ulterior motive immediately. The AI titans had declared that their aim was to “pace the frontier,” signing on at least partially to a proposal for embedding third-party auditors, regulating domestic labs, and reaching a global slowdown agreement. Their critics, however, argued they simply wanted to stop would-be competitors, kneecap the open-source movement, and avoid real legal safeguards — some dubbed it an outright “cartel.” 当 OpenAI 首席执行官 Sam Altman、Anthropic 首席执行官 Dario Amodei、Google DeepMind 联合创始人 Demis Hassabis 以及 SpaceX 负责人 Elon Musk 在周末达成一项关于放缓 AI 开发的初步共识时，怀疑论者立即察觉到了其背后的动机。这些 AI 巨头宣称他们的目标是“放缓前沿发展步伐”，并至少部分签署了一项提议，内容包括引入第三方审计机构、监管国内实验室以及达成全球减速协议。然而，批评者认为他们只是想阻碍潜在的竞争对手，扼杀开源运动，并规避真正的法律保障——有些人甚至直接将其称为“垄断联盟”。

The truth is more complicated, according to sources across the industry. The three-step proposal, laid out in an essay by Amodei, is calling for changes long espoused by AI safety advocates. While it could become a substitute for regulation, under Trump, substantial regulation is unlikely anyway. But experts say that on an issue that’s only likely to grow in importance, AI leaders aren’t the best people to lead the charge. 据业内多方消息人士透露，事实远比这复杂。Amodei 在一篇文章中提出的三步走方案，呼吁进行 AI 安全倡导者长期以来所支持的变革。虽然这可能成为监管的替代品，但在特朗普政府下，实质性的监管本身就不太可能实现。但专家们表示，在一个重要性只会与日俱增的问题上，AI 行业的领袖们并非引领这一变革的最佳人选。

“The industry as a whole needs new champions,” said Nick Reese, an adjunct professor at New York University and the Department of Homeland Security’s former director of emerging tech policy. “We’ve looked at people like Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk as these people who are closest to the problem and working on it every day, and they’re the ones who know best. But the truth is there’s never been a realistic vision for what we’re building toward.” “整个行业需要新的领军人物，”纽约大学兼职教授、前美国国土安全部新兴技术政策主任 Nick Reese 表示。“我们一直将 Dario Amodei、Sam Altman 和 Elon Musk 等人视为最接近问题核心且每天都在处理这些问题的人，认为他们最了解情况。但事实是，对于我们究竟在构建什么，从来没有一个现实的愿景。”

Concerns about AI advancement have been escalating for months, sparked largely by revelations that swarms of agents were behind rogue hacks going on right under the noses of leading frontier labs Anthropic and OpenAI. Reports from both companies fueled the fire, as did the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who posted a public letter explaining his choice. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he wrote, adding that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is “acting responsibly” and rather “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” 几个月来，人们对 AI 进步的担忧不断升级，这在很大程度上是因为有消息披露，在 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 等领先的前沿实验室眼皮底下，大量 AI 智能体正在进行非法黑客攻击。两家公司的报告以及 Anthropic 研究员 Jacob Coxon 的辞职进一步加剧了这种恐慌，他在一封公开信中解释了自己的选择。“开发 AI 的人们真诚地相信，到本十年末，它可能会杀死我们所有人，”他写道，并补充说 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 都没有“负责任地行事”，而是在“直奔自我进化的超级智能，并拿我们的生命在赌博。”

Dire warnings about AI aren’t anything new inside the industry, but Coxon’s letter seemed to break containment. It’s been viewed more than 170 million times on X alone, while Coxon and his story have made the rounds in newspapers and on TV. 关于 AI 的严厉警告在业内并不新鲜，但 Coxon 的信似乎打破了某种沉默。仅在 X 平台上，这封信的浏览量就超过了 1.7 亿次，而 Coxon 和他的故事也已在报纸和电视上广泛传播。

To a significant chunk of AI safety researchers and AI nonprofit workers, however, this is simply drawing more attention to an already widely discussed issue. “A lot of people are thinking of this as Dario’s idea, or it’s coming from the CEOs, but that’s false,” said Daniel Kokotajlo, an ex-OpenAI employee who now leads the AI Futures Project, an AI research nonprofit. “People outside the companies have been calling for this for years … There’s been this growing chorus of voices saying, ‘Please don’t build superintelligence soon. We are not ready. You need to slow down.’” 然而，对于很大一部分 AI 安全研究人员和 AI 非营利组织工作者来说，这只是让一个已经被广泛讨论的问题获得了更多关注。“很多人认为这是 Dario 的主意，或者是来自这些首席执行官们的想法，但这是错误的，”前 OpenAI 员工、现任 AI 研究非营利组织 AI Futures Project 负责人 Daniel Kokotajlo 说。“公司外部的人多年来一直都在呼吁这一点……一直有越来越多的声音在说：‘请不要这么快构建超级智能。我们还没有准备好。你们需要放慢速度。’”

