Gary Marcus conditionally praises Amodei’s pacing proposal
Gary MarcusAI researcher and commentator
On September 13, Gary Marcus welcomed the proposed slowdown but said the commitments needed enforceable safeguards and government pressure. The statement combines support for pacing with skepticism about voluntary industry control.
“We should all salute their tentative agreement to slow down the acceleration of this technology, given that not one of the AI companies seems to have good control over it. I hope they will sign in blood, and put actual teeth in their agreement, and that the government will hold them to it and force it to become something substantive. If Dario catalyzes all that, god bless him.”
Original text
Where this statement fits
Is Anthropic acting responsibly while advancing toward recursive self-improvement?
Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and said that Anthropic and OpenAI are acting irresponsibly by racing toward self-improving superintelligence. In a fuller interview, he praised Anthropic's current practices and denied that it was already cutting corners; his criticism concerns the competitive race and the pressures he expects it to create. Responses dispute the evidence and timing of catastrophic-risk forecasts, whether continued work inside AI labs can be justified, and whether governments should pause development or regulate its continuation. The record distinguishes these disagreements from arguments about the rhetoric of public warnings.
Source and context
Original text
About this source
Direct post by Gary Marcus. The cited passage is Marcus’s conditional evaluation of Amodei’s proposal and does not independently verify his broader statements about industry control or other people’s reactions.
Before the quotation
Marcus was responding to Dario Amodei’s September 12 public proposal to pace frontier AI development.
After the quotation
The surrounding article continues with criticism of the proposal. This record preserves Marcus’s conditional view and does not independently establish claims about other companies’ controls.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
Marcus endorses a tentative slowdown while expressly making his approval depend on stronger commitments and government enforcement.
- Recorded on
- Published here
More from this case
Read the full caseCoxon criticizes startup norms in frontier AI development
“The companies run on a startup mindset: Move fast, break things, fix them later.”Read statement
Nathan Lambert distinguishes inference scaling from recursive self-improvement
“I was underestimating how much we are likely to scale inference-time compute in the near future, but this is different than RSI and I have not seen enough to convince me that an intelligence explosion is near.”Read statement
Gary Marcus says Dario Amodei has lost credibility
“Top three ways Dario Amodei has blown his credibility in seven days. I hate to say it, but President Trump was right, Dario is only pretending to be a perfect little angel.”Read statement
Share or embed this statement
The embed keeps its attribution link to The Dispute Index. Credit the image to The Dispute Index and link to the statement page.
Cite this record
- Publisher
- The Dispute Index
- Title
- Gary Marcus conditionally praises Amodei’s pacing proposal
- First published
- Last updated
- Permalink
- https://disputeindex.com/events/1114-on-september-13-gary-marcus-welcomed-the-proposed
Last updated marks the most recent saved version of this published statement.
The Dispute Index. "Gary Marcus conditionally praises Amodei’s pacing proposal". First published: 2026-09-19. Last updated: 2026-09-19. https://disputeindex.com/events/1114-on-september-13-gary-marcus-welcomed-the-proposed