China, Michael Burry, and Yann LeCun reject OpenAI and Anthropic calls to slow AI development; LeCun calls warnings ‘fake’

China has rejected calls from some of America’s most prominent AI executives to slow the development of advanced artificial intelligence, putting Beijing on the same side of a widening debate as investor Michael Burry and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun.

The unusual alignment comes as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Elon Musk raise alarms about the risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems. Their warnings have triggered a fierce counterargument: slowing AI could give competitors an advantage, protect today’s market leaders, or both.

“Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Monday, according to an English translation published by Reuters.

Guo was responding to a question about calls from U.S. AI executives for the industry to slow down amid concerns over where the technology is heading, CNBC reported.

The dispute intensified after Amodei appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday and argued for greater public oversight of AI.

“The government and the public needs to have a stake,” Amodei said, adding that he wants the entire AI industry regulated.

The news comes just a week after two Anthropic researchers warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity within the next decade, setting off fresh alarm in Washington and new calls from U.S. lawmakers for tighter controls on advanced AI systems.

Those warnings have added urgency to a debate now splitting some of the biggest names in AI: whether the greater danger lies in developing increasingly capable systems too quickly, or in slowing down and allowing rivals to catch up.

China’s response does not mean Beijing is dismissing AI risks. China’s Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin, published an article Sunday calling for the acceleration of construction of an AI security risk prevention and control system.

Chen described AI as “the main battleground for global technological competition and a new arena for strategic rivalry among major powers,” calling for “healthy and orderly” development.

That distinction sits at the center of the fight. Governments and AI companies increasingly agree that advanced AI carries risks. They disagree sharply over whether slowing development is the answer, and who benefits if the industry hits the brakes.

Michael Burry and Yann LeCun question the motives behind the AI slowdown warnings

China is far from the only critic.

LeCun, Meta’s former chief AI scientist and one of the best-known researchers in the field, mocked Amodei’s warnings in a post on X.

“Right. Dario was already claiming that GPT2 was too dangerous to open source back in 2019. I made fun of them then. Everyone should make fun of them now.”

Right. Dario was already claiming that GPT2 was too dangerous to open source back in 2019.
I made fun of them then.
Everyone should make fun of them now.

— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) September 13, 2026

Burry, the investor known for predicting the U.S. housing crash before the 2008 financial crisis, went further. He accused major AI companies of having a financial incentive to promote fears about AI and calls for slower development.

“Let’s all take a moment to understand how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and other execs of big hyperscalers to talk of slowing things down,” Burry wrote on X.

Let’s all take a moment to understand how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and other execs of big hyperscalers to talk of slowing things down.
1. LLMs are not AI and won’t be AGI. There is nothing AI to slow down.
2. Competition is coming up fast, slowing benefits…

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) September 14, 2026

His argument is that incumbents stand to gain if development slows just as competitors are closing the gap. Burry claims warnings about dangerous AI can serve another purpose as companies prepare for possible public offerings: portraying their technology as so capable that it requires restraint.

LeCun’s objection comes from a different direction. He has long challenged claims that current large language models are on a straightforward path to human-level intelligence, putting him at odds with researchers who see increasingly capable models as a potentially catastrophic risk.

The debate is no longer confined to AI labs.

AI-related stocks fell Monday, with SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s largest investors, dropping 10% in Japan.

The AI race creates a paradox nobody has solved

Amodei himself has acknowledged the contradiction at the heart of the slowdown argument.

“Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless,” he wrote in an essay published Saturday.

He argued that any attempt to control the pace of development is constrained by the lead U.S. companies hold over China.

“If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) CCP-associated projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk,” Amodei wrote.

President Donald Trump has made a similar geopolitical argument from a different position. During a trip to Ireland, Trump rejected calls from AI executives to slow development and framed the contest with China in stark terms.

“Look, we’re leading China in AI… and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”

Beijing has its own plans.

At the BRICS summit in New Delhi over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would take a leading role in supporting AI collaboration and development across developing countries. Chinese AI models are gaining users outside China as their capabilities improve, adding another source of pressure on U.S. developers.

That leaves the AI industry caught in a contradiction with no easy exit.

Some of the executives building the most capable systems say those systems may become dangerous enough to justify slowing down. Critics say slowing down would protect the companies already ahead. China sees AI as a strategic competition it has little reason to abandon.

And Amodei’s own argument captures the dilemma: move too quickly, and the technology could create serious risks. Move too slowly, and someone else may get there first.

That may be why the debate over slowing AI is becoming harder to separate from the race to win it.