Pacing the frontier

When it comes to OpenAI vs. Anthropic this year, I’ve been all in on Codex. After a chaotic couple of years for OpenAI in 2024 and 2025, this year has been solid. I think OpenAI is in the best position to bring the potential good from AI to the most people.

But this is a good new blog post from Dario Amodei about pacing the frontier. A short excerpt from the beginning:

I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom. […] But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious.

Sam Altman responds:

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.

Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon.

Dario and Sam don’t agree on very much. This feels big.