Simon Willison · · 1 min read

Quoting Jeremy Howard

Mirrored from Simon Willison for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

10th June 2026

Easy solution to slow down recursive AI self improvement:

  • The lab with the top-ranked model must agree THEY must not use it for working on frontier AI
  • But everyone else should have access to it.

By definition, this means the frontier doesn't advance.

It also has the critical benefit of avoiding a dangerous power imbalance.

Anthropic has chosen the opposite of the safe path: they are allowing themselves, the current top lab, to use their top model for frontier AI research. They've said they'll sabotage others who try.

This means the AI frontier advances, & power imbalance increases.

(To be clear, I don't think we should try to slow down recursive AI self improvement - I think we should open it up and democratize it as much as possible. My point is: if you claim we should slow down, and you have the best model, you should ensure your org can't use it.)

Jeremy Howard, in a Twitter thread

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