# Over 1,200 AI Workers Sign 'Pacing the Frontier' Letter Urging US Government Action

> More than 1,200 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and Meta have signed a joint statement, published July 28 under the banner Pacing the Frontier, asking the US government to develop tools that could deliberately slow the pace of frontier AI if needed. Notably, the letter does not call for a pause or a slowdown now. It asks for an insurance policy, the capacity to pace development later, with the specific worry being the moment AI systems start meaningfully automating AI research itself. The timing is pointed. The statement landed two days before an August 1 deadline for the Trump administration's frontier AI framework, and both OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed it at the company level, not just through individual signatures. That corporate backing is what makes this unusual. It is one thing for outside critics to demand guardrails, and quite another for the people building these systems, and the companies employing them, to ask government for the ability to hit the brakes. Whether Washington takes them up on it, and what pacing tools would even look like in practice, is now the open question.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Multiple outlets · Published Saturday, August 1, 2026_

## Wortins' read

More than 1,200 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and Meta have signed a joint statement, published July 28 under the banner Pacing the Frontier, asking the US government to develop tools that could deliberately slow the pace of frontier AI if needed. Notably, the letter does not call for a pause or a slowdown now. It asks for an insurance policy, the capacity to pace development later, with the specific worry being the moment AI systems start meaningfully automating AI research itself. The timing is pointed. The statement landed two days before an August 1 deadline for the Trump administration's frontier AI framework, and both OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed it at the company level, not just through individual signatures. That corporate backing is what makes this unusual. It is one thing for outside critics to demand guardrails, and quite another for the people building these systems, and the companies employing them, to ask government for the ability to hit the brakes. Whether Washington takes them up on it, and what pacing tools would even look like in practice, is now the open question.

## Source

[Read the full story at Multiple outlets](https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/)

## Related coverage

- [Researchers used AI to build a WeChat worm that spreads through phone calls](https://www.wortins.com/story/researchers-used-ai-to-build-a-wechat-worm-that-spreads-thro-8bf3f469) — [The Next Web](https://thenextweb.com/news/wechat-worm-ai-calif-tencent-zero-click)
- [Trump officials say AI will help save rural health care. Some leaders in the field don’t believe it](https://www.wortins.com/story/trump-officials-say-ai-will-help-save-rural-health-care-some-bf0e7d83) — [STAT](https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/10/rural-health-care-ai-adoption-challenges-part-4-unraveled-series/?utm_campaign=rss)
- [First ‘Take It Down Act’ Sentencing Puts Man Behind Bars for 15 Years](https://www.wortins.com/story/first-take-it-down-act-sentencing-puts-man-behind-bars-for-1-7a82b442) — [404 Media](https://www.404media.co/first-take-it-down-act-sentencing-case/)
- [Inception launches Mercury 2.5 at 1,107 tokens per second](https://www.wortins.com/story/inception-launches-mercury-2-5-at-1-107-tokens-per-second-7999ed1b) — [TestingCatalog](https://www.testingcatalog.com/inception-launches-mercury-2-5-at-1-107-tokens-per-second/)
- [Letter: the Senate disaster management subcommittee, led by Sen. Josh Hawley, is probing OpenAI's handling of the Hugging Face breach, calling it "reckless" (Axios)](https://www.wortins.com/story/letter-the-senate-disaster-management-subcommittee-led-by-se-da54156c) — [Techmeme](https://www.techmeme.com/260910/p11#a260910p11)
- [Top AI spenders cut per-employee costs by nearly 10 percent in August](https://www.wortins.com/story/top-ai-spenders-cut-per-employee-costs-by-nearly-10-percent--b31ffb0b) — [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/top-ai-spenders-cut-per-employee-costs-by-nearly-10-percent-in-august/)

---

_Curated and written by [Wortins](https://www.wortins.com) — The daily AI briefing. Every story links to its original source; the "Wortins read" on each is our own original analysis. [About Wortins & our editorial approach](https://www.wortins.com/about)._
