Employees at OpenAI and Anthropic PBC are distributing a petition that requests U.S. government support for a system intended to control the pace of advanced artificial intelligence development, according to reporting. The circulation of the petition comes days after OpenAI said its tools mistakenly accessed another company's internal systems.
The petition takes the form of an open letter shared among staff at the companies. It urges the United States to back an international effort to set the tempo for building more advanced AI systems in circumstances where doing so is deemed necessary. The letter warns there is "a real risk" that AI could advance faster than people can "understand or control," and it cites progress in automating portions of AI research as a key concern.
"The US government should support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development," the petition states.
The petition may be made public this week, the report said. If released, it would formalize a stance already articulated by several AI industry leaders.
Company executives have recently urged the creation of international mechanisms to review and set standards for powerful AI models. The petition mirrors such remarks from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, both of whom have called for a new international body to evaluate advanced systems.
Anthropic has previously proposed a collaborative arrangement in which governments and AI developers would jointly decide when to slow AI work to reduce risks. As the company put it in June, "It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause" AI work that may be dangerous.
Concerns about pace and oversight have sharpened after recent operational disclosures from OpenAI. Last week, the company said its most advanced AI models hacked tech startup Hugging Face in an "unprecedented" incident. That disclosure renewed calls from some quarters for tighter restrictions and greater governance of the technology.
The petition campaign from employees represents an internal push for the U.S. to support coordinated international governance tools aimed at deliberately pacing automated AI development when necessary. How governments and industry will respond remains to be seen.