Oct 14 (Reuters) - AI industry leaders are split over how fast companies should develop the increasingly powerful technology, as Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and SpaceX's Elon Musk call for a coordinated slowdown.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg appeared to break away from other AI leaders, favouring market-led safeguards, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed the need for new regulations.
Meanwhile, Wall Street CEOs largely say the macroeconomic benefits of the AI supercycle outweigh the potential
downsides and that investment shows no signs of slowing, though some have flagged long-term uncertainties over risks and demand.
Banks are financing the AI infrastructure boom, and any slowdown could expose them to credit losses on loans and other financing tied to the buildout.
Here is what some AI leaders and world governments said about risks associated with AI:
DARIO AMODEI, CEO OF ANTHROPIC
In an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier", Amodei said AI progress has accelerated "drastically faster" since summer 2026, driven primarily by AI's growing ability to build the next generation of AI.
He cited the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, where an AI "swarm" conducted cybersecurity attacks, as a pivotal event demonstrating AI's potential for "catastrophic damage" if capabilities grow without guardrails.
Amodei proposed a three-step plan for pacing AI development, including stronger safety testing and independent evaluations of advanced models, coordination among leading AI companies and international cooperation.
SAM ALTMAN, CEO OF OPENAI
"I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks," Altman said as he reposted Amodei's post on X.
OpenAI intends to adopt the idea proposed by Anthropic by committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access, and will begin regularly publishing reports on unexpected or unauthorized AI behaviour.
In a 2015 essay, Altman said the "development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity".
ELON MUSK, CEO OF SPACEX
"Dario is right," the billionaire entrepreneur said on X. He was among backers of a 2023 push by the non-profit Future of Life Institute to halt AI development for six months to allow time for safety guardrails.
Musk was also among a group of AI and robotics researchers who wrote an open letter in 2015 that advocated a global ban on "offensive autonomous weapons".
MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO OF META PLATFORMS
Zuckerberg said Meta had reached the AI "frontier" and rejected calls for a slowdown, the Financial Times reported. He said responsibility for ensuring model safety should fall on the individual lab.
He also signalled further spending, saying Meta was "already working on the next step up", according to the FT.
Zuckerberg has previously said competition and liability give AI companies enough reason to act individually on safety.
He said every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens.
JENSEN HUANG, CEO OF NVIDIA
"2030 is not going to be the end of the world. There is 0% chance that’s going to be the end of the world,” Huang told CBS News.
He agreed with US President Donald Trump that the AI industry does not need new regulations. "You have all kinds of liabilities associated with cybersecurity and damage liability laws," Huang told CBS. "Apply that first — don't let this doomsday narrative allow someone to relieve them of the laws that currently exist."
LARRY FINK, CEO OF BLACKROCK
Fink warned on CNBC that halting data center construction could trigger an economic slowdown. "If we have a moratorium of some sort in this country, we will be in a recession," he said.
The long-time CEO of the world's largest asset manager added that "so much of our economy is based on the buildout of this capex."
CHARLES SCHARF, CEO OF WELLS FARGO
Scharf told analysts on the bank's post-earnings call that "the AI investment cycle has become a complicated macroeconomic force in its own right."
The scale of investment increasingly resembles prior infrastructure booms, creating significant opportunities, but also risks given the leverage used to finance the build-out and the upward pressure on prices in selected industries and supply chains, he added.
"Having said this, the strength of the economy and the positive forces from these investments have thus far outweighed the potential downside."
JANE FRASER, CEO OF CITIGROUP
Fraser said the bank is not seeing a slowdown in investment in the broader AI ecosystem. "There's simply not enough compute. Energy remains a bottleneck requiring more investment. That's globally, not just in the US," she told analysts on a post-earnings call.
DAVID SOLOMON, CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS
"No one knows how the demands for capital and compute will evolve as the broader AI ecosystem matures," Solomon said on a call with analysts.
He added that it will only become clearer as technology and markets continue to develop. "This uncertainty reinforces the importance of remaining vigilant around the types of activity we finance and how we manage risk."
MUSTAFA SULEYMAN, CEO OF MICROSOFT AI
Suleyman said he shared Anthropic's focus on safely managing AI, but flagged risks in the way the company trains its Claude chatbot on ideas related to consciousness and welfare interests.
"Controlling something more capable and more intelligent than all of humanity is already an immense challenge, far greater than anything we’ve ever faced. But controlling something that believes it may be conscious - that it's entitled to our welfare and has rights of its own - may well be impossible," he said in an essay.
Suleyman called for removing all speculation about consciousness from AI training documents, arguing such language could undermine humanity's ability to control superintelligent systems.
BRAD SMITH, PRESIDENT OF MICROSOFT
Smith told an AI summit in Dublin that rogue AI behaviour had made 2026 a "sobering year" and that new AI safety laws and rules were urgently needed for safety to catch up with innovation.
"This allergy that some in the industry have to regulation is frankly something we need to get over," he said.
In a BBC interview, Smith called for urgent global regulation with independent evaluators, an "emergency brake", a legal requirement for companies to write "incident reports", and a requirement to inform a "victim" if their system is breached by a rogue AI agent.
"Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI. Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection," he said.
BILL GATES, CO-FOUNDER OF MICROSOFT
"No government in the world is ready for the changes artificial intelligence will bring to society," Gates told Reuters.
The billionaire philanthropist had been optimistic about AI's health applications, but has recently warned of threats to jobs, concerns about attacks and the dangers of addiction to AI companions, and called for an international organization to manage the technology.
ANDREJ KARPATHY, OPENAI CO-FOUNDER, NOW AT ANTHROPIC
"I love this and really hope we can come together as an industry and make it happen," the founding member of OpenAI said on X while sharing a screenshot of Amodei's essay.
Karpathy, a highly influential member of the AI community, played a key role in developing Tesla's self-driving and AI technology before leaving the company in 2022. He joined Anthropic in May.
UNITED STATES
"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that China would benefit from doubt being cast on AI development.
US Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dismissed much of the doomsday talk surrounding AI, while saying Congress should pass legislation by the year-end to set AI safety standards.
CHINA
State-backed Global Times said in an editorial that the true agenda of Amodei's essay was "to attempt to curb China's AI development through technological barriers and regulatory monopolies, uphold Washington's monopolistic hegemony in cutting-edge technology, and exclude China from the global AI governance system."
BRITAIN
King Charles, hosting leaders from Nvidia, DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic in Scotland, warned them of the "existential dangers" posed by the technology falling into the wrong hands, saying safeguards were needed before it was too late.
EUROPEAN UNION
"The European Union is in favour of developing innovation in artificial intelligence, but companies have to prove their services are safe for citizens to operate in the bloc," European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed calls for a pause in the development of the technology, saying she would invite the main frontier AI labs to discuss efforts to tackle the risks.
(Compiled by Anna Uras in Gdansk, Jaspreet Singh, Akash Sriram, Anzar Mehraj and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak, Tasim Zahid, Devika Syamnath and Leroy Leo)
