OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees at a companywide meeting this week that the company is open to pacing development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the meeting.
Altman said OpenAI could move in step with other AI labs, the people told Bloomberg. He also acknowledged that some companies might not agree, according to the report. The remarks signal a willingness to slow the frontier if rivals follow — not a settled plan for an industry-wide slowdown.
That distinction matters as the debate shifts from voluntary restraint to mandatory rules. OpenAI has separately argued in a public policy post that governments should establish mandatory national safety requirements for advanced AI systems. The policy position is laid out at https://openai.com/index/ai-policy-window/; it is separate from Bloomberg’s account of what Altman said privately to staff.
A coordinated pace would depend on decisions by companies that compete to build the most capable systems. Bloomberg’s anonymous sourcing describes Altman raising the possibility of moving with other labs, rather than announcing that OpenAI had reached an agreement with them or that the company was halting a particular program.
The meeting remarks put a CEO-level signal behind a question that has circulated through the AI industry: whether safeguards should be left to companies acting voluntarily or set through rules that apply across the market. They also leave open the practical question of whether other labs would accept a slower timetable.
For now, the reported comments describe an option Altman presented to employees, not a public commitment to reduce OpenAI’s development pace. Bloomberg’s report is the basis for the account of the meeting and its anonymous sourcing.