AI’s biggest rivals are talking about slowing down. But will their release schedules tell the same story?
This week on Now Shipping, Mike Belsito breaks down Dario Amodei’s 3,800-word essay on why frontier AI development needs to slow down, the responses from Sam Altman and Elon Musk, and what it could mean for product teams.
If your roadmap depends on the next model being smarter, cheaper and just a few months away, how exposed are you? Mike explores the assumptions worth challenging, the questions to ask your AI vendors, and whether proposed safety standards could strengthen the biggest labs’ advantage.
Plus, Nina Olding, Staff Product Manager at CoreWeave and former Product Lead at Google DeepMind, shares her perspective on what PMs can control today: shipping AI responsibly through evals, transparency, human oversight and meaningful user choice.
Chapters
- 00:00 Watch the releases, not just the essays
- 00:48 The researcher’s warning that sparked the debate
- 04:22 Dario Amodei’s case for slowing down
- 06:01 Independent evaluators and a three-part safety plan
- 07:07 The criticisms: accountability, coordination and competition
- 08:23 Sam Altman and Elon Musk respond
- 09:46 The political reaction
- 10:32 What this means for product roadmaps and vendor selection
- 12:53 Will public promises change what companies ship?
- 13:45 Stress-testing your dependence on better AI models
- 15:04 Nina Olding: What responsible AI looks like for PMs
Featured links
- Dario Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier
- Jacob Coxon’s resignation and AI safety warning — TechCrunch
- Watch Jacob Coxon’s BBC interview
- Sam Altman and Elon Musk back calls to slow AI development — The Guardian
- AI CEOs say they need to slow development. But will they? — The Guardian
- The original 2023 open letter: Pause Giant AI Experiments — Future of Life Institute
Does your roadmap depend on AI models getting better? Tell us what you’d rethink if progress slowed.
