The Day After They Cut the Price of Their AI in Half, Altman and Amodei Told the UN Security Council It Could Be a Risk to All Humanity
About This Episode
On Wednesday, September 23, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei told the UN Security Council that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole and asked governments for controls; Amodei pledged to slow down 'as much as necessary.' The day before, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5, its first model since calling for the industry to pace the frontier, about 40% cheaper to run, and OpenAI answered within hours with GPT-6 Sol and Luna at half price. Fortune called it an all-out price war; Trump told the General Assembly he will encourage AI, not rein it in.
Our Take
The two CEOs who asked the world to slow AI down halved its price the day before asking the Security Council for controls; the pledge governs the ceiling of capability, the price war governs the floor that reaches every office, and only one of the two has numbers attached.
Continue Reading on Unscarcity
The Commoditization of Intelligence
Explains why the pledge to pace the frontier and Tuesday's half-price releases are not in conflict: the labs are holding the capability ceiling while the floor, where most tokens and most jobs live, collapses in price, so the moat moves from capability to trust and accountability.
Anthropic Pulled the AI Alarm. Who Can Act on It?
Supplies the frame for the Security Council briefing: a capability warning is information, a protocol is pre-negotiated machinery, and the UN, like Washington, currently has the first and none of the second.