The story behind the cartoon
In a September 12, 2026 essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei urged the AI world to slow the pace at which it improves the capabilities of AI models, so safety measures can catch up. He argued that AI advances were being driven by recursive self-improvement — AI's growing ability to build the next generation of AI — and championed embedding independent evaluators inside the leading labs, specifically naming the nonprofit Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) as an appropriate third-party evaluator.
On November 5, 2026, METR released its analysis of Anthropic's own internal data, and the news was the opposite of slowing down: Anthropic is developing its artificial intelligence systems around twice as quickly as it was a year ago, with much of the speedup coming from AI itself helping to build newer, more advanced versions of itself. Anthropic had invited METR in, giving researchers what the group called unprecedented access to internal data over about 11 weeks from mid-August through late October, plus employee interviews. Co-founder Sam McCandlish responded the same day that many of METR's conclusions match his own, while acknowledging that redactions make it harder for others to check the group's work.
The findings landed as Anthropic prepares for a Wall Street debut later this month, in what could be the biggest initial public offering ever, and as the company says its public risk report from August overall understates the level of acceleration that was occurring. METR also found no bottlenecks — no limits on computing power or data — holding back Anthropic's AI progress, and warned that AI improving itself could start to compound the acceleration. Amodei's own essay had flagged exactly that dynamic as the reason to slow down.
The joke in Zimbo's cartoon is the preacher strapped to his own rocket: Amodei solemnly holding up a SLOW DOWN sign while the ANTHROPIC rocket he is riding blasts past at 2X. He asked the whole industry to pump the brakes — and the speedometer says his own lab is the one going twice as fast.
THE ONE CUSTOMER WHO READ THE LABEL
HUANG TO AMODEI: ENOUGH WITH THE DOOM
THE $518 BILLION IOU.
HE’S GIVING AWAY 80%.