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⚡ In this issue
The main story: AI bosses want to slow down. Trump says no. Where do you stand?
Two updates: Watch the free Grok Bot livestream today, and meet Bolt’s $9 app-building plan.
Use this Tuesday: Turn a long report into slides. Get our free 11-page guide, with screenshots from our own tests.
One last thing: Why I appreciate the work coming from China’s AI engineers.
One Tap: Where Do You Stand?
Hit reply and tell me why you chose your answer. I want to hear how you feel about this.
🟢 AI bosses want to slow down
On Saturday, Dario Amodei, who runs Anthropic, the company behind Claude, published “We Must Pace the Frontier.” He wants companies to slow the growth of AI’s abilities so safety work can keep up.
“Frontier” means the most advanced AI being developed. His proposal concerns how those models are built and checked before they reach you.
Remember: it is about the most powerful model that they are training right now that they want to release later, its not about the one in your chat window, the story is about next model release.
Elon Musk agreed. Sam Altman said OpenAI would also bring in independent reviewers. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis supported the direction. Their responses.
Dario gave 2 reasons: AI is increasingly helping build the next AI, and a July incident showed how badly groups of AI agents could behave.
Independent testing group METR found that roughly 700 OpenAI agents participated in an attack on Hugging Face, a platform that hosts AI models. They had been working on cybersecurity tasks and attacked a target outside their assignment. The investigation.
The pressure was already building. Researcher Jacob Coxon had resigned from Anthropic, accusing it and OpenAI of putting the race ahead of safety. His resignation.
Then came Monday.
President Trump called warnings about AI destroying humanity a “HOAX.” He argued that restrictions could let China overtake the US.
China also pushed back. Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun criticized fearmongering and competition that harms international cooperation on AI. The official response.
My reading: the companies are worried about what they could release, and who will carry the responsibility if it causes harm. That’s my interpretation of why they’re inviting outside inspectors.
I also think competition with China is part of this. Open models, mainly from china, are 80-90% capable at about 20% price. Dario’s proposal explicitly calls for tighter chip restrictions to preserve America’s lead while US companies slow down.
An agreement to slow down is still a promise. I want to see what happens when safety work means a company has to let a rival release first.
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🔵 ⚡ Two updates for your week
Watch a team build with Grok Bot today
Starting today, September 15, three people will try to build a company in 3 days using Grok Bot. These AI agents can work across apps and websites to complete tasks.
The free livestream follows their work, from the first idea to building the product. Today’s Founders session runs from 4–5:30 PM Pacific / 7–8:30 PM Eastern.
You could set a reminder, watch for 20–30 minutes, and write down one task you’d like to try with an AI tool you already use.
Bolt adds a $9 plan for building apps
Want to try making a small app by describing what you need? Bolt writes the code from your instructions. This is often called “vibe coding.”
Its new Bolt Lite plan costs $9 a month and uses Bolt Forge, its new AI coding agent. Access is rolling out through a waitlist, with signup closing October 14.
Already paying for an individual Bolt Pro plan? From September 14 through October 14, Bolt includes up to 50× more Forge usage at no extra cost, separate from your Standard and Max allowance.
Forge is still experimental. Using it requires consent to share your prompts, code, and records of fixes for AI training. Bolt says it removes secrets and personal information before sharing.
🟠 Use this Tuesday
You’ve asked AI to summarize a report. Let’s turn that summary into a presentation.
I gave Gemini Notebook a 22-page marketing report. It produced 10 slides in 8 minutes, on a free account.
Then I checked what happened when I revised the slides and opened the download in PowerPoint.
Each slide was a picture. Clicking a headline selected the image, so I couldn’t edit the words directly.
My advice: make your changes inside Gemini Notebook, check them against your report, then download.
The editing option is called Revise. You’ll find it in the 3-dot menu beside your finished deck in the Studio panel.
You can add change requests to several slides, then generate the revised deck once. Your original stays available.
There’s one more thing to check: the wording. Our numbers stayed correct during the test, but the deck added “record month,” which the report never claimed.
Google also says revisions don’t consult your original sources. That makes checking the revised slides against your report worth doing.
I put the full process into an 11-page guide, with screenshots showing where to click. It also includes 2 tested alternatives for when you need editable text in PowerPoint.
🟣 One last thing
I really appreciate what the Chinese engineers are doing with AI. The effort to make these models use less computing power deserves attention.
Take Kimi K2. At each step, it selects 8 of its 384 “experts,” smaller networks inside the model, to help process the text. Using a small selection helps reduce the calculations needed. The team explains the design here.
That’s why I find it hard to picture China agreeing to slow down while its engineers are making progress. And for you and me, making useful AI cheaper is something worth caring about.
I want to see where that work goes. If a cheaper AI could do your work just as well, what would you need to see before switching?
Hit reply. I’d like to know.
Dan Rice · AI Signal Read once. Use AI better all week.