The AI slowdown is coming

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The AI slowdown is coming<br>Transformer Weekly: Claude hacks revealed, Commerce markup delayed, White House framework imminent<br>Shakeel Hashim, Veronica Irwin, and Celia Ford<br>Jul 31, 2026

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Anthropic revealed that in internal testing Claude “gained unauthorized access to the real systems of three different organizations.”

The Senate Commerce punted a markup on AI bills until after the summer recess.

The White House AI framework is expected to be published by Sunday.

But first…<br>THE BIG STORY

Like it or not, an AI slowdown looks imminent.<br>The OpenAI-Hugging Face hack has catalyzed a vibe shift — one sure to be amplified by yesterday’s revelation that Anthropic’s models also hacked into other companies during internal tests, going unnoticed for months.<br>Sam Altman said the hack by his models was “the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally.” He wasn’t the only one shaken up. This week, over a thousand employees of frontier AI companies, including some of the most senior executives at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, signed a statement warning that “there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.” It asks the US government to “support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.” Both OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed the letter, too.<br>Congress is itching to act, albeit failing to make much progress. And even President Trump is talking about the need to balance beating China with keeping Americans safe.<br>In other words: many of the people building frontier AI systems believe we might need a slowdown in the near future. And at this point, we’re more likely than not to get one.<br>What will that look like? First, self-regulation: companies voluntarily holding back models because they don’t want to be held responsible for a catastrophe. We’ve already seen that with Claude Mythos and GPT-5.6-Cyber; as capabilities continue to advance, expect more of this. Given the recent incidents have concerned internal deployment, rather than public releases, we might also see companies slowing down development, too.<br>Next will come concrete regulation: companies will not be allowed to release a model unless it’s safe. This is arguably a position we’re already in, thanks to the de-facto licensing regime created by last month’s executive order; a draft AI framework expected to be released this weekend will formalize it further. Over time, this will morph into controls on internal research and development too: requirements for proper sandboxing to begin with, expanding into requiring evidence-based guarantees that models won’t wreak havoc across the web if internally deployed.<br>None of this need be planned as a coordinated slowdown or “pacing.” But that will nevertheless be the end result of a series of individual actions that each seem necessary at the time. Intelligence agencies are not going to allow models with advanced cyber — let alone bio — capabilities to be widely accessible. The White House will not let companies test models that might hack into third-parties with unknown repercussions.<br>At each stage, some will fight against the slowdown. “We can’t lose the race to China” will be their main reason. But they will be increasingly ignored, as both the government and companies realize that with alignment and control unsolved, “winning the race” just means being the first to risk disaster.<br>Across the Pacific, China will be facing the same incentives. As I’ve argued, the Chinese government will be forced to backtrack on its open weight commitments; tighter regulation will come soon after. The end result will be an uneasy détente. Both the US and China will effectively have a capability ceiling: AI models will be as good as they can be without posing significant risks. The ceiling will edge up as we make progress on alignment, control and societal resilience, but it will do so more slowly than capabilities advance today. At some point, the détente might formalize into a bilateral agreement; doing so will require the “technical and governance tools” to verify the kind of treaty the pacing letter calls for.<br>Depending on your point of view, all this might seem hopelessly optimistic or naive. Perhaps it is. But as AI risks become all too real, so might once unthinkable policy responses.<br>— Shakeel Hashim<br>THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER

Who should be responsible for OpenAI’s hack of Hugging Face? — Gabriel Weil argues AI companies need liability rules akin to keepers of wild animals

Internal AI deployments have people worried. OpenAI’s escaping models show why. — Celia Ford explains why everyone was already so worried...