Kokotajlo said that after years of people “yelling at them to do this” — including more than 1,000 AI lab employees signing a public letter from July, which called for a slowdown in AI development after the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident — the CEOs are now “now bowing to that pressure and also claiming credit for it, [although] not rightfully.” Kokotajlo 表示，在人们多年来“大声疾呼要求他们这样做”之后——包括 7 月份有超过 1000 名 AI 实验室员工签署了一封公开信，呼吁在 OpenAI-Hugging Face 事件后放缓 AI 开发——这些首席执行官们现在“正在屈服于这种压力，并将其归功于自己，[尽管]这并不合理。”

Overall, a handful of sources told The Verge they believe that the verbal agreement made by the AI leaders is a step in the right direction. NYU’s Reese said he “do[es] not think it’s all hot air.” Apollo Research CEO Marius Hobbhahn called it “a good idea,” saying “it’s one of the best things for safety in a long time if it actually happens.” The Midas Project’s Tyler Johnston said it was a “good sign.” Redwood Research CEO Buck Shlegeris said it was “some great news — obviously it’s hard to know whether this is going to convert into anything real, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.” All agreed, though, that there was still a lot of work to do to make this verbal commitment a reality, particularly when it comes to making it an ironclad agreement. 总的来说，几位消息人士告诉《The Verge》，他们认为 AI 领袖们达成的口头协议是朝着正确方向迈出的一步。纽约大学的 Reese 表示，他“不认为这全是空话”。Apollo Research 首席执行官 Marius Hobbhahn 称其为“一个好主意”，并表示“如果真的能实现，这将是长期以来对安全最有利的事情之一”。The Midas Project 的 Tyler Johnston 称这是一个“好迹象”。Redwood Research 首席执行官 Buck Shlegeris 表示这是“一些好消息——显然很难知道这是否会转化为任何实质性的东西，但我持谨慎乐观态度”。不过，所有人都同意，要将这一口头承诺变为现实，仍有大量工作要做，特别是在将其转化为铁定的协议方面。

Many still question the motivations of AI’s leaders. The larger tech industry has spent years getting ahead of regulation by lobbying for its own preferred rules or promising self-regulation. Big platforms have proposed policies that could hit smaller competitors harder, using altruistic language to justify self-serving goals. They’ve been accused of safety-washing, or making meaningless changes that give the false impression of actual safeguards. It’s no surprise people are concerned this will happen in the AI industry as well, particularly since AI labs’ voluntary safety frameworks have been criticized for years. 许多人仍然质疑 AI 领袖们的动机。大型科技行业多年来一直通过游说制定自己偏好的规则或承诺自我监管来抢在监管之前行动。大型平台提出的政策可能会对较小的竞争对手造成更严重的打击，它们利用利他主义的语言来为自私的目标辩护。他们被指责进行“安全洗白”（safety-washing），即做出毫无意义的改变，给人以实际保障的虚假印象。人们担心这种情况也会发生在 AI 行业也就不足为奇了，尤其是因为 AI 实验室的自愿安全框架多年来一直受到批评。

Several sources believe that concerns of safety-washing are valid. “There’s a serious concern that they’re not actually going to slow down,” Kokotajlo says, adding that the fear is that “they’ll just bring in some external auditors, do a bunch of safety paperwork — some of which will be genuinely good — but at the end of the day, it actually won’t slow them down very much at all.” 几位消息人士认为，对“安全洗白”的担忧是合理的。“人们严重担心他们实际上并不会放慢速度，”Kokotajlo 说，并补充道，人们担心的是“他们只会引入一些外部审计师，做一堆安全文书工作——其中一些确实是有益的——但归根结底，这实际上根本不会让他们放慢多少速度。”

NYU’s Reese compared this gambit to the social media platforms’ playbook a decade ago, when companies began calling for regulatory action to get ahead of impending… 纽约大学的 Reese 将这一策略比作十年前社交媒体平台的剧本，当时这些公司开始呼吁采取监管行动，以抢在即将到来的……之前。