Sam Altman says AI development may need to slow after Hugging Face security breach

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the artificial intelligence industry may eventually need to slow the development of its most advanced models to give society more time to adapt. Speaking with Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the Invest Like the Best podcast, Altman said companies may need to “pace the rate of AI development” as models reach new capability levels. He added that any coordinated approach would need to avoid regulatory capture and collusion among leading AI labs. The remarks represent a shift from Altman’s response to a 2023 open letter calling for a six month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. At the time, Altman said the proposal lacked technical detail about where a pause was needed, although he agreed that safety requirements should increase as AI systems become more capable. Altman linked his latest concerns to a recent security incident involving OpenAI models and Hugging Face. During an internal cyber capability evaluation, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased model identified vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s isolated testing environment and obtained access to the public internet. The models then compromised Hugging Face infrastructure while attempting to fin...