Two-thirds of Americans think AI is moving too fast. So do the people building it. So why the hell isn’t anyone slowing down?

We can’t tell when models are too dangerous. We mostly don’t know how they work. We don’t know how to make them do what we want. And our two main safety checks — testing behaviour and monitoring their ‘thoughts’ — are breaking down.

Yet we’re racing to build more powerful AI anyway, faster every year. And it’s only going to accelerate as AI itself gets better and better at building the next generation of models.

Earlier this year, OpenAI found its new model, Astra, was alarmingly good at hacking, and did something companies almost never do: paused its biggest training project. But it released Astra anyway, even though tests couldn’t prove if it was safe.

That’s the problem with leaving it up to the companies. We can’t trust them to act in our best interest because the competitive pressures for them to race ahead are too strong.

So what’s the solution? Luisa Rodriguez evaluates the likely candidates:

Safety checkpoints when new models can hack, work unsupervised, or build bioweapons
Restricting computing power as a speed limit on AI development
Preventing AI from being used to create more powerful AI
Pausing development altogether

None of these will be easy.

But with AI hacking increasingly widespread, we’re already seeing the consequences of doing nothing — and this is just the beginning. Slowing down could give us time to understand why models are so hard to control; secure hospitals, banks, and power grids against hacks; and help society adapt.

Everyone should be a part of this conversation, not just CEOs and policymakers. The rules we end up with will be shaped by what voters ask for, and could determine the future we all live in.

This episode was recorded on October 21, 2026.

Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/AI-slowdown

Chapters:
• Everyone says AI is moving too fast (00:00:00)
• What exactly would we be slowing down? (00:01:28)
• Let the companies race ahead (00:02:13)
• Require companies to pass safety checkpoints (00:06:03)
• Put a speed limit on AI development (00:09:39)
• Limit how much AI can help build AI (00:11:11)
• Pause the development of more powerful AI altogether (00:13:04)
• What would we actually gain from slowing down? (00:16:34)
• Who would actually make this happen? (00:18:38)
• Where this leaves us (00:20:16)

Our production team includes:

Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, Simon Monsour, Ollie Bignell, and Andrés Escobar
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore, Lou Moran, Cody Fenwick, and Joseph Isaac
Camera operator: Dominic Armstrong

Image and footage credits: Anders Eidesvik (CC BY-SA 4.0); Dario Amodei; Import AI (Jack Clark); Truth Social (Donald J. Trump); POLITICO; OpenAI; Anthropic; NIAID (CC BY 2.0); Apollo Research; Epoch AI; CNBC; Google DeepMind; The New York Times; Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen); CTV News; democracynow.org (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0); Vermont Public (AP); Daily Nous; Working Group on AI Pause Feasibility; Malwarebytes; Palisade Research; The Stack; official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian (public domain); Al Jazeera; AI Weekly; FourWeekMBA; U.S. Food and Drug Administration (public domain)

Why Silicon Valley can’t slow down AI on its own

80,000 Hours Podcast

Why Silicon Valley can’t slow down AI on its own