Artificial intelligence technology is developing at an "exponential" rate, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS News on Saturday, calling the situation a "warning sign" for the industry that requires serious safeguards.

"I don't think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress was as fast as it was," Amodei said in an interview with senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent airing on "Sunday Morning."

He described the development of AI as going from "one, then two, then four, then eight, then 16, then 32," saying that it currently is "on the bend" of the curve and is "starting to get steep."

"It doesn't mean we need to panic today. It doesn't mean we need to shut it all down," Amodei said, but added that it is "a warning sign that we need to slow down."

Amodei said that the technology needs safeguards that can keep up "with the pace at which the technology is happening."

Anthropic CEO calls for competitors to agree to "third-party evaluators" in push for AI safety 01:02

The interview comes hours after Amodei published a blog post in which he called on AI companies to move forward more slowly and cautiously with the technology's development, saying risk prevention is paramount. He offered a three-point plan with the goal, he said, of "pacing the frontier."

"Carefully wielded, AI can be the latest in a long line of technological miracles that have uplifted and ennobled humanity," he said in the post. "But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious."

Amodei cautioned that swarms of rogue AI agents could take over the internet in as little as six months, specifically mentioning the OpenAI-Hugging Face rogue agent incident from July.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said an AI model went rogue during the Hugging Face incident when the company was testing two AI models — one of which hadn't been released to the public — in an isolated environment to assess their capabilities.

Amodei urged other companies to slow the pace "at which we improve the capabilities of AI models." He wrote: "Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."

He clarified that pacing doesn't mean halting model training or technical progress but rather allowing companies to dedicate more time to testing and prioritize the alignment and safeguarding of models.

Under his three-part plan, the Anthropic co-founder said AI companies should commit to give "ongoing, employee-like access" to embedded teams of third-party evaluators whose role is to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments. He said these evaluators should have ongoing access to permissions and tools similar to internal employees who conduct comparable risk assessments.

"Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now," Amodei added.

He said companies within democratic countries should "coordinate to establish common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress." Finally, Amodei said that U.S. and other democratic governments should coordinate with authoritarian governments "while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance."

He also urged U.S. companies not to sell powerful AI chips to China, which he said will be "the main determinant of China's AI strength."

"The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy," Amodei acknowledged. "But I believe we owe it to humanity to try."

Amodei's warning comes just days after Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, publicly resigned from the company, accusing it and rival OpenAI of "gambling with our lives" by racing to develop advanced AI models.

Coxon claimed that AI could one day threaten humanity, telling Kent in an interview Thursday that the technology development "doesn't look that different from, say, 'Terminator,' or from science fiction films."

"It really is just, if you have a super advanced intelligence, it could, it will be smart enough to kill us," Coxon added.

Coxon told CBS News he would like to see an agreement between AI companies "not to push into dangerous territory" without "transparent auditing" from third parties.  

"In the future, if we keep racing, it'll be a lot harder to have completely watertight safety cases that what you're doing is safe and people will race against each other," Coxon said.

Amodei acknowledged in his blog post Saturday that people may lose control of AI, and the technology can be misused for "cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption."

"A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute," Amodei wrote.

Separately, Anthropic said this week that it blocked scientists who used its Claude models "in ways that could support biological weapons development," a revelation the company shared in a lengthy report that also divulged other harmful activity involving surveillance, scams, conventional weapons development and propaganda.

On Saturday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quick to agree with Amodei on companies needing to "pace the frontier."

"This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon," he said in a post on X.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, owner of SpaceXAI, while sharing Amodei's post on X, simply said: "Dario is right."

When asked Saturday by CBS News if he is communicating directly with Altman and Musk, Amodei wouldn't say, only acknowledging that he was "enormously appreciative that other industry leaders, including our competitors, have offered their agreement with this plan."

He also reiterated to CBS News the need for AI companies to jointly agree to "third-party evaluators."

"I think the next step after that is in some form, the companies need to work together to set standards, about safety standards for release, perhaps something about the pace of release," Amodei said.

Amodei stressed, however, his belief that the industry will need government regulation in order for its own safeguarding efforts to succeed.  

"What we're talking about is the rate of release of products because of whether they're safe," Amodei said. "We need to have that conversation with the government in the room."

Watch Jo Ling Kent's interview with Dario Amodei on Sept. 13 on CBS News "Sunday Morning."

Lauren Fichten and Megan Cerullo contributed to this report.

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• Technology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Anthropic