Pacing the Frontier is not the actual goal for AI labs

In his latest post about pacing the frontier , Dario writes: But over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain. Two things have convinced me. My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry , including at Anthropic , as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all. You can find countless videos, posts, and articles from all the frontier lab CEOs saying some variation of the above, and also posts from people saying variations of "the labs are really concerned. We should listen to them." I think this is confused, and the right thing to do is ignore anything from the labs regarding risks of AI. In what is now ancient history, the CAIS 2023 statement was signed, where the same CEOs claimed to be alarmed by the risks, and we should do something about it. Since that statement was signed, they have done…