Elon Musk has publicly endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s push to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development, posting “Dario is right” on X in response to Amodei’s widely circulated essay.
Amodei’s essay called on AI companies to deliberately moderate the speed at which they improve AI model capabilities, framing it as a necessary safety measure with broad industry implications.
In the essay, Amodei wrote: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
The essay came after a former Anthropic researcher publicly resigned over AI safety concerns, a move that prompted others in the field to voice their own fears about the direction of the technology.
Amodei said in an interview this month that he did not anticipate AI would advance as rapidly as it has, and that recent evidence of model misalignment is “a warning sign that we need to slow down.”
Musk’s agreement carries significant weight given that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is in the midst of transitioning its core focus toward autonomous vehicles and robotics, both of which depend heavily on continued AI progress.
SpaceX recently purchased and integrated Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, making the conglomerate’s exposure to AI development even broader and more consequential for investors.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also aligned himself with the cautious camp, warning that the industry risks losing control if development continues at its current trajectory, saying “We could lose control.”
Importantly, Amodei stopped short of calling for an outright halt to AI model training, instead advocating for more independent safety reviews and structured oversight of frontier AI systems.
Despite Musk’s rhetorical agreement with Amodei, analysts and investors should not interpret his comments as a signal that Tesla or SpaceX will meaningfully slow their own AI development timelines in practice.
Any delays to Tesla’s or SpaceX’s AI road maps are more likely attributable to the inherent ambition of their original timelines than to any philosophical pivot toward restraint driven by Musk’s public statements.
The episode nonetheless highlights a growing tension at the heart of the AI industry, where the companies driving the fastest development are simultaneously the loudest voices calling for caution.
