• OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki suggests AI development is at a junction
• He advocates not just for slowing AI development, but keeping people in the loop, and the technology controllable
• Pachocki also states that international coordination from governments on future AI development is needed

OpenAI is taking the post-Hugging Face fallout very seriously. Just days after the release of GPT-6 Astra, Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki believes that development into artificial intelligence should be slowed across the board. Not just by OpenAI, but by every company across the AI industry.

Writing on the OpenAI website, Pachocki said AIs “present clear new dangers” for computer security, and that “no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.”

Referring to OpenAI’s plan to develop an automated research assistant, and its progress with recursive self-improvement (where AI develops its next iteration), Pachocki suggests that now is the time to slow AI development and make the right choices for what happens next.

Understanding machine intelligence

The timing of the blog is surprising, given its proximity to the recent release of OpenAI’s business-focused GPT-6 Astra. Pachocki’s notion of slowing research into AI is based around understanding – or rather, a lack of it. He states how “we now find ourselves at the moment in history of computing where machine intelligence is starting to exceed that of humans in transformative ways,” and that “study of deep learning-based AI is largely an experimental science.”

His argument is a strong one, which digs into the history of OpenAI as an AI developer and its early understanding of machine intelligence requiring increased computational power. This was required to accelerate research, and while various new algorithms have been developed that enhanced AI, the drive towards more power has continued.

While there is no discussion over the concerns of energy, cooling, and data center opposition, Pachocki’s article does accommodate the possibility of losing control of AI. “I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.”

Conscious choice

Does hitting the brakes solve the various problems that AI is facing? OpenAI’s Chief Scientist hopes it will, and enable the industry to consider just what it is offering to the world. Rather than accelerating research into deep learning, Pachocki’s view is that development into AI should be slowed.

He notes that “The main levers we have are either steering the process to strengthen alignment and monitoring alongside the AI and find ways to keep people in the loop; or coordinating to slow down future development as needed to build confidence in these measures.”

However, OpenAI’s Jakub Pachocki conclusion is that the best way to proceed is to employ a combination of these options. But will the rest of the industry work to a reduced pace in order to fully appreciate the scale of AI’s potential, the risks it represents, and deliver the power it offers to everyone who needs it?

It doesn’t seem incredibly likely.