This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 15th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Are we about to lose control of AI? That is the claim from the companies furthest ahead in the field. But their proposal for a global rulebook has enormous holes in it – and could have major consequences for the world economy.
We need to slow down, says the man with his foot on the accelerator.
That is roughly how it sounds when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns that AI technology is heading in a dangerous direction. Over the weekend, though, he was backed by both Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Together they all say that something must be done.
So are we facing a global slowdown in AI development? Three factors argue strongly against it.
We do not need to speculate about how this is meant to work. Amodei has a plan, which he has published online. In it you can read that this restraint around AI development needs to happen in three stages – independent oversight, global coordination between democracies and finally: coordination with authoritarian regimes.
So that is Amodei’s plan. But even looking beyond it, there is a great deal to suggest that a global pause or slowdown would be extremely difficult to pull off.
The first factor against it is purely practical. For a pause to work, countries as well as companies need to agree. We do not have a particularly strong tradition in the world of sitting down in a room with our enemies and being reasonable together. We are not especially good at doing it among friends and allies either, frankly. The forum for this – other than possibly the UN, whose mandate does not primarily cover corporations or technology issues – does not exist today.
In practice, though, the dialogue is mainly about the US and China. Europe and the EU are not mentioned in Amodei’s essay at all (other than possibly as “allies”).
If the US slows down without China doing the same, the balance of power between the two could be upset. Amodei proposes, for example, that exports of powerful AI chips to China be banned. The suggestions on the table would handle this regulation in a way that keeps the US in the lead in global AI development.
You do not need to be an expert on Chinese trade policy to suspect that this particular ambition will not be met with cheers in Beijing. Why would a competitor agree to rules that cement it in second place? Have China’s ambitions for power ever worked that way?
The second factor is the economy. Expectations about what AI will do for the world economy are enormous. You can read it off the valuations of the companies right now. Data centers are being built one after another around the world, and billion-dollar deals are being promised to lock in demand the market is certain will materialize. Oracle, Nvidia, CoreWeave, Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, Microsoft. The list of companies whose valuation is entirely bound up in AI is considerably longer than that. There is not a stock market in the world that would be untouched by a major decline – or, for that matter, a slowdown of any kind.
On the contrary, the exchange is strongly forward-looking in this respect. It prices in what is to come. Should there be any indication that this economic scenario might not arrive, we can count on a jolt in equities. Shares began to tremble on Monday at the mere thought.
Such anxiety would in turn affect the appetite to invest in ordinary companies too. Trump – who often points to the stock market as an indicator of the country’s successful economy – is unlikely to risk a drop there. He would not be alone in having that reservation either.
The third and final factor is about motive and timing. Anthropic and Amodei have cried wolf about AI safety many times before.
Look at the common denominator among the world’s largest AI companies and it is clear: money and financing. Anthropic is heading for the stock market shortly, and OpenAI has filed its application as well. Musk’s SpaceX is a major player in AI and is already listed.
Introducing regulation in the AI market would mean large costs and added complexity. If you are the biggest player, that is manageable. But smaller rivals could find it considerably harder to cope. It sounds as though the proposals would slow the competition down more than those making them.
If the leading AI companies truly believed the end of the world was near, they could of course stop building it. No global regulation is required for that.
That leads you to think there are other motives and purposes behind issuing warnings in this way. Not that the risks do not exist – they do.
But the brake is right there, next to the accelerator.
Until Amodei and the other chief executives do themselves what they are asking everyone else to do, the arguments about the world’s impending doom will ring hollow.
