--- title: The company building God wants a kill switch... | daily.dev description: Anthropic's internal think tank has proposed pausing AI development due to concerns about recursive self-improvement, even as the company files for a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The company building God wants a kill switch... | daily.dev og:description: Anthropic's internal think tank has proposed pausing AI development due to concerns about recursive self-improvement, even as the company files for a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/vTrE4lCMw.png og:image:alt: The company building God wants a kill switch... og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The company building God wants a kill switch... **[Fireship](https://daily.dev/sources/fireship)** · 5 min read · 22 upvotes · 7 comments ## Summary Anthropic's internal think tank has proposed pausing AI development due to concerns about recursive self-improvement, even as the company files for a trillion-dollar IPO. Critics note the strategic convenience of a market leader advocating for a global pause. Meanwhile, economists from Boston University warn of an 'AI layoff trap' where automation leads to collapsing consumer demand. Counterbalancing the doom, a 2025 MIT study found 95% of enterprise AI projects delivered zero measurable ROI, and app store data suggests AI-built apps aren't gaining real users — raising questions about whether AI is as transformative as claimed. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@tenko** · 4 upvotes > seems like the unapologetic neophyte tunnel vision makers woke up and join the choir singing the same song for years. good. > > even putting rsi, agi and super intelligence aside - with the current pace of ai development, we DEFINITELY should pause and let "the world" catch up, let we end up like with dot com bubble aftermatch - i mostly mean the lack of (any, in fact, let alone sufficient) the legal structures around ai, just like there was a legal void, huge gap around dot coms that lingered for about a decade since the bubble burst. i mean legal from both the proprietary, IP and ownership POV... **@brightblade42** · 1 upvotes > look like they got it. **@ezpie** · 1 upvotes > just to be clear, most economist aim for worst case scenarios right? I mean I don't know I'm not an economist but from what I heard it seems almost in all cases every researcher aims for worst case scenarios... which honestly sometimes make me feel as if reality decided to do a backflip and fall on it's back, cause how is that even possible? **@rickvian** · 0 upvotes >  ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [What happens when AI no longer needs us to improve](https://daily.dev/posts/what-happens-when-ai-no-longer-needs-us-to-improve-hzgvktme1) · TechCentral · 32 upvotes · 16 comments - [Anthropic backs urgent call for the most powerful AI labs to hit the brakes](https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-backs-urgent-call-for-the-most-powerful-ai-labs-to-hit-the-brakes-tgay0ejok) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Anthropic urges a coordinated, verifiable pause for frontier AI](https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-urges-a-coordinated-verifiable-pause-for-frontier-ai-itsaiakem) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#automation](https://daily.dev/tags/automation), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The company building God wants a kill switch...","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw"},"datePublished":"2026-06-09T17:37:23.391Z","dateModified":"2026-06-09T17:37:41.717Z","description":"Anthropic's internal think tank has proposed pausing AI development due to concerns about recursive self-improvement, even as the company files for a...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0pgCBV8CTZY/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0pgCBV8CTZY/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Fireship","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Fireship","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--75ndqrkr--/f_auto,t_logo/v1702882094/logos/fireship.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/fireship"},"commentCount":7,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":22},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":7}],"keywords":"ai,llm,automation,anthropic,ai-safety","timeRequired":"PT5M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"The company building God wants a kill switch...","description":"Anthropic's internal think tank has proposed pausing AI development due to concerns about recursive self-improvement, even as the company files for a...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0pgCBV8CTZY/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-06-09T17:37:23.391Z","duration":"PT5M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/vTrE4lCMw","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/0pgCBV8CTZY"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fireship","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/fireship"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The company building God wants a kill switch..."