AI executives call for a slowdown, and Saudi Arabia shuts down a key oil pipeline: Weekend Rundown

The CEOs of two leading AI companies are publicly calling for a slowdown in the race to build more powerful AI systems, adding to a week of warnings from researchers developing the technology.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, argued in an essay published Saturday that AI firms should deliberately “slow the pace” of model development because advances are outstripping researchers’ ability to understand and control them.

Hours later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman endorsed the idea and said his company would adopt one of Amodei’s proposed safeguards.

“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman wrote on X, adding that the issue had been a major topic of discussion at OpenAI in recent weeks.

Saudi Arabia has shut down a critical oil pipeline after it was struck by drones launched from Iraq, raising fresh concerns about regional stability as attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels threaten to deepen the global energy crisis.

The 745-mile pipeline allowed Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about 20% of the world’s oil before the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran in late February.

Saudi Arabia said…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business