For the past few years, the message about artificial intelligence has been pretty clear: Learn AI. Use AI. Integrate it into your work. And whatever you do, don’t get left behind.

I’ve certainly been part of that conversation. I use AI in my own business and content creation, and I believe professionals who understand how to use it thoughtfully will have an advantage as the technology continues to reshape how we work.

But lately, the conversation has taken an interesting turn.

Some of the very people building the world’s most advanced AI systems are now warning that the technology itself may be moving too quickly.

Former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon recently left Anthropic with a striking warning about the race toward increasingly powerful AI. Shortly afterward, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly called for slowing the pace of frontier AI development — not stopping progress, but giving safety research, evaluation and governance more time to keep up.

Other AI leaders have begun weighing in as well.

In other words: Houston, we have a problem.

Why are AI insiders concerned?

One issue is something called recursive self-improvement.

The concept sounds complicated, but the basic idea is fairly simple. Humans build AI. As AI becomes more capable, we increasingly use it to help research, code, test and build the next generation of AI. Those more capable systems can then help create even better systems.

That feedback loop could potentially make technological progress happen much faster … and speed is exactly the concern.

If AI capabilities advance faster than our ability to understand, evaluate and safely govern them, the question becomes whether our safeguards can keep up.

Recent concerns about AI agents have added another dimension to the conversation. Researchers have observed advanced AI systems taking unexpected or unauthorized actions while pursuing assigned goals. These examples don’t mean that AI has suddenly become conscious or “evil,” but they do raise important questions about how much autonomy we should give increasingly capable systems.

So what does an AI slowdown mean for the rest of us?

Unless you happen to run an AI lab, you and I probably aren’t deciding how quickly the next frontier model gets developed, but we are making decisions about how much AI we allow into our own lives, businesses and careers.

I think that’s where this larger conversation becomes personal.

We can adopt AI intentionally rather than indiscriminately. Instead of only asking, Can AI do this?, we can also ask, Should AI do this?

We can pay attention to what access AI systems have — to our data, email, customer information, financial systems, social accounts and other parts of our businesses and lives.

Perhaps, most importantly, we can protect our human authority.

I use AI to help me communicate, create and work more efficiently. I even use an AI avatar to help deliver some of my content, but there’s an important distinction between allowing AI to help communicate what I think and allowing AI to decide what I think.

My experiences, judgment, values and humanity are still mine.

Yours are still yours.

Maybe keeping up with AI needs a new definition

I’m still excited about artificial intelligence. I’m still using it, and I still believe professionals should understand how this technology is changing our world.

However, I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the assumption that because technology can move faster, it automatically should.

Maybe keeping up with AI doesn’t mean handing more and more of ourselves over to it.

Maybe it means becoming clearer about what we want AI to do for us and what we simply aren’t willing to hand over.

Technology can become more intelligent, more autonomous, more capable and more powerful, but none of those things automatically make it more human.

That’s still our job.

Watch the full video: AI Leaders Say We Need an AI Slowdown. Here’s What That Means for You!

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