Elon Musk has publicly endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s argument that frontier AI development should be paced so that safety measures can keep up. The xAI founder’s response is clear, but it does not specify whether xAI will adopt any of the concrete safeguards Amodei has proposed.
Dario is right.
Elon Musk
Amodei has called for a more controlled approach to advancing frontier models, including independent evaluators with internal access, shared standards across AI laboratories and, eventually, coordination among governments.
- Anthropic: Dario Amodei has argued that AI progress should be moderated enough for safety work to keep pace.
- OpenAI: Sam Altman has backed the concept of outside evaluators with internal access to the company’s systems.
- Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis has said Amodei is pointing in the right direction, while noting that the details of a mechanism still need to be worked out.
- xAI: Musk has endorsed Amodei’s overall position but has not outlined a specific policy response.
The alignment is notable because Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and xAI are direct competitors in the race to build more capable AI systems, backed by major infrastructure investment and demand for increasingly powerful models. Their leaders are now, in different terms, acknowledging that raw acceleration cannot be the industry’s only priority.
Musk’s three-word statement should not be read as an operational commitment. It offers no indication that xAI will accept independent assessments, follow a common safety standard or delay a model release if an evaluation raises concerns. The key test for this emerging consensus will be whether any of these companies accepts those trade-offs when safety measures conflict with competitive pressure.
