As calls for AI regulation intensify, US President Donald Trump’s team have made it clear that if lab leaders want to implement an industry-wide slowdown, they’re going to have to do it themselves. Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk have all called for pacing development, following a week of intense debate about the technology’s threats to human safety.

However, David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has warned against the idea of slowing down, stating, 'Stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission.' This sentiment echoes the US government’s reluctance to slow the pace of AI development, with concerns about the US ceding its lead in the technology to China.

Despite this, companies are starting to take voluntary steps to reestablish public trust. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has committed to a proposal by Amodei, giving embedded third-party evaluators employee-level access to their firms to check that practices and products are safe and to report incidents. While these measures will have significant costs, he believes that 'pacing will be well worth this cost.' However, critics wonder how effective these measures will be, especially given the US government’s stance.

Meanwhile, the US largely views China’s AI ecosystem as an economic and national security threat and has previously been caught short by the country’s advances in the technology. Mike Johnson, House Speaker, has warned that if Congress races in to regulate AI, the US will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American. 'So, we’ve got to have balance,' he stated, 'we’ve got to have steady hands at the wheel.'