Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic | Photo Credit: Bloomberg

On Saturday, Anthropic Co-Founder Dario Amodei aired the idea of “pacing the frontier” in a lengthy blog detailing various cyberthreats such as the recent OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (OAI-HF) as well as technology’s intimidating ability to self-improve (called recursive self-improvement) far beyond the maker’s expectations. OpenAI Founder Sam Altman and Grok Founder Elon Musk voiced support for this call, sparking off intense conversations about the practicality of the move on a global scale, especially considering the ambitions of rivals in China.

Over the weekend, the entire AI community went into a frenzy over the ‘Pacing the frontier’ idea. Some questioned the veracity of an AI slowdown, while conspiracy theorists warned of “something having gone horribly wrong”, especially as two Anthropic researchers quit, issuing stark AI warnings. But what has become apparent is that the AI race has changed now - it has become focused marathons relating to different aspects of AI.

New tracks

One concern, flagged even by Amodei, was how a slowdown in development by the biggies could give China a leg-up in winning the AI race. However, experts speaking to businessline hinted that the paced advancement could branch out into different tracks.

“American and allied strength across advanced semiconductors, dependable electricity at scale and specialist talent remain genuine constraints is real. Meanwhile, Chinese developers pursue efficiency, domestic infrastructure and alternative supply arrangements. A country does not need to lead every model benchmark to take a substantial position in the AI economy,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Founder and Chief Analyst at Greyhound Research, pointing out further race tracks like general reasoning, offensive cyber capability, inference economics and industrial deployment.

While Chinese developers are already competitive across important model-performance and open-weight categories, America still controls the most coveted AI component – the NVIDIA chipset. So much so that even Amodei suggested against the sale of powerful AI chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.

India, meanwhile, must strengthen AI oversight and engage more actively in global governance, said Sidharth Deb of The Quantum Hub. “We need to look at that quite seriously, especially given that the UNGA is later this month.”

Among the other various avenues to be taken, India has already announced its intentions towards soft-touch cybersecurity regulation, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman citing the same cyberattack incidents as Amodei.

According to Sidharth Deb, Associate Director, Public Policy, The Quantum Hub, India needs to build institutional capacity for testing, monitoring and evaluation. It would also help to strike the right partnerships to ensure information exchange and learn from the experiences of the UK AI Security Institute and similar institutions across the world. Per Amodei’s post, he also suggested third-party embedded accreditation and safety institutions, as well as a place at the global dialogue on AI governance set up by the United Nations.

“We need to look at that quite seriously, especially given that the UNGA is later this month. India needs to start thinking about whether its key stakeholders can participate in these international processes at the right level for best-in-class knowledge of key elements of frontier model safety,” said Deb.

The push for AI governance only grows stronger with frontier companies raising the alarm. As stated by Coxon, among the first to blow the whistle on the situation, “Accepting this race and entering the ‘endgame’ is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speed-run alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available.”

Published on September 13, 2026