Industry and political backing
| Actor | Position | Date |
|---|
| Sen. Bernie Sanders (US) | Bill to ban ASI, pause advanced training | Sept 2026 |
| Dario Amodei (Anthropic) | Essay calling for slowdown | Sept 12, 2026 |
| Sam Altman (OpenAI) | Backed Amodei plan, we will do the same | Sept 13, 2026 |
| Elon Musk (xAI) | Backed Amodei plan, most important paper of the year | Sept 13, 2026 |
| Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind) | Backed Amodei plan, thoughtful and overdue | Sept 13, 2026 |
| Jakub Pachocki (OpenAI) | Called for voluntary slowdowns | Sept 6, 2026 |
| UK open letter to Andy Burnham | Multinational treaty on superintelligence | Sept 2026 |
The breadth of cross-firm support, with Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google DeepMind all on record, is unprecedented. The most consequential signatory is OpenAI's Pachocki, whose September 6 voluntary-slowdown remarks marked the first time an OpenAI technical leader has broken from the company's historical opposition to mandatory pauses.
What the industry is saying
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki called for voluntary slowdowns on advanced AI training on September 6, 2026, in remarks at a closed-door conference in San Francisco, a notable shift for a company that has historically resisted mandatory pauses, per the Forbes and Verge September 2026 coverage. The shift is widely attributed to internal concerns about the speed of capability gains and to the broader alignment debate that has spilled out of Anthropic following the high-profile resignations of researchers including Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger.
In the United Kingdom, an open letter to Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who is widely expected to become the next Prime Minister, calls for a multinational treaty on superintelligence. The letter is signed by leading UK and European AI researchers, civil-society groups, and several members of the House of Lords. Burnham has not yet publicly responded, although allies say he is open to the idea of an international AI safety treaty modelled on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
What the bill would actually do
If passed, the bill would create the most powerful AI oversight regime in the world, per the Reuters and Politico September 2026 coverage. The AI Safety Board would have the power to define what counts as artificial superintelligence, mandate pre-training evaluations, and block the deployment of any system that exceeds the threshold. Companies would be required to publish detailed safety reports, share evaluation data with the board, and accept on-site inspections. The compute-monitoring regime would track large training runs in real time, similar to the export-control regime for advanced semiconductors. Civil penalties for non-compliance would start at 1 percent of global revenue and scale to criminal liability for executives.
The bill is modelled in part on the 1958 Defence Production Act, which gives the federal government the power to intervene in critical industries during national emergencies. Supporters argue that AI is now a critical industry, and that the bill is needed to prevent a race to the bottom between labs that prioritises speed over safety. Critics argue that the bill would entrench the market position of the largest labs, chill open-source research, and cede ground to Chinese competitors.
Chances of passage
Most Washington observers think the bill as drafted is unlikely to pass in 2026, given the partisan composition of the House and Senate and the strong lobbying presence of frontier AI labs. The bill is widely seen as a marker for a much larger policy debate that will play out over the next two years, and several provisions, including the federal compute-monitoring regime, are likely to be included in must-pass defence authorisation legislation. Industry executives have signalled they would prefer a federal framework to a patchwork of state laws, which may yet open a path to a compromise bill.
What to watch next
Three signals will indicate whether the slowdown movement is gaining real political traction. First, whether the Senate Commerce Committee schedules a markup of the bill before the November midterms. Second, whether the UK open letter to Burnham translates into a formal position from the next British government. Third, whether the frontier labs, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, sign on to the embedded-evaluator scheme proposed by Amodei, which would mark the first concrete industry commitment to the slowdown agenda. Until then, the bill is more a marker than a law, but it is the most ambitious marker ever introduced in the United States.
Resources and next steps
- Sanders Senate office and bill text: sanders.senate.gov
- Amodei We Must Pace the Frontier essay: darioamodei.com
- Reuters US politics coverage: reuters.com
- Anthropic company statements on the slowdown proposal: anthropic.com
- OpenAI company statements on AI safety: openai.com/safety
Fazlur Rahman
