* Anthropic says AI could soon improve without human

intervention

* Development pause will allow society to deal with AI's

implications, startup says

* Previous attempts to halt AI progress have not been

successful

(Rewrites throughout with details, context, updates dateline)

By Aditya Soni

June 5 (Reuters) - Anthropic is calling on major

artificial intelligence labs to consider a coordinated and

verifiable pause in development, warning that rapid advances in

the technology could soon allow AI systems to improve themselves

faster than society can manage the risks.

The Claude creator said AI's ability to complete tasks on

its own has been doubling roughly every four months and it was

headed for "recursive self-improvement", the point at which the

technology can improve without human intervention.

"If systems are capable of fully building their own

successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape

their behavior all grow much more important," the startup said

in a lengthy blog post on Thursday, adding that a pause would

allow society to "deal with its immense implications."

"We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not

inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are

prepared for," Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Anthropic

Institute lead Marina Favaro wrote in the post.

Fears that advanced AI systems may get out of human control

and cause societal harm have risen as the technology becomes

increasingly capable. Anthropic's own Mythos model sent

shockwaves through industries including banking and software

earlier this year with its ability to find vulnerabilities in

existing code.

But regulation has been slow, especially in the U.S. where

most leading AI labs are based. A Trump administration executive

order earlier this week put the onus on the labs themselves,

asking them to voluntarily submit their most capable models for

government cybersecurity testing before public release.

AI researchers have also urged a pause before but had little

success. Elon Musk, who owns AI lab xAI, was among backers of a

2023 push by the non-profit Future of Life Institute to halt AI

development for six months to allow time for safety guardrails.

Anthropic has long positioned itself as a safety-focused AI

lab. Earlier this year, it refused to let the U.S. military use

its models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous

weapons, prompting backlash from the government which put it on

a national security blacklist, set to take effect later in 2026.

Reuters reported on Friday the dispute was showing signs of

easing across parts of the U.S. government.

Still, Anthropic has continued to release increasingly

powerful models and in February walked back a key safety pledge,

saying that it would no longer hold back potentially dangerous

AI if rivals were close to matching its capabilities.

It was recently valued at $965 billion in a massive funding

round and confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public

offering on Monday, putting it ahead of rival OpenAI in both

valuation and the race to secure crucial funding.

COORDINATED ACTION

Anthropic's Thursday post cautioned that unilateral or

poorly coordinated slowdowns could backfire if less cautious

actors continue advancing, potentially reducing overall safety.

It said that a meaningful pause would require agreement

among "multiple well-resourced labs" operating at the

technological frontier, as well as rules on what conditions

would trigger or lift such a pause and who would oversee it.

"A unilateral pause by one lab, by contrast, is achievable

immediately, but accomplishes much less: it would change who the

front-runner is, but it would not create the wider deliberative

process that is currently missing," the startup said.

Its research arm, Anthropic Institute, plans to study

systems needed to support a slowdown and in the coming months

will convene policymakers, researchers, civil society groups and

rival AI firms to discuss managing risks such as recursive

self-improvement.

OpenAI, xAI, Alphabet, Meta Platforms ( META ) and France's Mistral

did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether

they would join the call.

(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico

City; Editing by Shreya Biswas and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)