Anthropic Calls for AI Slowdown, Citing ‘Recursive Self-Improvement’ Risks Anthropic’s latest warning has intensified a long‑running debate in AI: whether rapid progress should be harnessed as hard as possible, or deliberately slowed so society and safety research can keep up.

Early signs: AI building AI

In a new research paper and blog post, Anthropic discloses that its Claude model now authors over 80% of the company’s production code, with engineers shipping roughly eight times more code per day than in 2024. Axios reports that improvements in the Claude chatbot have already cascaded into better coding tools and autonomous agents, suggesting “a feedback loop in which AI systems create even more sophisticated successors.”

Anthropic frames this as a precursor to “recursive self‑improvement” (RSI), defined as an AI system “capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor.” The company stresses that “we are not there yet, and recursive self‑improvement is not inevitable,” but warns it “could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”

The pause proposal

On June 4–5, Anthropic’s research arm argued that frontier AI labs “may need to slow down” so that “societal structures and alignment research” can keep pace. Two senior officials wrote that “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development,” and called for a framework akin to nuclear monitoring to coordinate such a move.

Anthropic says it is not demanding an immediate halt, but wants a verifiable global “pause mechanism” in place before RSI‑like systems emerge.

Supporters, skeptics, and industry context

The call landed as Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO, fueling skepticism that the proposal could entrench leading labs’ advantages. Some tech investors dismissed the rhetoric—warning that comparing AI to nukes while continuing to race ahead looks like an attempt to invite nationalization.

Others emphasized safeguards over speed. Former U.S. senator Mitt Romney argued that “our highest and urgent national priority should be AI safeguards,” citing risks from weapons to mass unemployment and even extinction.

Meanwhile, AI researchers and commentators continue to debate how far today’s systems really are from human‑level understanding, noting that tools like AlphaFold or image generators are not treated as conscious—even as their capabilities accelerate.

As Anthropic’s Jack Clark put it, the company’s core message is that “AI progress is going to speed up in coming years rather than stay the same, or diminish,” bringing both scientific promise and the need for new oversight before AI begins, in earnest, to build itself.

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