}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-company-building-god-wants-a-kill-switch--vtre4lcmw","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"seems like the unapologetic neophyte tunnel vision makers woke up and join the choir singing the same song for years. good.\neven putting rsi, agi and super intelligence aside - with the current pace of ai development, we DEFINITELY should pause and let “the world” catch up, let we end up like with dot com bubble aftermatch - i mostly mean the lack of (any, in fact, let alone sufficient) the legal structures around ai, just like there was a legal void, huge gap around dot coms that lingered for about a decade since the bubble burst. i mean legal from both the proprietary, IP and ownership POV but also from simply the ethical POV, -i think- we absolutely MUST prioritise ensuring these tools serve humans (and humanity), especially since they gobble up such humongous resources, irreversibly too, we can’t make more water than this planet has. sure we can plant trees, but while trees and most such things take shitton of time to reach maturity and their full potential, the damage and depletion happens MUCH faster. and it just saddens me - for what? for ai slop videos? [cries in green dev].\nthen there is the inequality - yes, now seemingly everyone have similar access to ai, hence the ubiquity of ai slop actually. but just like with dot coms, which were also accessible to everyone, few people understood how to use this tool and cashed in tremendously - this is not necessarily bad an sich, but it does worsen the stratification as the result, and the scale we see nowadays is… incomparable with anything we’ve known before, actually.\neconomy’s laws, theories and models are falling apart right in front of us, old knowledge no longer applies. bankruptcies which were mathematically certain are not happening. the sheer number of billionaires globally is worrisome too.\ni truly subscribe to the idea that clever, smart and hardworking people should reap their rewards, but this is just disproportionate, and big part of their success comes from not their “hard work” or “genius idea” but from not so noble activities like cashing in on commercialised public commons, brokering user data with or without their knowledge and permission, and basically taking advantage of public resources for monetary gain of select few - while not covering up the costs of their gains - public commons can be damaged, destroyed or depleted, companies turned those into money, but that’s their money now, right? were public commons their to take? not really, not on such scale anyway, but that’s one of the yet unaddressed legal gaps. right now there probably isn’t a country in existence that has sufficient laws to protect their underground water reserves. these are hardly ever measured, let alone monitored, so that any abuse could be noticed even, let alone penalised. the harm is everyone’s cost, but the gain belongs to 1 company only, and not even all the employees, but mostly the c level execs.\nsame thing was with the invention of plastic - companies gained a lot, and all the trash out there is now “social responsibility”, the companies who multiplied their gains thanks to production and use of plastic do not participate in cleaning up the results of their produce. same deal with every oil spill that happened too. company may get some penalty, the money goes to the gvt and is spent on “god knows what”, but that’s still a measly percent of the actual cost of damage control and removal. lion’s share of the responsibility for companies’ mess is put on the society in general. or never even addressed and cleaned up, actually.","datePublished":"2026-06-10T14:25:44.640Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/vTrE4lCMw#c-59E5MhgRf","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"蘿安娜","url":"https://daily.dev/tenko","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJRzdvPC6CCqN7zfkoUeaez9M3Do8Exp7bETQq7hkVg3PXM3UKN=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"look like they got it.","datePublished":"2026-06-15T14:17:52.597Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/vTrE4lCMw#c-0ETqLQDFC","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"ryan","url":"https://daily.dev/brightblade42","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"just to be clear, most economist aim for worst case scenarios right? I mean I don’t know I’m not an economist but from what I heard it seems almost in all cases every researcher aims for worst case scenarios… which honestly sometimes make me feel as if reality decided to do a backflip and fall on it’s back, cause how is that even possible?","datePublished":"2026-06-11T12:01:26.528Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/vTrE4lCMw#c-E40pmrRGF","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ezpie","url":"https://daily.dev/ezpie","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/104765117?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"","datePublished":"2026-06-15T23:10:19.669Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/vTrE4lCMw#c-bhBXR8ZWW","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Rickvian Aldi","url":"https://daily.dev/rickvian","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--0-huIxZc--/f_auto/v1783474901/avatars/avatar_1TTYQL613ee5RYwfu6DlY?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} ```