What does it mean when the CEO of one of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the world calls for an AI slowdown? After Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, called for the pace of development of AI models to slow down, it created a ripple effect across the whole tech sector. Whilst rival AI CEOs Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed with Amodei, others like NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have continued to stress the importance of exponential AI innovation.
At this week’s Dreamforce, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has also shared his thoughts on the matter, saying that no matter the outcome, these AI companies “should be held accountable”.
An Open Letter
Last week, Dario Amodei shared an open letter titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”, detailing how the scale of AI’s innovation needed to be reconsidered. He explained that although AI has the potential to solve a variety of relevant, real-world problems, the risks were becoming too serious to continue at the current pace of innovation.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
He detailed that AI’s recursive self-improvement capabilities and the recent OpenAI-Hugging Face incident had spurred him to think differently about AI’s direction. “Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet,” he wrote. “The scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”
Amodei proposed a three-pronged approach to this issue, citing the need for independent monitoring of AI models, industry-wide regulation, and global regulation.
AI Leaders Speak Out
Since the release of the letter, other AI leaders have come out to share their opinions, with CEOs like Sam Altman and Elon Musk sharing their support. Altman, who spoke in a session at Dreamforce yesterday, said that he believed that safety and monitoring should take precedence over features when it comes to AI development, whilst also acknowledging the growing hesitance to believe that AI companies will do the right thing.
“[People] feel the speed with which things are moving”, he said. “It doesn’t take as much imagination to imagine how this could go wrong.”
“When there’s any implication that because of the commercial pressures and the race, some company or between countries, some countries might not do the right thing; I think that’s when people get very scared.”
However, in the same session, Altman also appeared not to actually agree with Amodei on all fronts, almost contradicting himself and insinuating that AI companies were creating the fear around the technology through pushes for change.
“You have companies saying things like: ‘We will only slow down, or we will only be responsible if other companies are responsible,’” he said. “The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing.”
Other tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang have also come out with their opinions on the matter, with Huang making it clear in the Dreamforce keynote that companies should be allowed to “run as fast as they can” and that the “most important thing [is to not] get left behind”.
“Let’s Hold Ourselves Responsible”
It was only a matter of time before attention turned to Marc Benioff and his beliefs on the proposed AI slowdown.
“Technology is never good or bad,” he said. “It’s what you’re doing with the technology that matters.”
This framing is not too dissimilar from what Amodei discussed in his letter, but Benioff also made it clear that a high level of responsibility is needed, no matter what decisions individual AI companies make.
“If they feel like they should slow down, then they should slow down,” he said. “If they feel they should speed up, they should speed up – and then they should be held accountable.”
“We must hold companies and technology executives responsible for the technology they build. I hope that we will take those lessons and say that social media is probably just a warm-up for AI.”
Benioff has historically been vocal about the dangers of AI, especially to young people, calling LLMs “suicide coaches” and pushing for stricter AI regulation.
He also co-chaired the launch of the AI for Good Global Commission at the AI for Good Global Summit in July 2026, aiming to expand access, strengthen trust, and accelerate AI’s impact.
“Let’s hold ourselves responsible as an industry and as executives to make sure our technology is safe and does the right thing.”
Final Thoughts
The world’s biggest AI leaders will never agree on everything, but understanding where they stand and what they’re pushing for remains important.
For Marc Benioff, he remains dedicated to establishing strict regulations for AI to protect the public from harm, but also believes that AI companies should have the flexibility to choose their own pace – as long as they act responsibly.
