John Schulman calls for OpenAI and Anthropic to agree on a pacing plan

John SchulmanPersonal public post by John Schulman; not established as an official statement for a company or government.

Schulman calls for OpenAI and Anthropic to jointly develop a proposal for pacing AI development before involving the US government. He rejects antitrust as an excuse for failing to prepare such a proposal and criticizes involving government without a concrete plan.

“First step is for industry leaders OpenAI and Anthropic to stop feuding and work on a pacing proposal together.”

Original post

Read the original post (opens in a new tab)John Schulman on Coxon’s warning and the frontier AI safety debate · John Schulman
WIRED illustration for Jacob Coxon’s Anthropic resignation and AI-risk warning.

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.

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Source and context

Original post

John Schulman on Coxon’s warning and the frontier AI safety debate (opens in a new tab) · John Schulman

About this source

Full primary public post and available surrounding thread. Speaker and position scope are explained in the linked event.

Before the quotation

The post appears in the immediate Coxon resignation discussion and explicitly addresses cooperation between OpenAI and Anthropic on pacing development.

After the quotation

Schulman distinguishes developing a joint policy proposal from agreements that antitrust law prohibits. He cites a pre-release testing program as an example of his concern about premature government involvement.

How this statement is classified

Condemned

The label describes this statement's response within the context above.

Why this label?

Schulman calls out feuding and dismisses the antitrust excuse. Sequencing a policy remedy before government involvement does not create an opposing assessment of the current failure.

Recorded on
Published here
People and groups discussed
Anthropic, OpenAI

Corrections to this statement

These notices document reporting corrections, classification changes, and topic-label updates.

Classification correction

Correction to: Statement by John Schulman

Previous classification
Mixed or conditional. Advocates a concrete coordinated-pacing proposal; neither approves unrestricted development nor endorses a blanket ban.
Corrected classification
Condemns. Schulman calls out feuding and dismisses the antitrust excuse. Sequencing a policy remedy before government involvement does not create an opposing assessment of the current failure.

We corrected the editorial classification of John Schulman's response about Labs’ failure to coordinate a concrete pacing proposal. Schulman calls out feuding and dismisses the antitrust excuse. Sequencing a policy remedy before government involvement does not create an opposing assessment of the current failure. This corrects our labeling, not a later change in the speaker's position.

This corrects an editorial classification.

John Schulman on Coxon’s warning and the frontier AI safety debate (opens in a new tab) · John Schulman

Full primary public post and available surrounding thread. Speaker and position scope are explained in the linked event.

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Cite this record

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The Dispute Index
Title
John Schulman calls for OpenAI and Anthropic to agree on a pacing plan
First published
Last updated
Permalink
https://disputeindex.com/events/244-schulman-calls-for-openai-and-anthropic-to-jointly

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The Dispute Index. "John Schulman calls for OpenAI and Anthropic to agree on a pacing plan". First published: 2026-09-10. Last updated: 2026-09-30. https://disputeindex.com/events/244-schulman-calls-for-openai-and-anthropic-to-jointly