Elon Musk has found an unlikely ally in the debate over artificial intelligence: the head of one of his fiercest competitors. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article arguing it was time to “pace the frontier” of AI development, and Musk amplified the message to his 241 million followers on X, writing simply, “Dario is right.”
The exchange produced a rare moment of alignment among the leaders of three of the world’s most competitive AI companies — Musk’s xAI, Amodei’s Anthropic, and Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Altman also endorsed the slowdown argument, saying, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.”
A shared warning about losing control
Amodei’s article laid out a series of risks he associates with rapid advances in frontier AI, including the possibility of “losing control of AI systems,” cyberattacks, bioterrorism, and “serious economic disruption.” He argued that regulation is the most effective tool for pacing the technology, noting that it “covers even those who are unwilling to cooperate voluntarily.”
To reinforce that approach, Amodei floated the idea of “embedded evaluators” — outside reviewers with “employee-like access” who would be stationed inside AI companies. Their job, according to the Anthropic chief, would be verifying formal commitments, informing the public, and providing “a second opinion free of commercial incentives.” The reviewers would have access to Anthropic’s offices and company laptops, he wrote, describing it as an unusual step meant to prove out the concept of embedded external oversight. He urged other frontier companies to follow suit.
For Musk, the stance is consistent with a position he has held for years. In April 2023, he publicly praised then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for laying groundwork for congressional AI regulation, saying at the time that “AI regulation will be far more important than it may seem today.”
The White House pushes back
Not everyone in the political arena welcomed the industry’s sudden enthusiasm for rules. Vice President JD Vance expressed skepticism on Monday about AI companies asking Washington to rein them in.
“I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” he said. “It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.”
President Donald Trump went considerably further, rejecting appeals for new guardrails and framing the debate as a contest with China. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” Trump wrote on Monday. He accused Amodei of “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel'” and claimed his administration had already stopped AI “people” from doing “bad, or potentially bad, ‘things.'”
The president also rejected the broader push for caution, casting it as part of a “SICK conspiracy going on against AI and data centers” that only benefits Beijing. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” he wrote. “We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”
Karp: ‘You can’t pause it’
Palantir’s Alex Karp sided with the White House’s position in comments to CNBC, arguing that a pause would be a strategic error given that other nations are pressing ahead with the technology.
“If we didn’t have adversaries, I would be very in favor of pausing this technology completely, but we do,” Karp said. “You can’t pause it because it’s a structural advantage.”
The split exposes an unusual political dynamic. Musk, a longtime advocate of AI oversight who now runs a competing frontier lab, finds himself aligned with Amodei — the executive of a rival firm — while the administration he has worked closely with rejects the premise that American developers should slow down. Altman’s agreement adds another layer, given OpenAI’s own competitive position against both Anthropic and xAI.
An industry asking for the brakes
What makes the current moment notable is the direction of the pressure. Rather than resisting regulation, several of the largest AI developers are now publicly inviting it — at least in principle. Amodei’s embedded-reviewer proposal is an attempt to translate that sentiment into a concrete structure, one that would give outside parties visibility into how safety commitments are honored inside company walls.
Whether Washington takes up that invitation remains an open question. Vance’s “Trojan horse” remark and Trump’s insistence that a strong presidency is the only control AI needs suggest the administration is not inclined to build the regulatory architecture Amodei describes. Karp’s framing — that a pause would cede ground in a global race — captures the argument most likely to carry weight in the current political environment.
For now, the three rival CEOs agree on the diagnosis, if not the remedy. The debate over who should hold the brake — and whether anyone should touch it at all — is only getting sharper.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-finds-common-ground-with-rivals-on-ai-controversy